There are roughly 1.6 million rail cars in the united staes
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Holy crap. I knew it was a lot but not that many. What's the source on that?
@wyattg2208Ай бұрын
@@Hyce777 i cross referenced the AAR website with BTS (bureau of transportation) as well as some educated guesses provided by the knowledge that over 500 railways are operated in the US. Granted this is including all sizes and gauges of cars.
@ghost307Ай бұрын
That includes about 250,000 grain cars.
@RT-qd8ylАй бұрын
Now imagine how many times you've seen the same rail car throughout your life. I think about that with semi trailers on the highway. 🤔
@brayidurАй бұрын
UP also states this same number on their site. 28,000 movers, 1.6million unpowered freight cars, 140,000 miles of track in the US. Plus LIRR, MNCR, Brightline, Amtrak, those are just the 4 that come to mind as a Former New Yorker.
@kANGamingАй бұрын
So what you are saying is I could buy a custom rail car and put logos on it. Genius advertising.
@Sunglobe6029Ай бұрын
When do we get a real CRAP car
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
I mean, this isn't legal advice, but it'd be cheaper to buy a few spray cans... Lol!
@wyattg2208Ай бұрын
@@kANGaming if I saw a Kan branded car I would be delighted
@machintrucGamingАй бұрын
@@Hyce777 ESnDT branded tank cars comming soon to your local CSX yard ? xD
@whatusernameis5295Ай бұрын
#DEW IT
@dafrog55Ай бұрын
X on the end of a reporting mark means it's not a common carrier so BNSF is a common carrier while FURX is a private company. Basically means that BNSF cant really deny a load while FURX could.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Oh interesting! That's a detail that I've never heard, but makes sense. Cheers!
@sandy1653Ай бұрын
@@Hyce777 That's also why CSX's reporting mark is CSXT and not CSX.
@phillyphakename1255Ай бұрын
Huh. Never thought about common carrier protections and regulations on the railroad, especially in re private cars. Interesting.
@dafrog55Ай бұрын
@@Hyce777 interestingly most container reporting marks end in a "U" or a "Z" like JB Hunt is JBHU for a container
@Sigil_FirebrandАй бұрын
@@dafrog55Huh. I always wondered why all FedEx trailers are FDXZ or whatever. Cool to learn, thank you!
@davidfrischknecht8261Ай бұрын
The exception to this is passenger railroads. Those railroads tend to own their own rolling stock. I'm referring to the modern government-owned passenger railroads.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
For most, yeah. There's always odd exceptions too. Haha.
@dmac7128Ай бұрын
One rare exception can be found on on one of the commuter lines running from NJ into New York. You will see a mix of NJ Transit and Metro North rolling stock and locomotives. The line is operated by NJ Transit, but the rolling stock is owned by Metro North.
@nrschumАй бұрын
Actually, lots of head-end equipment showed up in other railroads’ passenger trains. There are tons of photos of NYC/PRR/other eastern roads’ baggage and express cars in UP and SP passenger trains, among others. Transcontinental sleepers were common, too-NYC and PRR had their agreement with the Overland trio (C&NW, UP, SP)-and when Pullman was broken up and railroads painted sleepers in their own colors ca. 1949, one-road, unified-paint-scheme passenger trains were pretty much a thing of the past. Gotta get those cars across the country somehow!
@leightonboster3332Ай бұрын
I was actually being told about private rail car chartering. Blew.my mind.
@davidty2006Ай бұрын
in britain alot of passenger stock is on lease though normally wears operator livery.
@enjoyinsanity7065Ай бұрын
So fun fact Hyce, there's a wartime ad from the Pennsy that actually talks about where a specific boxcar's been over the course of a year. IIRC it actually winds up in Portland or Seattle or something like that at one point.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
That's cool!
@MarcusDooleyАй бұрын
Makes me want to buy air tracker and put it on a car or ten.
@burnerheinzАй бұрын
glad to see that "Treat it like a Rental" applies to more than cars.
@spaceflight1019Ай бұрын
And mules, as in "Sidney Crosby beat him like a rented mule, and the Penguins retake the lead!"
@brianentwistle145Ай бұрын
Work at a small recycling refinery. We lease about 20 tank cars. Very much true we are responsible for wear and tear damage and damage that is our fault. Usually any part that we have to deal with as part of our loading operations (gaskets, manway bolts and the like). We do, per regulations, pre and post loading inspections, Some defects that we notice we have to call an AAR certified repair crew to fix since we are not certified. Basically any welding or pressure valve work, and oddly enough the reporting marks and lettering on the car. This is all done for every car we touch. Weather we lease it or not. Any major repairs such as running gear and breaks is billed to the leaser and done off site if the railcar can safely travel. The only time my hobby and career choice have ever really crossed paths. Keep up the good work.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Thank you for some great additional context! :)
@ferky123Ай бұрын
I remember reading in Trains or Model Railroader that almost all car carriers are hybrid owned. The car is a flat car which is owned usually by TTX and the superstructure which holds the cars is built and owned by the railroad.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Weird. Would love to hear the source on that.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
The rack is called an "Appurtenance" and actually carries its own rental rate separate from the flatcar.
@mikestrainsthingsАй бұрын
Would make sense why the auto trains I see, the cars all have TTX, GATX etc. on the base near the boogie and the R.R. company toward the top near the front or rear of the car.
