Re: [CBQ] Empty GN/NP Box Car Extras

["jpslhedgpeth via groups.io" <jpslhedgpeth=aol.com@groups.io>]

RE Lumber  "rollers"

All this conversation about "rollers" brings back memories of my days as a brakeman on the Lincoln and Wymore Divisions in the late 1950's.

At that time 1956-58 there was the matter of  boxcars of lumbers being held at various sidings awating disposition.  The siding I have in mind was at BERKS just a few miles East of Crete, NE The "Siding" and it was a real Timetable Siding..not just an auxiliary track was almost always full of boxcars of lumber awaiting dispositon.  

I was working the Crete-Wymore local for it seemed like..many many days..It was a 16 hour job coming back from Wymrore to Lincoln wi;th most of that time being used for switching Cete Mills and we were almost always on overtime when we left Crete after finishing 5-6 hours of the night switching and OT or not..We were TIRES AND HUNGREY and wanted to "get home'...

About the time we were getting our train together and head for Lincoln the Crete Clerk would come out with a message that we had several cars of Lumber to "dig out"...and I do mean 'DIG OUT" of the siding at Berks..just a couple of miles east of Crete an on the uphill side of the hill that takes the Main Line out of the Blue River Valley and into the bluffs up and down on the way to Lincoln.

Well sometimes there would be 25-30 cars of that 'cursed lumber" on the siding and gues which cars we needed..12th....17th....25th  etc..  Well that maneuver from siding to mainline getting those cars dug out gave us an extra hour or two of OT and...knowing nothing about  rates, routing tarriffs etc we always wondered "what kind of CRAZY routing was responsible for this kind of nonsense.   To make matters worse  many of these cars were  "Foreign"  thusly the Q was paying Per Diem for these cars which were sitting on the siding for extended periods of time.

Just a year or two later after I had gone to work for the Rock Island I discovered that that road had a similar situation at Belleville, KS which was "full of lumber"  Just like we had on the Q.

I had always wondered   and still do...how "profitable" that "Bidness" was which caused such an inordinate amount of  literal  "storage in transit  especially when the cars were "stored" on a foreign road and accumuaing per diem.

Pete  

-----Original Message-----
From: William Hirt <whirt@fastmail.com>
To: CBQ@groups.io
Sent: Mon, Apr 12, 2021 10:39 am
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Empty GN/NP Box Car Extras

Chris,

I recall seeing a picture of a train rollers on one of the Burlington branch lines. It was the Cheyenne WY - Sterling CO branch. Normally a train of a SW-1, 2-3 cars, and a waycar. The photo had double headed SW-1s pulling 40 boxcars of roller lumber plus a waycar. The explanation was that caused an extra day for the lumber to be moved east and another day to try and sell it.

The C&NW Modeler had an issue about modeling lumber yards. As part of that issue, there was discussion of roller lumber cars and some of the odd routings the cars would take moving east all to delay arriving at a final destination without being sold.

For many years one of those Morrison lessors sat next to a grain elevator in Rushville MO. The top coat paint had worn enough that the Lackawanna lettering was showing through on the car.

Bill Hirt

On 4/12/2021 1:03 AM, leakinmywaders via groups.io wrote:

Bill: Interesting stuff, thanks!  That’s the first I’ve heard of a ban on roller loads, and guys working for the NP in the late 60s have reported being quite familiar with the practice, so I wonder if that ban was temporary, and/or ineffective.  

Your comments on the spreading of EB traffic among multiple interchange roads got me thinking about a sales agent spreading rollers around the country, so at any given time he’d have a load within a day or 2 of most any buyer that rang him up. 

The east-west disparity in boxcars was so bad that the NP and GN both worked deals with lessor AA Morrison to buy older boxcars by the hundreds off the NE railroads’  bad order lines, refurbish them with double doors, and lease them for lumber service. So they were cheap rolling stock that saw high utilization and big net profit for the NP, and presumably GN. 

Chris Frissell
Polson, MT 

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