Freight car

“ You have only to drive it to the railroad station, roll it on an automobile freight car with a door at the end, as in a small garage, take the next passenger train yourself and skip as many or as few miles as you choose. In America, automobile freight is wonderfully efficient, and is about as fast as ordinary express. (At least the Santa Fé service is.)
We spent only two days at the Grand Canyon and the car arrived in Los Angeles at the same time we did. There is only one deterrent to frequent freight shipments: the cost. Automobiles weigh a good deal and the freight charges are by the pound. ”

“ Most loaded freight cars weigh between forty and eighty tons.
Sometimes a factory wants to ship a very tall machine by freight. So the railroad has it loaded onto an underslung flat car that looks as if it had had a bite taken out of its middle. It’s called a depressed center car.
But still the machine may stick up too high to go through underpasses. Then a special department gets to work figuring out what to do. Men who know every mile of track work out a route that has no low underpasses. This sometimes means that the machine will make a dozen detours before it is delivered. ”

“ Prompt loading and unloading of freight-cars is one way in which owners of freight can conserve railway service and in the long run help themselves.
The conservation of railway service has yet larger aspects. The moving of a freight-car from the place of shipment to its destination is the duty of the railway company, but it cannot perform that duty without adequate facilities. ”

“ A steady increase in the freight performance of American equipment is shown by official data of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Whereas in 1894 it required on an average 1,888 freight cars for every 1,000,000 tons of freight transported their capacity has so increased that the same amount of traffic in 1906 was carried by only 1,127 cars. ”

“ Yet upon the other hand a very considerable portion of the business community still seems to be at the rather definite conclusion that the motor-truck is to replace the railroad for freight hauls up to a hundred miles or less, while old-time railroaders for years past have been frank in saying that a freight-car did not even begin to make money until it had hauled its goods at least forty miles, and to-day the modern generation of operators will put this figure at eighty miles. ”

“ This movement of freight cars makes a valuable barometer of the general condition of business. The daily papers have a custom of making national compilations of car-service reports part of their most interesting market news. In dull seasons the cars come home from long service on other roads. But in very busy seasons all roads have little compunction about borrowing “foreign” cars for use in their local service. With shippers begging cars from every quarter and threatening all manner of dire things, 35 cents daily is a small rental to pay for the use of a roomy car. ”

“ A number of special classes of freight require special cars for their transportation, and these are sometimes owned by the shippers or by fast freight lines, as well as by the railway companies. Live-stock cars for cattle, refrigerator cars for dressed meat and other provisions, heater cars for fruit, etc., are in extensive use, as well as many other special cars adapted to the needs of perishable freight. ”

“ The motor trucks transport less than carload lots of freight in complete coordination with the rail service. The railroad instituted this additional method of transportation in order to furnish an improved and more convenient freight service to the public in certain areas of light traffic and in order to curtail car mileage and way-freight service. Motor vehicle transportation, in other words, is merely a new method of carrying on part of its all-rail freight business in which it had been engaged for many years. ”

“ But to freight crews there is no danger more menacing than the “break-in-two,” although, happily, this danger is gradually growing less and less, with the introduction of air-brakes on freight-cars as well as passenger.
Freight-trains, when traffic is heavy, are usually run in sections, with as many cars to each section as an engine can handle. The sections are run as close together as they can be with safety, and, in railroad parlance, the first section of Freight-train Ninety-eight, for instance, is known as “first Ninety-eight” ”

“ The results in benefit to the agriculture of the country in a general system of good roads, will be most felt through the facility it will give the farmer in marketing his products. With the aid of the motor truck, the farmer may be able to meet, in many cases, the congestion-of-freight-by-railroad problem.
Adding to its other benefits, the automobile promises to be an element in the reduction of the high cost of living, and if it does aid in this it will be in two directions, first, as a freight carrier, and, second, by displacing the horse. ”

“ Voorhees' story [21] of the wanderings of a freight car will understand that any one freight car in the United States or Canada should be prepared to run in the same train with any other car. A few years ago a committee of the Master Car-builders' Association was appointed to choose and recommend a type of coupler to be adopted as the standard of the association. ”

“ The ordinary foreign freight cars are the same as those of 30 or 40 years ago, being short four-wheel cars, weighing 5 tons, and carrying 8 to 10 tons. These are not well adapted to the handling of bulk freight, and greatly increased economy and facility in such traffic would result from the introduction of the American system, as has been done in Australia. In modern American practice, too, the cars are equipped with automatic couplers and657 power brakes, thus greatly increasing the safety and facility of operating heavy fast trains. ”

“ The hard-headed railroad executives who continue to argue against a too elaborate car-building program must understand these figures and their full import. Nor can their brethren in the field be entirely blind to the success of the Car Service Commission of the American Railway Association in making an extensive and vastly bettered use of the freight equipment immediately at hand at that time and available all the way across the country. It takes a lot of time and money to build any considerable quantity of new freight-cars. ”

“ A freight train of 800 tons, running at 30 miles per hour, can be stopped in about 950 feet in 32 seconds, or in 300 feet and 11 seconds by an “emergency” application. Very few countries have applied continuous brakes to freight cars, except the United States and Canada, and (to some extent) Russia and New South Wales.
The improvement in train service has been even greater than that in train equipment, and this improvement has been in speed, accommodation, and number of trains. Among the notable runs are those across the American and European continents. ”