@fmo94jos8v3Ай бұрын
@@Hyce777 re-read buddy, his source was either "Trains" magazine or "Model Railroader" magazine :)
@EyeMWingАй бұрын
@@Hyce777 It's a pretty common setup. The wikipedia article on autoracks even mentions it. The bottom of the car is basically a flatcar, and is almost always TTX-owned, with a TTX reporting number. And then often, you'll have railroad markings and a whole separate reporting number on the carbody. Apparently it's a weird historical artifact of the introduction of the autorack - it was the 1960's, and the railroads were a shambles, and they didn't want to invest in expensive specialized equipment. So the company that became TTX offered them a deal: TTX would build and lease them big flatcars, and the railroads would.... Buy the expensive specialized equipment to put on top of them. Railroad management, man. In fact, this deal was so wildly successful for TTX that it's why the third-party car ownership scheme is so common. These days, new autoracks are usually either entirely-TTX owned or entirely-railroad owned depending on if they're likely to be interchanged or not (because of the particular logistics of the auto industry, usually not), but the older ones are still around in droves.
@AzeriaАй бұрын
I was just thinking ‘I’d love a new Hyce talky video’ and here one is!
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Saturday's and sunday's at 12 pm est. :)
@CDROM-lq9izАй бұрын
Ok, as a railroader I'm about to show my foamer card so here goes. The Rocky Mountaineer out of Denver (if I recall correctly) used to use power from UP and got tired of UP basically screwing them over. They also had some bad experiences with lease power for the exact reason you said. The company that owned the lease power wasn't familiar with railroad stuff and couldn't be asked to actually pay to fix the broken stuff. So, the Rocky Mountaineer got in touch with a leasing company we've done some work for before (one where the people running actually know the ins and outs of repairing and maintaining locomotives) and asked to lease some power from them. The company in question had an SD-18 and SD40M-2 (I'm pretty sure) laying around that weren't operational. They didn't have the capacity to do the work that was needed so they sent them to us to do the final needed repairs. They then tested them by running them on a few of our trains to make sure they would function. After all was said and done, we prepped them to be shipped across the country and sent them on a train to (I think) Bellevue, where NS took them further west to (I assume) get picked up by UP and taken to Denver. So, if any of you guys out west see the Rocky Mountaineer being pulled by an HZRX 187 or HZRX 8600, now you know that those two locomotives were made operational again in Brewster Ohio and then shipped all the way across the country because the Rocky Mountaineer was tired of junk lease power and getting screwed over by UP. Also, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="708">11:48</a> yeah that's definitely a thing. Also, also, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="746">12:26</a> we actually still have quite a few SD40-2s rolling around in the green and silver FURX scheme.
@tythebearАй бұрын
used to work at a shop repairing tank cars, super dangerous work but good times. got a lot of stories out of it lmao.
@therocinante3443Ай бұрын
That's freaking cool!
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Yeah, I can only imagine the joy of doing any kind of repair to the tank itself. I know we had a *ton* of rules about welding on the locomotive fuel tanks at BNSF. I can only imagine it's the same for tank cars, if not worse.
@tythebearАй бұрын
@@Hyce777 we had 4 books that were about 5 inches thick just on welding regulations, it was pretty crazy
@RT-qd8ylАй бұрын
This is so cool. It feels like when I was a little kid and sat down with my grandpa to hear his stories (he was a section foreman for C&O/Chessie/CSX with 40+ years). It's that same feeling, except now I'm hearing it from someone younger than me! 😂Keep up this series, it's great.
@geoffreylee5199Ай бұрын
TTX is a pooled ownership by railway companies.
@AllisonChainz3718Ай бұрын
Fun Fact about TTX: It was originally a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad made to build cars for their trailer trains, In fact the company is literally named Trailer Train Company. The Pennsy is quite famous for its many experiments in inter-modal shipping from early attempts at containerization, to its trailer trains that TTX was made for. Considering how ubiquitous they are now, I'd say TTX was a pretty successful experiment.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
It's always the Pennsy, lmao.
@timothystamm3200Ай бұрын
@Hyce777 Once the biggest company in the world and the biggest U.S. Railway at the time and their prime era overlapped with the heights of U.S. passanger and freight railroading in terms of mode share. Who else would it be when something important or innovative happened back then? If not them, probably the New York Central, and maybe the Santa Fe, or if you went far enough back in time in the East the Baltimore and Ohio becomes a more likely suspect for such an incident, and for the fat past of railroading in the West that would be either Union Pacific, or the Chicago and North Western depending on how far west we this hypothetical important development that we are thinking of happened.
@AlcochaserАй бұрын
@@Hyce777 TTX is a whole ball of wax, that is slightly different. TTX is a Railcar pool. A pool of "railroad owned cars". The arrangements on how the Racks and Intermodal cars are handled are slightly modified then a normal "Per Diem" car.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
@@Alcochaser actually TTX cars carry an hourly and a mileage rate similar to a normal railroad owned car. I'm looking at a TTZX car right now. It carries a $1.26 hourly rate and a .016 mileage rate.
@660OliverАй бұрын
TTX was not a subsidiary of the PRR. It was formed as Trailer Train in 1955 by PRR, N&W, and Rail-Trailer Corp. Other class 1 railroads later joined. Railbox , which maintains a fleet of boxcars, was added at a subsidiary in 1974. In 1974 they formed Railgon was formed to supply and lease a fleet of gondolas. All 3 were subsequently consolidated as TTX Corp.
@danehill9346Ай бұрын
New Drinking Game: Take a shot any time Hyce says 'nuance' 'nuances' and/or 'nuanced' This applies to any of his previous videos as well
@homiedog4975Ай бұрын
Nuisance
@shimesu443Ай бұрын
BNSF shop crew: The hell are you doing here? NS Locomotive: I don't wanna talk about it.... This video reminds me of a sight from my childhood. I'm originally from Galveston, Texas, and close to the bridge that connected the island to the mainland there was a railyard, and it was full, I mean completely stuffed, with Santa Fe boxcars. In a decade of living in that area, I don't think I ever saw them move. Until recently I didn't know that Galveston still had a rail connection to the mainland, since no rail bridge was visible from the causeway, so little me was always puzzled as to why they were just sitting there. I wonder what happened to them, since that yard is long gone now.
