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Which specific types of cars in a brewery pool would be determined based upon interior cubic capacity. (Besides the requirement to be insulated.) Industries loading boxcars most often have specific loading patterns for palletized shipments and want to maximize the amount of product in a car, since it moves on a carload rate. I think you would be fairly prototypical in your pool by matching cars with similar interior capacity, without knowing specific cars assigned to the prototype pool.
Welcome to the group Joe!
Tulsa’s connection to the MP is that it was also on the Midland Valley Railroad, along with Ft Smith and Muskogee. A portion of the line in Tulsa is still operated by the Tulsa-Sapulpa Union RR. I believe the depot at Jenks, OK, just east of Tulsa is still standing, not sure the status of the museum that was located there.
Updated and edited, subject line changed.
A lot of cars were assigned to pools managed by other railroads, for industries on that railroad. As an example, there were MP RBL’s in Southern’s pool for the Stroh’s brewery in Atlanta. I would imagine there were some MP cars in the pool for Miller’s facility in Milwaukee. MP cars would be in any pool for a Miller plant where MP participated in the routing of outbound traffic. I have dug around and not found any specific info on the assignments for ARMH RBL’s, but I continue to search.
As an aside – the AB brewery in Houston was served by MP. It was located on the Houston-North Shore route to Baytown, and served out of MK Yard.
March 9, 2017 at 12:45 am in reply to: Analysis of a Freight Train: #76 out of Pueblo 8/9/1966 #8250So, the “DRWG” should be “DRGW” as in Denver, Rio Grande & Western. Me having a bout of dyslexia, probably because I have been typing “DWG” while renaming a bunch of drawing files. I will get the spreadsheet changed.
I presume you mean car 29, which is TP 719197. That is actually what the paperwork says, although I would venture a guess that it is an indentical move to Car 20, TP 719194, and both cars came from San Francisco.
I really appreciate your observation on Car 2, SP 117614. It orginated at Susanville, CA, on the Southern Pacific, and was routed SP-Salt Lake City-Pueblo-MP-Omaha-MILW with a destination of Peoria, IL via Chicago & North Western. A roller car would explain having the same consignor and consignee (I would guess one of the spellings is a typo.)
A “roller” is a car shipped with a pseudo or temporary destination, giving a freight broker time to sell the carload before it reaches that original imaginary destination. Rollers of lumber often took circuitous routes to allow time for the load to be sold.
@steve503 wrote:
I find these fascinating at times. How about car 27, A TP CH going from St. Joseph (originated by TP?) to St. Joseph with time on the DRWG (a reporting mark I can only guess at.) Car 2 appears to maybe be a “roller” since route looks roundabout?
Steve MarquessHi Ryan,
It took me some time, but I searched through the MPHS Digital Archives for enclosed autoracks. So far, I have only found these two photos. One is a roofless rack on a Trailer Train flat. I cannot tell if it is bi-level or tri-level. The other shows most of a MP rack at the GM Shreveport assembly plant.[attachment=0:qt42ctkm]MP autoracks at GM Shreveport.jpg[/attachment:qt42ctkm][attachment=1:qt42ctkm]MP roofless rack on TTGX flat.jpg[/attachment:qt42ctkm]
Thanks for posting this Dana. The freight cars are interesting. We sure do not have any location clues in the photos for CSI work.
Brownsville train service: my info is spotty, but here is what I have…….
In the mid to late 1960’s, a pair of trains connected San Antonio and Brownsville. #367 San Antonio-Brownsville connected with #95 New Orleans-Kingsville, and #366 Brownsville-San Antonio connected with #94 Kingsville-New Orleans. #94/#95 moved the Houston traffic to/from Brownsville.
By the early 1970’s, 94/95 had been renumbered 394/395 and cut back to Houston-Kingsville. 366/367 changed to San Antonio-Mission trains which made connection with Houston traffic at Kingsville, and Brownsville traffic at Harlingen.
Southbound, Houston to Kingsville train #395 carried a Brownsville block for Harlingen, which was picked up at Kingsville by San Antonio-Mission train #367. Brownsville traffic was set out at Harlingen and moved to Brownsville on Local 856 departing 05:00 and arriving Brownsville at 07:30.
Northbound, another local (not sure job#) departed Brownsville 12:01 am and arrived Harlingen 02:00, connecting to Mission-San Antonio train #366, which set out traffic for Kingsville-Houston #394 at Kingsville.
