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Empty Box Cars Competing for Loads - Variability within a State
In the previous post I showed how the competition for loads among a pool of empty cars varies from state to state. There are some states that are net exporters of commodities that are carried...
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Box Car Travels - R 197: Step 7
At the end of the 6th step in our Monte Carlo journey, Rutland 197 was actually in Rutland, Vt., on the Rutland, after delivering a car of animal feed to a local distributor. Step 7 involves...
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Box Car Travels - R 197: Step 8
Step 8 involved a trip from Meadville (Crawford County) Pennsylvania to Wellston (St. Louis County) Missouri. Wellston is a suburb of St. Louis. You may recall that the last load (Step 7) was...
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Box Car Travels - R 197: Step 9
At the end of Step 8, our ordinary 40' all-steel PS-1 box car, Rutland 197, had delivered a carload of vehicle parts to the Abex Corp. plant just outside of St. Louis, Mo. At step 9, the TRRA picked...
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Box Car Travels - R 197: Step 10
After delivering a load of plate and structural steel to a freight forwarder at the Port of Houston, our ordinary 40' box car failed to compete for a load in Houston, Texas. 16 empty box cars were...
View ArticleCovered Hoppers at Newberry Junction
In a series of posts that I haven't kept up with recently, I was writing about freight car distribution as seen from the vantage point of Newberry Junction. The original post explaining the passing...
View ArticleBox Car Travels - R 197: Steps 11 through 21
Over last weekend I figured out steps 11 through 21 in the travels of Rutland 197, an ordinary 40' steel PS-1 box car using statistics from 1957. At the end of step 10, the car had returned empty to...
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The Universal Box Car (for 1957)
In the last post I showed some examples of cumulative statistics that I have been compiling for the travels of Rutland 197, an ordinary 40' steel box car. The idea is that in each step of the travels,...
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Box Car Travels - R 197: Steps 22 through 100
I calculated steps 22 through 100 for the Monte Carlo simulation of Rutland 197's travels in 1957 over the last 10 days. The work went more quickly as I refined my spreadsheets and algorithms, but it...
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A Prototype Waybill - 33
Introduction:This waybill is the from the group of August 27, 1962 deliveries to the Ahnapee & Western. The scan is from Andy Laurent, the curator of the A&W waybill collection. It appears...
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More Progress on the Municipal Ferry Terminal
At the start of the summer I had roughed out a 3' by 8' layout element that represents the area of the Municipal Ferry Terminal in the inner Milwaukee harbor. I had aligned the center axis of the boat...
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Commodity Flows of Automobiles and Trucks
Bill Keene recently posted on the STMFC group that "I am trying to determine if a small fleet of automobile box cars would be needed on my east central Kansas layout." He posed four questions:"It has...
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Commodity Flow of Linseed Oil
Tangent Scale Models recently introduced a 3-compartment 6000-gallon tank car on a GATCC Type 30 riveted frame (http://tangentscalemodels.com/general-american-6000-gal-3-comp-tank-car/). The car comes...
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A Step Closer...
I started the City of Midland project on October 31, 2006. Last night, 7 years later, I feel like I got a major step closer to completion. In Mark Preussler's article on Great Lakes Car Ferries (RMJ...
View ArticlePrinting White With a Laser Printer on Decal Paper
Mike Brock and Jeff Aley kindly accepted my application to present at Prototype Rails in Cocoa Beach next January (http://www.prototyperails.com). Jeff recently issued the call for titles and brief...
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TOFC Traffic - Some Preliminary Thoughts
I've been trying to get a handle on how I should portray Trailer-On-Flat-Car (TOFC) traffic through Milwaukee in the fall of 1957. The late 1950s were a time of rapid changes in TOFC traffic patterns...
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Background for Prototype Rails 2014
This post contains background information for my Prototype Rails presentation in January 2004. It deals with the general problem of printing white using a laser printer with an emphasis on the...
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Background for PR 2014 - Addendum
John Barry writes"Charles,Thank you file pioneering this technique. I had also spent some thought on the problem but had not gotten this far. I had planned to replace the black curmudgeon an inner with...
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More Background for PR2014
This post contains background information for my Prototype Rails presentation in January 2004. It deals with calibration of the white laser printer. The purposes of calibration are to find color...
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Commodity Flows of Portland Cement
I was was prompted by some correspondence with Brad Andonian to look into the commodity flows of portland cement in the 1950s. Brad has graciously agreed to collaborate on this post by providing some...
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