@nicholasresarАй бұрын
Interestingly with the autoracks, I think most of the flat cars are owned by TTX but the tracks on top of them are owned by the railroads.
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
That's wacky! Neat.
@SpudsMcCatАй бұрын
@@Hyce777that's why they're ttxd yet the car car container section has say a bnsf logo
@RailRideАй бұрын
@@Hyce777 If you look closely, you'll see the rack has it's own number distinct from the actual car number.
@pinecone01Ай бұрын
Lots of leased power in the northeast on CSX back in the 2000's era. I rarely seen a train that DIDN'T have some kind of leased power. "Rent a wrecks" I believed the crews called'em.
@gameworkertyАй бұрын
I like how Hyce is "here's how things work and are basically fine if a bit nuanced" and Well There's Your Problem is like "here's how things work and are completely fucked and constantly kill people"
@StefsEngineeringАй бұрын
Edit: GATX >148k Procor ~30k BNSF >85k CSX ~51k NS >54k So yeah well over 50k combined :) All can be found on their wiki pages. Can't give a link because YT will just delete my comment but I'm sure you can google for the name + "wiki" :)
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
That's neat! I knew BNSF keeps a pretty extensive grain hopper fleet but didn't think they had that many. Cool!
@marktegrotenhuisАй бұрын
European rail freight is a lot more complicated. For example in the Netherlands (where I live) running a freight train is basically a collaboration between 3 companies. 1. Prorail (the owner of the railroad, also responsible for rail traffic control) 2. The owner of the rolling stock 3. The owner of the locomotive
@djcarrotkingАй бұрын
Fun addition on how it is in Finland with our much smaller and more isolated railways. The equivalent of Prorail is Traficom (in charge of communication, roads and waterways as well). For us most rolling stock is owned by the rail operators themselves as VR still have a virtual monopoly on all freight (and still functionally all passenger) although with the slower increase in other rail operators such as Fennirail more cars are leased and pretty much all train operations going over the Russian border has leased cars. (For us the locomotives are owned by the rail operators except with probably some small cases regarding intra industry moving)
@davidty2006Ай бұрын
Yeah theres alot of leasing companies. Where the stock had the livery of the operator but is owned by someone else...
@RailRideАй бұрын
@@djcarrotking Might you know offhand a resource explaining where car numbers are located on various kinds of European rolling stock? I've started a small collection of O scale freight and passenger cars (mostly Lima) bearing SNCF, DB, RENFE, SBB+CFF and other liveries, and am puzzling over which markings are the actual car numbers (for collection inventory purposes)
@MilwaukeeF40CАй бұрын
It gets more complicated when cars get forwarded from country to country with a lot of bllsht charges and rules. The EU has not improved it at all, long distance shippers would rather use trucks.
@marktegrotenhuisАй бұрын
@@RailRide Those numbers are called UIC codes. It consists of 12 numbers.
@DavidKing-vb9uxАй бұрын
In my 11 years with the Missouri Pacific and Union Pacific trading power was a nightly occurrence. KCMO being the second largest rail hub in the US, most major railroads have a yard of significant size with some sort of a diesel shop. So every night, the yardmaster or Road foreman of engines would be on the phone either providing power or asking for it. These guys knew each other they were together every day. If you had extra power, you would give it away if they had extra power, they would give it away because it changed who was asking who was receiving from night tonight sometimes nobody had power then trains just sat in the yard Other times had plenty of power and no trading was going on great point.
@BowlesTroyАй бұрын
Part of JD Rockefeller's success, maybe even the greater part, came from his dominance of the tank car industry. He realized right away that he could control the transport of crude oil this way. Since he owned all of the tank cars, oil simply wasn't going to move from point A to point B without him taking a cut. It was a no-lose situation. He didn't have to invest in expensive refineries, railroads or drilling. But he was damn well going to earn money if anyone wanted to move the stuff by rail. And he proceeded to rake in gigantic profits for many decades. UTLX is his legacy.
@NundevwizerАй бұрын
The ones without the Xs on the end are other railroads like GTW = Grand Trunk Western, RBMN = Reading & (Blue Mountain) Northern, and SP = Southern Pacific (R.I.P. 1996) The ones with the X (with the exception of CSX) are non-railroad companies/entities like WFLX = Wells Fargo Leasing, DODX = Department of Defense (aka the Military), and TBOX = the boxcar guys
@dafrog55Ай бұрын
CSX is actually CSXT. X denotes non common carrier. Meaning private companies can deny loads to other private companies.
@wvrailsАй бұрын
With CSX their AAR reporting mark is CSXT. The "T" (Transportation?) was added to the reporting mark to prevent confusion with non-railroad car owners.
@NundevwizerАй бұрын
@@wvrails never saw those too often aside from their engines
@TheSharkKing45Ай бұрын
There used to be a caboose in my area that actually had a DODX report marking. DODX 1483, ex Rio Grande caboose 01483 which was stored in fremont nebraska for a good while. . It's currently in Colorado, undergoing restoration by a private owner.
@Nova_BlazeАй бұрын
I work out of a warehouse in Bay Minette, Alabama, and it always makes my day to see foreign power roll by my warehouse. I've seen BNSF, UP, NS, CN, CP, even seen an old switcher with CiT on the side.
