Number 90 posted:Rule292 posted:Number 90 posted:The single-carload business is not being solicited any more. The payback does not justify the expense these days. It takes a lot of people to handle single car shipments from pickup to delivery. The shippers gave up on it, too. They can no longer call downtown to the local railroad agency, release a loaded car, and expect to have it picked up promptly.
For the most part, industrial spurs are, and will remain, unused. They don't even build tracks into new industrial parks any more.
I think it may not be that bad out here in the east, Tom.
Plastic pellets and liquid/bulk products such as corn sweeteners and chemicals as well as bulk frozen food shipments still ship best by rail.
I guess I was being kind of provincial. We run a double-ended local between Amarillo and Clovis daily. Because agriculture is the business of the Great Plains, the local's pickups and stouts are mostly fertilizer, wallboard, lumber, cattle feed, and things of that nature. We don't have much manufacturing, refining, or distribution, and I think I failed to look out and take a broader view.
Mea culpa.
It's interesting to see the "metamorphosis" of railroading here in the northeast. If you ride the old PRR from NYC to Philly (Amtrak's Northeast Corridor) you can see scar after scar of sidings that served just about every brick building along the ROW.
Another interesting ride is the old CNJ main line (NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line) from the Aldene connection to Raritan. Hot Water's old stomping ground - a bazillion old brick and curtain wall buildings with the scars of yesteryear when the US was a manufacturing powerhouse and anyone of any size had sidings and railroad service. Like the PRR, the CNJ was so busy as to need 4 and 5 tracks ("and even six tracks" as their 1948 promo movie touts) on the main from Elizabethport to Raritan to keep the freight traffic out of the way of passenger and commuter. All gone.
Yet when we drive to the O scale March Meet crossing through the prairies of Ohio and Indiana there is such a dynamic railroad presence in new line industries with silos and railroad service.
Makes me smile since the explosion of making things out of plastic has really helped industry and the RR in the USA.
