(The following article by Meggan Clark was posted on the Press of Atlantic City website on January 1.)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Ever wonder how a boxcar from a Vermont railroad can end up in Pleasantville, or cars owned by many different railroads can be towed by one locomotive?
While a trucker can drive just about anywhere he wants, railroads own their tracks and they don’t like other railroads on them. As a result, rail cars may pass through the custody of many different rail companies before they reach their destination.
“About 30 percent of all freight moves over the lines of more than one railroad,” said Tom White, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads. “More than 100 years ago, railroads reached agreements to provide for the interchange of freight cars from one railroad to another so that freight would not have to be offloaded from one railroad’s car and onto another railroad’s car when it moved from one railroad to another.”
For example, apples taken from Washington state to New Jersey would likely be transported to a large “Class 1” railroad by a local “short line” carrier, to the middle of the country by that Class 1 railroad and to the east by another Class 1 railroad. Then, it would be delivered to the local distribution point by a shortline railroad.
Since there’s no point in taking empty boxcars back to Washington, the cars would be filled up and sent back across the country with another load of cargo – unrelated to apples.
Some railroad companies, such as Union Pacific, even have agreements with other railroads to swap engines. Union Pacific’s territory ends in Chicago, but its engines sometimes end up heading to the east coast with a CSX or Norfolk Southern crew aboard, said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis. In exchange, the company will use an eastern railroad’s locomotive when it needs to.
“You keep track of where your locomotives are and watch for extra hours (used by one of the partners) and then, at the end of the year, you have an hour swap where the other railroad has to provide some type of locomotive for your use,” he said.
How far does a boxcar travel? It can travel from Canada to Mexico, or even South America.
“Anywhere there’s a railroad, a track,” Davis said. “A rail car, in its lifetime, could literally travel everywhere … within the Americas.”
So what happens when they break down?
“When you have the car, if it breaks down, you repair it,” said Jim Kvedaras, a senior manager for Canadian National railroad. “We have rules of protocol.”
Imagine having this guy’s job. Mike Boivin is the car accountant for Vermont Railway. His company mainly transports talc and other products within Vermont and just outside the state’s boundaries to major connection points. But he has to keep track of Vermont Railway’s cars as they travel around the country and send the appropriate railroads rent bills.
“Probably a few (U.S. rail cars) venture into Mexico, but not many,” he said. “They usually stop in Texas.”
He said relationships between railroads can get a little touchy when there are weather-related delays, but mostly “it’s like a big fraternity.”
While railroad cars – and engines – can end up just about anywhere, that’s not true of engineers. Railroads say their engineers generally travel back and forth on the same same 200 to 250 miles of track, swapping with a new crew at each designated intersection.
They spend the night in a hotel and pilot a train in the opposite direction in the morning.
“It’s a fascinating way of shipping, and it’s not just because I work in the industry,” Boivin said.