@peterbumper2769Ай бұрын
There would also need to be a different mind-set. A locomotive owner will think, 'if it is not moving, it is not earning'. A grain car will have period during the year when there is no grain to be shipped and has to sit in a siding for a month or two
@RAM-PAGE-if3xlАй бұрын
Because of you mostly I have become kind of a train nerd at least compared to all of my friends
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Ya love to hear it. :D
@BarredCoast0Ай бұрын
With more than 28,000 locomotives, 1.6 million rail cars and freight rail lines spanning across 140,000 miles, America's freight rail system is perfectly positioned to be the most efficient and cost-effective transportation network covering the 3.12 million square miles of the continental U.S.
@MilwaukeeF40CАй бұрын
The AAR standardization and paperwork streamlining for interchange in all of North America is a big contrast with Europe. They do have an EU run entity for "standardization" of interchange practices, but it is disfuncional with every state run railroad charging high costs and labor protectionist type bureaucracy. So if a shipper has something that has to cross more than like two countries, they tend to say fckit and use Eastern European migrant truckers. If European rail was privatized and deregulated North American style, the problem would be fixed immediately with a lot of trucks off the roads.
@SternLXАй бұрын
Some would argue what we have in the US is still not enough. Rail wise that is.
@jameskesler6477Ай бұрын
Happy that you mentioned Railroader! It does a good job of portraying how different load types and car ownership works.
@daniellewis1789Ай бұрын
The Atlantic and Western, now owned by G&W but for a long time a little ten mile shortline near me, had a car shop and car storage and had over 4,000 box cars in interchange! For a railroad that only serves about five small customers with two or three engines, that's a big fleet!
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
The ATW railcars are all owned by a leasing company. They just have an agreement to use the ATW marks. The railcars themselves are assigned all over the company and will never see the actual ATW line.
@devvydoesstuffАй бұрын
Sounds like IPD boxcars
@daniellewis1789Ай бұрын
@@cdavid8139 I'm going back to the 60s and 70s with the interchange fleet, I have no idea what their reporting mark gets up to in modern times.
@TrainMedia00Ай бұрын
Mostly all railroad cars are belong from factories or mines like a tank car has weird letters and numbers that looks like some sort of a code but no it belongs from a oil factory, and the funny thing is I'm a riding the Austin Steam Train Association trip from Austin to Bertram while I watched this video lol.
@jacoblyman9441Ай бұрын
Tank cars have a lot of legal requirements with the FRA, Department of Transportation and whatever the Canadian equivalent is called. Most of those markings are tied to that, tank class (primarily among three overarching types: general purpose car, pressure car, or acid car), the permitted lading, and a grid showing the tank's regular inspection schedule. Tanks undergo full qualifications every ten years on the tank thickness, lining, structural welds, safety appliances, wheels, etc. So all the weird markings mean something important.
@davidty2006Ай бұрын
There used to be ALOT of industry owned wagons. which atleast here in britain was pretty much free advertising whilst you got an order of coal shipped in from a colliery across the country.
@RailRideАй бұрын
@@davidty2006 Looking at photos of UK freight trains from years ago, I can't help but to think all those 2-axle wagons were so small that they were easily outclassed capacity-wise by road-going trucks (lorries). I wonder if that was among the factors responsible for carload freight nearly vanishing from the UK and moving by road instead.
@davidty2006Ай бұрын
@@RailRide hmm factories found it easier moving their quite low quantity by road moreso by the BR diesel era combined with the de-industrialisation of britain main wagons left were for bigger hauls though there was an attempt to keep some wagonload freight via speedlink.
@660OliverАй бұрын
I wouldn't say " mostly", not even half. Some major shippers own their own cars, but they are in the minority.
@jaredkennedy6576Ай бұрын
One of my favorite interchange stories is about the old Bangor & Aroostook red white and blue potato cars. They were insulated, but had stoves in them to keep the potatoes above freezing in the winter. These cars would go all over, and usually came back fully iced like a reefer car. It would take hours to clear them out and get them warmed back up for another trip.
@johnbeck3270Ай бұрын
My first driving job was moving coal to the tipple and loaded onto hoppers for shipment to Denver. The hoppers were 5bay 100ton cars lettered with the “flying” Rio Grande, then you read the “fine print”, the cars were actually owned by (I believe) the First National Bank of Denver. There was some “legalese along with this as well. My dad was the one who pointed this out to me, at first I thought he was joking. The funny thing is absolutely no models of this car has been produced.
@YourLocalRailfanАй бұрын
Private 3rd party owned cars have the last letter X ex: UTLX / GATX and when you have CSX, a class 1, not a third party, had to have the classification: CSXT
@ItsReallyJackBlack26 күн бұрын
UPRR
@YourLocalRailfan26 күн бұрын
@@ItsReallyJackBlack that’s a class one…
@ItsReallyJackBlack26 күн бұрын
@@YourLocalRailfan no t
@YourLocalRailfan26 күн бұрын
@@ItsReallyJackBlack because it doesn’t end in the letter X
@michaelball76026 күн бұрын
I work for a class 3 shortline and while we bring in cars we dont own, we do own around 1700 cars ourselves.
@lifeisagift.cherisheverymomentАй бұрын
50,000 Rail Cars isn't even close. 100,000 wouldn't even be approaching the total.
@raymondleggs5508Ай бұрын
2 million wagons?
@lifeisagift.cherisheverymomentАй бұрын
@@raymondleggs5508 Not quite that many. :)
@MartinBrennerАй бұрын
Video thumbnail immediately caught my attention as you can see GATX (General American Transportation Corp) on a lot of European tank cars. These videos are always interesting to see how things are run on the other continent.
@DonkenAndToivolaRRАй бұрын
As for tank cars things are getting even more interesting, if they are becoming incontinent :P.