“ During the same period, 1902 to 1909, covered in the table relating to locomotives, for which alone full data is available, the increase in the number of passenger cars and freight cars, and in the capacity of the latter, is shown in the following statement:
It is in the increased capacity of locomotives and cars rather than in their numbers that the seeker after truth will find the explanation of how American railways have been able to handle freight traffic that has increased in volume over 80% in ten years where numerically the increase of equipment has been less than 60%. ”

“ No precaution need be taken by the motorman as nothing can get into the tube and only one train is allowed in a section at one time. Certain hours are given to passenger traffic and others to freight traffic. An immense amount of freight can thus be carried in one hour. It is possible to send a through freight car two thousand miles in ten or twelve hours. Express cars are never connected with passengers cars. They are run on their own schedule and sometimes attached to freight cars. ”

“ There are 17 electric locomotives, ranging from 55 to 100 tons weight; 287 freight cars are owned, which have no electric equipment, are the same in all respects as steam railroad freight cars, are interchangeable with steam railroads, and are and have been regularly so exchanged. Foreign line freight equipment of every character flows freely over the road. ”

“ The principal types to be found in the United Kingdom and on the continent of Europe are open wagons (the lading often protected from the weather by tarpaulin sheets) , mineral wagons, covered or box wagons for cotton, grain, &c., sheep and cattle trucks, &c. The principal types of American freight cars are box cars, gondola cars, coal cars, stock cars, tank cars and refrigerator cars, with, as in other countries, various special cars for special purposes. ”

“ It would seem absurd if our railroads had no passenger-cars, and we had to travel about the country strapped on to the roof of a freight-car. Ocean-travel is quite as absurd, and even more dangerous, for our tier of state-rooms is strapped to the top of a heavy iron box, loaded with heavy freight, which, in the event of a sudden blow, goes to the bottom as if it were made of glass. According to the writer in the Post, the passenger-steamship should be of about the same length as at present, but broader and shallower, with lines adapted, not to carrying capacity, but to speed ”

“ Shippers, particularly those who require a specialized form of freight car for transportation of their products, may and do, own cars adapted for the purpose. They may, and do, in lieu of owning such facilities, rent them from the owners. Car companies owning a large number of a special type of freight car, some affiliates or subsidiaries of railroads and others, like the petitioner, wholly independent and financed by private capital, have, for many years, been in the business of leasing cars to shippers. ”

“ This dingy little building was one link in that great chain of offices which enables every road in the country to keep track of the cars it is using, to know where « 13 » they are, what progress they are making, and what service they are performing.
Every one who has seen a freight-train has noticed that it is almost always composed of cars belonging to many different roads, and must have wondered how these cars were kept accounted for. Every road would prefer to use only its own cars, and to keep them on its own system, but this is impossible. ”

“ It is charged that Armour not only gets large quantities of high-class freight carried at the rates appropriate to lower-class freight by unreported mixing of his goods in carload lots billed at the lowest rate applicable to any of the goods in the car; it is also further charged that the space beneath the beef that is hung up in the refrigerator cars is often crowded full of poultry, eggs, etc., which are carried for nothing. ”

“ In 1919 the entire property, including controlled lines, embraced more than 13,000 miles of main track, besides about 5000 miles of extra tracks; over 200,000 freight cars are in use on the system, and every year upwards of 200,000,000 tons of freight are transported. ”

“ In making up a freight train, a switch engine, with a freight car attached, was being moved down grade towards where other freight ears were standing upon the track, when the single car became uncoupled from the engine, and, being propelled by gravity towards the standing cars, came into contact with them. ”

“ The public assumes that if enough cars are provided they can be moved on schedule time from point of origin to destination, wherever these may be. This is not the real trouble. What is really needed is the greater movement of cars. The average movement of a freight car is about 24 miles, or two hours, per day. Delays in loading and unloading by shippers are partly responsible, but much of the lost time is consumed in getting into, out of or through terminal points where there is not room to handle the cars. More cars intensify instead of reducing the trouble. ”

“ With their little ten-ton cars there is always enough package-freight to “make” a full car even to the smallest communities, while once arrived at one of these, a switching-crew composed of a man and a horse handles the car-load shipment with great care and no little speed. ”

“ Few roads could afford to maintain [Pg 193] highly specialized equipment to care for a business of a few weeks length. But a private company operating all over the country, could utilize its cars first for early vegetables and fruits from the south, then from the middle west or the Oregon-Washington region, and finally in winter for oranges from California or Florida. The number of these cars rapidly increased until by 1903 there were 130,000 in service,—in fact about one-eleventh of all the freight cars in the United States were privately owned. ”

“ Here traffic is relatively thin, the track with dirt ballast is less solid, hauls are many times longer, and single track is the rule. Moreover, we frequently have merchandise, implements, machinery and other high-class freight in one direction, and such perishable stuff as live stock and dressed meats in the other. A dozen years ago we had developed a combination freight and passenger engine, usually a ten-wheeler with fairly high drivers, which handled such business promptly and profitably. ”

“ Each year the locomotives run about 80,000,000 miles, the passenger-train cars move 220,000,000 miles, and the freight-cars move 624,000,000 miles. The total mileage of these units of equipment is 2,500,000 miles per day, or more than 100,000 miles every hour.
These impressive figures are even more impressive when used as an index of service in carrying passengers and freight. Each year the New England lines and associated properties, including the steamboats and electric lines, carry 252,000,000 passengers, a number which is more than double the entire population of North America. ”