I have a 1975 listing that shows Brownsville assigned 2 units for yard service, totalling 3,200 horsepower. 2 jobs worked on both 1st and 2nd shifts, no jobs worked on 3rd shift.
By January 1979, two very long distance locals were serving Brownsville. L859 operated Houston-Brownsville with 5,400 horsepower assigned, departed Houston 04:00 hrs. L858 operated Brownsville-Houston with 5,400 HP, departed Brownsville 2359 hrs.
Here is a photo of locomotive 946 being raised from the Intracoastal Canal at Morley, Louisiana.
From the MPHS archives.Written information on the back of the photo as follows:
Train NF-16 (New Orleans-Ft Worth of 9/16/1973)
48 loads, 61 empties
35 mph
Incident occurred at 11:55 pm (9/16/1973)
2 units, 11 loads, 4 mtys into the canal
$620,000 damageThe car kind and STCC load kind are interesting. BNSF uses a different car kind code, and places the L/E information after the car kind, but I’m assuming the STCC code and descriptor are universal. Is there a master list of car kinds and STCC codes available for browsing?
Ryan,
STCC code lists can be found through a Google search. They are universal. As for car kind code, MP developed their own car types I assume internally when developing TCS. They are not quite the same as the UMLER codes, but do have similarities. I was given a master list back in the 1990’s by a former MP trainmaster, I will search over the holidays to see if I can find it.
How about a shot of a TCS screen for this discussion……
This image was cropped out of a slide used to illustrate either a presentation or an annual report. It has some pixelation from application of a sharpening filter in Photoshop. Disclaimer: I am a student of TCS, not a practitioner. Hopefully Kevin and Charlie can correct me where I derail, and fill in any holes.
The screen is a car inquiry screen showing origin, destination and its trip plan. The top line shows the car initials and number (MP 253558), L=loaded, L50 is a car type code for a boxcar equipped with load restraining devices. It is carrying “BRICK”, but the more descriptive STCC code follows that, 3255110 being the STCC code for Fire Brick. (STCC is Standard Transportation Commodity Code, and this is the classification that matches up with the proper rate for billing the cost of the movement.)
The second line shows the waybill number, date waybill created, and location where the car was waybilled. Next lines show origin station and shipper, destination station and receiver. Company names made up for demo purposes. OFF indicates the car goes offline, in this case interchanged to FW&D at Ft Worth. ETA=I/C is the interchange ETA at TP250 (station code for Ft Worth).
Next is the trip plan. Each line is an event. SA=station arrival, SS=station setout, SD=station departure, SP=station pickup, RL=released. The trip events are read from bottom upwards, with past events under the dashed line, and scheduled events above the dashed line. This trip plan shows the car released at ZTS location 04-851-01. It is scheduled to be picked up by yard job YM38-16 (Job M38 of the 16th of the month), then it leaves Memphis on train MLS-17 (Memphis-Little Rock-Southern, a runthrough off the Southern Rwy at Memphis), and at Little Rock it is classified to Train LF (Little Rock-Ft Worth) for the trip to Ft Worth. Scheduled dates and times for each event.
I have been working with JMRI to see if I can duplicate the MP train consist formats generated from TCS, for use on my model railroad. Still a very early work-in-progress.
[attachment=0:3o696nns]Demo TCS screen.jpg[/attachment:3o696nns]
Hi Ryan,
MP used ZTS (Zone-Track-Spot) system and published books for each territory covered by a particular customer service center. They were all in 4.25″ x 11″ format with orange covers. After the UP merger, the books continued to be published, with a UP herald replacing the MP herald on the covers.
The MPHS digital archives group is working toward offering a set of ZTS diagrams, probably on CD, that covers the entire MP system. We are currently compiling what is in the collection, and what portions of the system we are missing.
Ted Ferkenhoff
Flagstaff, AZCharlie, thank you for the additional info. The export process was and is pretty interesting, and still sometimes frustrating.
Charlie, I have studied many Circular 61 freight schedule pages that indicated southbound Mexico traffic was set out at San Antonio “to be manifested”. Several different blocks from several different trains, set out, then to be handled later on trains to Laredo (DM, DMZ, etc.) Was this practice a response to the congestion in Laredo from too many cars waiting for release on too few tracks?
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