@andrewadams3894Ай бұрын
Back before the Staggers Act substantially economically deregulated the railroads, the railroads' ability to raise capital for stuff like railcars was limited. This led to car shortages and shipper complaints to the Interstate Commerce Commission (the railroads economic regulator at the time). In an attempt to deal with the shortages, the ICC increased the rates the railroads had to pay to car owners when a car wasn't on its home railroad. This was called incentive per diem. The result was investors buying short line railroads and then buying as many cars as could physically fit on the railroad. They then managed their fleets of cars to keep them on the class 1 railroads as much as possible. This solved the car shortage but increased the class 1 railroads cash bleed. Incentive per diem was repealed shortly after Staggers came into effect.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
The staggers act was passed in 1980. The "Incentive Per DIem" boxcars came around later. However, when IPD was cancelled all that really did was cancel the bumped up rate. The IPD boxcars still carried a high rental rate which was later grandfathered in. So for example if you bought a IPD boxcar as an investment in the early 80s you had a few years of incentive per diem and the tax credit. When the incentive rate went away you still owned the car and it still could earn decent revenue.
@MilwaukeeF40CАй бұрын
They didn't even have to buy the railroad, just bought cars and registered them to the shortline and shared revenue. Doctors and lawyers were financing box car fleets. Some of them lost big when the rules were changed, "grandfather" time not being enough to cover it or shippers finding cheaper options for cars. Also a lot of cars with no use ended up sent back to "home rails" that had no space for them.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
@@MilwaukeeF40C grandfathered time was actually not bad and if the cars stayed in service they could produce decent revenue. Definitely enough revenue to make the investment worth it. But you had to be willing to weather the storm. It was a long storm however as boxcar traffic declined dramatically as trucks became larger and carried more weight. However to this day you still see thousands of those cars in service.
@HodaggiumАй бұрын
I see you alluded to what I've heard called foreign power. I recently saw a train come through my city with two BNSF engines leading it, but I live in CN territory. One reason I heard for this happening is that train might have originated in BNSF territory but had to pass through CN territory, but it was just easier to keep the BNSF engines on. In this scenario, CN will have their own engines run through BNSF territory, or already have done so.
@charlesmacd1905Ай бұрын
CN and CP (nowCPKC) often just have a two letter code on their cars, I understand that X is used where the owner is not a railway. CP also owns the SOO line, marked SOO.
@ericwillcoxen7856Ай бұрын
Speaking of foreign power and horsepower hour agreements, I used to work on the Southwestern Railroad, a small class 3 shortline in Carlsbad, New Mexico, that interchanged with the BNSF in Clovis, New Mexico. We would get in unit fracksand trains, empty oil trains, a TON of hopper cars (mostly BN and BNSF, sometimes Cnadian hoppers) for potash unit trains, and hi-cub BNSF boxcars for salt. In the foreign power category it was mostly BNSF locomotives (when I worked there it was a seperate subdivision operated by SWRR), but there was one or two times we had an NS loco, ALOT of Ferro Mex power, one CSX standard cab Dash-8, and an incredibly far from home Canadian Pacific cowl unit EMD. Yes, a Canadian locomotive in the deserts of south eastern New Mexico. A fish out of water to say the least.
@andrerenaultАй бұрын
Take a shot every time this man says “nuance”
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
That is a dangerous game
@seanwoods64719 күн бұрын
I'm developing an RPG set in space. And I've been loving all your stories about bizzard interactions between unions, different associations, different lines of ownership, etc. Basically I want trade in space to be every bit as strange as trade on Earth.
@skippern666Ай бұрын
Same in box logistics, I live near a seaport and regularly see trucks with standard containers. Often branded by the major box ship operators, like Hapag Lloyd or Maersk Sealand, but sometimes I see containers marked by other companies, most often Swire, which just lease out boxes, or DHL which is a more general logistics company. When a container is leased it can travel any modal form from any origin to any destination on globe, and can be interchanged intermodal. The same container can be transported on truck, ship, and rail, from factory to its destination.
@LUNITICWILLАй бұрын
another thing to add to that HP hours thing, when I was working near the Great Western tracks in Windsor, CO, I saw at least 1 Norfolk Southern loco helping shunt cars around the oval (it's a giant oval looking thing on Google Earth). Great Western, from what I could tell, has about 5 locos. one blue, one green, one orange, I think a red one and another color I can't think of. simple paint job with their logo on the side.
@heronimousbrapson863Ай бұрын
I even saw a Norfolk and Southern locomotive in the yards in Lethbridge, Alberta here in Canada. They really seem to get around.
@ianbelletti624121 күн бұрын
What's fun about early railroading is that every railroad had their own gauge.
@TheOneTrueDragonKingАй бұрын
I love - and I mean LOVE - when I get to see foreign power. As a railfan it's a real treat.
@jimfisher7324Ай бұрын
I worked for one company where we leased old covered hoppers from the railroad rather than one of the leasers. They were in captive service between Baltimore and West Virginia. So beat up that no one else would have wanted to use them.
@ColtonRMagbyАй бұрын
That makes a lot of sense from many perspectives.
@jacoblyman9441Ай бұрын
Fun fact, the Field Manual of the AAR Interchange Rules has colors on the cover that always matches the latest Super Bowl winner prior to the release of the book's annual updates.
@MilwaukeeF40CАй бұрын
Actually they print two batches of copies and always have to shred the one with the loser colors.
@robertadams6606Ай бұрын
Autoracks seem to have the most variety of RR names on their cars. Run through Locos are common on commodities that travel across the Country. When they come back through then they can bring that Loco back to where it came from.
