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Re: (erielack) Freight consists in EL (and earlier) trains...

Paul R Tupaczewski noted, with regard to the use of box cars in freight
trains:

> Today's freight consists have MUCH more variety, by comparison.


and then wondered:

> Why is this?

Whereupoon he speculated:

> Has specialization (covered hoppers, centerbeam flats, etc.) removed the
> commonality of boxcars in freights? I noticed in older (DL&W/Erie era)
> trains that boxcars were very predominant as well. I figured that by
1970,
> the specialization rage had already taken over, but I guess not?

Yeah, that's part of it but another reason is the use of TOFC and COFC has
eliminated (almost) the need to use a box car - you just pack the stuff in
the box right at your loading dock, seal it up and send it away.  Not many
new industrial buildings use rail spurs anymore - I know, I design 'em.  I
have asked a few clients about it - boy do you get strange looks!!

One client, a large commercial baker, even used old freight car bodies for
storage (I think they were airslides mounted about 16' in the air on large
concrete piers) which he got delivered to the site by rail as the MEC main
was next to the site, but he said when they did use rail for delivering
flour, they sometimes ran out!  If you're baking 20,000 loaves of bread a
day, this is not good!

Sorry, getting back to the point here, I believe that by the mid seventies,
using a box car was getting old hat and the T/COFC was the new way to get
things done.  I think (but can't prove it by my observations because I
haven't been looking with this in mind) that if you enumerated the T/COFC
cars in a modern freight and compared them to the boxes in a, say, 60's
freight, the proportion would be similar.

SGL

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