@firewolf2079Ай бұрын
I know our shop here in Utah has two brothers that work together restoring old locomotives and equipment for museums. Their reporting mark is KLIX. They do amazing work and restored a beautiful western pacific loco for the Ogden UT museum
@Gavsta40Ай бұрын
In Australia, there is a major lease company known as RailFirst (previously known as CFCLA - Chicago Freight Car Lease Australia), where they lease all types of rail cars (flat beds, ore hoppers, container, agriculture, etc) as well as locomotives. These can be both second hand or new (new locomotives and rail cars are being built as of current, to replace aging rollingstock)
@rottenroads1982Ай бұрын
I don’t have a video of it, but one time, while a Train was Passing through at the Station where I take my Railroad Training Class, there was a CSX locomotive (and I think a NS locomotive) behind a UP locomotive in Stockton, California.
@SantaFe194846 сағат бұрын
You forgot to mention that AAR rules require that railroad owned car must be returned to home rails after it goes off of them, which non-railroad cars aren't bound by.
@railfanmaximstill7279Ай бұрын
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="172">2:52</a> Scanner Channels for railroading are called AAR Channels
@Infrared73Ай бұрын
I think you might have seriously underestimated the number or railcars out there. I see a lot of GATX on CN's line. Wikipedia says as of Dec 31 2020, they had 148939 rail cars. They are in Europe and Asia as well as North America, so that number won't apply to North America exclusively. A couple other examples would be Wells Fargo Rail has 135000 cars and Procor has 30000 cars.
@BandanRRChannelАй бұрын
Not only have I seen Norfolk Southern power in Edmonds, I've seen one of their heritage units going south through Edmonds! Don't recall which railroad, it was the light green one...
@jordonfreeman166Ай бұрын
That would be 8099, the Southern Heritage Unit. It’s an ES44AC.
@Trainlover2002Ай бұрын
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="591">9:51</a> It goes the other way too down here in Atlanta, with BNSF power absolutely EVERYWHERE on NS. Like full BNSF power on an intermodal, going thru Duluth or Norcross.
@kristoffermangilaАй бұрын
On the last part of Danny Harmon's latest video, he chased down an empty hopper train going to Florida's Bone Valley. The motive power - a BNSF GE unit all by its lonesome.
@RailRideАй бұрын
Funnily enough, the only BNSF locomotive in my collection was acquired specifically to re-create the practice of horsepower-hours amongst my many NS locos. Being in O gauge, this was a rather pricey simulation :)
@Grigori423Ай бұрын
SNDX....what a missed opportunity. Just change two letters and you will have our beloved company from this channel 😂
@durachromeАй бұрын
There’s a cat litter plant that receives shipments of clay in hoppers with reporting marks CATX. They even have a small paw print painted on them.
@hughjanus697525 күн бұрын
You definitely look exactly like the kind of fella who's into trains.
@barefoot3662Ай бұрын
When i was younger the Seabord Coast line rail road had a train called the coast to coast express this train started in california on the southern pacific railroad and ran through Abbeville SC. It would have engens from southern pacific, frisco and the seaboard.
@Shipwright1918Ай бұрын
Huh, never heard the origin story for Gramps tankers before, but it's a good one.
@davidty2006Ай бұрын
must of made life easier for train crews to figure out which trains they needed to put them on.
@bnsfbandit9807Ай бұрын
Hey Hyce! I work on a class one (the blue one) and I've come to realize something and would like to share. Not sure if you already know this but going back to the Autoracks, big leasing companys own the bottom of the car (the "flat" car) and the railroads actually own the rack part of it. I still havent figured out why yet but its something to keep you thinking! Thats why you can see railroads on a autorack and the car is labeled as a TTGX or something of the sort. Fun!
@Hyce777Ай бұрын
Someone else also commented this; and it's just utterly bizarre to me. Lol. Maybe each railroad has different ramp setups requiring different types? I have no idea. Very neat fact.
@paulbergen9114Ай бұрын
. If the train isn't moving too fast I try to look at those end panels and you can get a TTX bottom and the track has a UP herald but on paper they are still CNW. SP. MP. DRGW. WP the latter two being the rarest. The recent Mindbender are the new auto racks apparently owned by GATX with no lettering or reference to TTX and have WRWK Warwick reporting marks but the big metal plate has the new CPKC emblem
@ChristopherDennie-tc5jtАй бұрын
Fun lore fact for my o gauge railroad, there are two ES&DT locomotives and their only standard gauge crane on permanent loan to the AP&CC. Side note, how was the trip overseas?
@witty1764Ай бұрын
Talking about shared power hours. There is also trough route trains. When I lived in FL you would see this. A flour mill near Tampa would get a grain train in from CSX. I have seen it where the inter train. Locomotives and all the rolling stock say BNSF on it. Its a lot easier for CSX just to stick their crew on that train when the whole thing is going to the same place.
@frederickschulkind8431Ай бұрын
I do a lot of railfanning. A reporting mark ending in X indicates that the owner is not a railroad. Not all reporting marks have 4 letters, notably UP for Union Pacific. Some manufacturers own their own freight cars, and one that I will note is The Andersons, which is an agricultural products company that frequently uses the mark AEX but has others. TTX owns almost all the auto rack bases even if the cover shows the name of a railroad. Some short lines have large lease fleets, and so you tend to see their reporting marks all over the place.
@kansascityshuffle8526Ай бұрын
The most one thing I’ve noticed. On certain cars you see a stencilling saying something to the effect: this car runs under an international running agreement/ license…. This must pertain to what you are talking about.
@wobblebee1242Ай бұрын
I swear that NS 4500-whatever engine has been kicking around the NW forever. I'm pretty sure it's the same one I saw heading south through Portland in 2017 on a UP manifest
@patricksheary2219Ай бұрын
A very nice episode Mark about something I never thought too much about. Makes perfect sense of course. So enjoyed the nuanced details you included which added a perfect layer of understanding to car ownership. As always, Professor, many thanks for yet another excellent Railroad 101 learning moment video and cheers to you!
@jacobpfeifertrains1998Ай бұрын
X usually symbolizes a private company or privately only car or locomotive. For example my local power plant owns their own coal cars and end in x. Leasing companies are typically private.
@TheSharkKing45Ай бұрын
For rolling stock not owned by the railroads, The best example I can think of for this are the three bay hoppers marked OMAX , the report marking for the Omaha Power Public District
@andywomack3414Ай бұрын
When I was working as a railway clerk the daily fee that a railroad would pay the owner of a car not owned by that railroad was seven dollars. I was at work the night the Penn Central went down. We (the B&O) held thousands of cars routed for the PC in Baltimore Terminal and the priority was to offer the cars for interchange so the B&O could charge a penalty for cars offered for interchange, not accepted.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
That all changed ages ago. Railcars not privately owned are now paid for on an hourly basis with the rate dependent on the age of the car and its value. In today's market you can also negotiate with the railroads what you think your car is worth on an hourly basis
@andywomack3414Ай бұрын
@@cdavid8139 Not surprising, much can change in 50 years.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
@@andywomack3414 You're right Andy. And interestingly enough the actual term "per diem" goes back to your day when cars were "Per Day". I bet the term 'midnight interchange' means something to you. I came around a bit later and by then "Per DIem" was an hourly rate so there was no monetary reason for a midnight interchange. (I'm sure you know the "old heads" clung on to the concept for years and computer systems would measure cars in yard at midnight). There is now a term called "offering" in which your computer transmits a list of cars to your connection and tells them you want to give them cars they say they cannot accept. And of course the new system is probably as mis-used as what you saw!
@andywomack3414Ай бұрын
@@cdavid8139 I don't know if the position of railway clerk exists anymore. I doubt the clerk jobs that remain involve walking track or standing out in the rain verifying inbound and outbound trains
@andywomack3414Ай бұрын
@@cdavid8139 When I first started the computer was a main-frame occupying a large room downtown. We sent train consists buy feeding punched cards into a machine that translated the data to a punched tape which was feed into what looked like a 1920's era teletype machine which also typed out a list to be stored with the tape and cards. The consist would then be delivered via teletype to whatever yard received the train. Not familiar with the term "midnight interchange" although there may have been a midnight deadline for offering those cars to the PC as it went bankrupt. After midnight, lose a day's per diem. I've forgotten more than I remember, but that was a memorable night. Strangely celebratory on the B&O, as the PC was a spectacular merger failure, and rail mergers are not popular with railroaders on the ground. B&O was in the process of being taken over by the C&O, and there was resentment over that.
@nerdydevАй бұрын
It's also fun that UTLX is owned by Berkshire Hathaway that own BNSF too.
@KaiHenningsenАй бұрын
As for the thumbnail: _GATX Corporation is a railcar lessor that owns fleets in North America, Europe, and Asia. In addition, jointly with Rolls-Royce Limited, it owns one of the largest aircraft spare engine lease portfolios. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. As of December 31, 2020, the company owned 148,939 rail cars, including 83,959 tank cars, 64,980 freight cars, and 645 locomotives. Other major car types owned include covered hoppers, open-top hopper cars, and gondolas. It primarily serves the petroleum industry (29% of 2020 revenues), chemical industry (22% of 2020 revenues), food industry (11% of 2020 revenues), mining industry (10% of 2020 revenues), and transportation industry (20% of 2020 revenues).[1]_
@gc1172Ай бұрын
News flash, many truck trailers, are lease/rentals or if specials owned by the user who doesn't own any tractors.
@aaronyeoman6521Ай бұрын
I installed a playground for GATX over in Hearn TXs it looked like a train
@FelineSublime17 күн бұрын
I was under the impression the X suffix at the tail of the reporting marks represented it was a private/contract carrier vs. a common carrier, eg UTLX, GATX, TTX, etc. CSX was kind of a self-made exception because they were using it as a placeholder when renaming the Chessie System after they acquired Seaboard and it just stuck because it was the 80s, man.
@sjwhitneyАй бұрын
I used to do both freight agent work as well as shop car management. Your description of the AAR billing is fairly correct, but I can add that the AAR has a billing matrix as well as an annual field manual that describes all the common repairs and the costs that you are allowed to charge for repairs. It's fairly complicated. Any repairs not covered are usually those for specialized equipment provided by the car owner for the product that the cars are designed for. Things like the piping on pressure differential cars comes to mind. We did repairs to a great many of those as a contract shop for the car owners. Repairs that cannot be completed by the contract shops are sent to the major shops according to the car owner desires. For the record, there are MILLIONS of freight cars in North America!! I would estimate that 75% of them are NOT owned by the railroads themselves. Most are owned by leasing companies, regardless of what name is showing on them. The X on the end of the names is a generic identifier for non-rail company owned cars. It doesn't mean that cars without the X are not still owned by leasing companies. It simply means that they are non-rail owned cars that the revenue goes to the owner. With leased cars, the revenue goes to the carrier, and they pay a lease fee.
@likesanddislikesetcАй бұрын
When I was a kid in the 80s railroads hauled lots more boxcars than they do now- they had all sorts of neat writing on them and pictures. Then intermodal took the place of most of the boxcars. When I worked as a conductor in the 2000s I noticed everything was a utilitarian color/ grey, black, white, reddish brown, yellow, etc. gone were the fancy road names and slogans and all I saw were reporting marks and numbers. The cool designs of days gone by were no more…😢
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
Another way to look at it is that generally railroads are going to own cars that can be used for multiple purposes. A boxcar or gondola or flatcar for example. They provide a car that can be used by many customers for multiple reasons at multiple points. For example, a BNSF grain car can be loaded by one of hundreds of elevators. Private companies own cars that tend to be in dedicated service. FOr example a GATX car is equipped to haul a specific type of anhydrous. They are assigned to go back to the same loading point for the same product over and over. Another reason for rail vs private ownership is freight rate. BNSF may quote you a rate of $4000 to move a product from A to B if you use a BNSF car. But if you have your own car, they may cut you a break and move it for $3000. (FIgures are for illustration and not real). In North AMerica over 50% of railcars are privately owned (which includes Trailer Train)
@scylex4773Ай бұрын
honestly never new, but makes sense. My grocery store doesn't own out pallets either
@jaysmith1408Ай бұрын
My former employer, a grocery store, owned many of their trailers, primarily the reefers, being expensive, but they were also gorgeous, and I’d pull one any chance I got. The van trailers were usually owned by the contracted carrier, with some leases for good measure. The store trailers were captive to our network, the corporate trailers would come and go. I actually have seen trailers I’ve pulled for the store, going down the highway several states away.
@gordonreeder3451Ай бұрын
I remember seeing Conrail locos lashed into Southern RR trains. I found out that some Southern trains would run into Conrail territory to deliver a train directly to a yard and avoid an interchange. But that generated a HP-hours credit for Southern. So occasionally Conrail would provide a loco to Southern to "run off hours".
@sirfirewolfe5647Ай бұрын
Hearing the explanation for sharing horsepower-hours was great, earlier today I saw a Ferromex loco pushing at the rear of a BNSF consist in Denver earlier today so that explanation was really timely lol
@railwayjadeАй бұрын
Very cool anecdote about Gramps
@MissKay199426 күн бұрын
I've actually seen cars that don't belong to anyone anymore on occasion on the short line here. A couple were Penn Central boxcars
@SeanJAnimationsАй бұрын
Nice quick video for a 4 hour drive. Quite interesting stuff!
@BigMoTheBlackDragonАй бұрын
Did you ever get to "foreclose" on one of the bank's engines (I guess it would be more of a mechanic's lean) for failure to pay in a timely manner? That would be so funny.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
Been there. Done that. Used to own a bunch of old GP7u locomotives and had to go after a couple of leasors for non payment. There are some legal assistance (or there was at the time) that gave the equipment owners a bit more power to reposses than other heavy equipment. It all worked out but it was entertaining
@MarioFanGamer659Ай бұрын
I've seen quite a few GATX cars, mostly liquid containers where the name is quite prominent on the tank. And I'm not even American, lol. I always thought it made sense that the railways may not necessarily own their carriages since they're the infra owners (owning the tracks) and transporters (owning and operating the locomotives) but also are merely given an order to ship a company's goods which also own containers. I think road logistics work similar where (some) shipping companies merely own the vehicles and the drivers and merely transport others' cargo including the containers.
@better.betterАй бұрын
don't know if this has anything to do with it but X is a fairly common substitution in short-hand words, like, the company I work for uses Trx for "transmissions" Tix for "tickets", in this case it might be a substitution for "cross" as in "Cross-country", or maybe simply alluding to the universal association of the X of a "crossing" sign to railroads... kind of like the way trucking company logos almost always incorporate a graphic representation of a road receding off into the distance
@mcbeardsfsuАй бұрын
Just found this out myself traveling to the midwest in may this year having a man tell me at the golden spike tower in north platt nebraska. It blew my mind.😁
@opiumextract2934Ай бұрын
If something is seriously wrong with the car, a lot of times they will ship it to the repair facility. When this happens itll have a sign saying home shop for repair.
@wvrailsАй бұрын
Railcar accounting rules/practices are a mind-numbing maze. They often resulted in empty cars being returned to the owning railroad rather than re-loaded near where they were emptied. Pennsy (yes, them again) started the company that became TTX to develop TOFC equipment. With ICC approval of car pooling other railroads then bought into it. Pooling of car ownership with RailBox - "Next load, any road" - and RailGon was a way to reduce utilization inefficiency and provide much needed equipment for cash-strapped railroads pre deregulation. I think TTX absorbed the RailBox and RailGon fleets at some point. TTX's website says they own "175,000 efficient and low cost railcars."
@kristoffermangilaАй бұрын
In essence, TTX is the only operating remnant of the Pennsy.
@cdavid8139Ай бұрын
all depends on car type. You can set up your cars as general purpose and it can be loaded from any point to any point. Makes sense during equipment shortages.but if you have a car your company invested in to haul a specific product you can assign them to a home point so that when empty the must return home
@ufilms2272Ай бұрын
Hey fun fact from my family! My dad was a carman for TTX (an intermodal railcar company) for 26 years! He’s been a trainer now for like 4 years. I think he has 30 years
@tomlebudzinski771613 күн бұрын
100,000 cars is peanuts!! There's 100K abandoned and rusting alone!
@keithjurena9319Ай бұрын
The electric utility serving the San Antonio TX area owns a fleet of coal hopper cars used to transport WY coal. To prevent inadvertent door operation in route, the cars are solid bottom. They dump by inversion mechanism at the coal yard.
@thenekomАй бұрын
There are a lot of railcars in storage too, I would not be surprised if the total in North America was 6 figures.
@paulbergen9114Ай бұрын
I remember looking at the statistics in Railway Age during the big recession and it was about 35% this is also when scrapping is outnumbering new cars deliveries 2 to 1. You always know when things are slow and passing sidings are filled along with the lightly used Branch lines