Word: boxcar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...with Boxcars. The best gains were made by the long-troubled Eastern railroads, largely because they made the most noteworthy improvements in equipment. The Pennsylvania, whose net rose 115% to $50 million, now has "unitized trains" that carry only one commodity between two fixed points (coal from mine to utility) and make 156 round trips a year, v. 18 under the old boxcar system. The New York Central's profits soared 150% to $35 million, largely because of gains from its Flexi-Vans and triple-tiered auto-hauling carriages, which enabled the line to carry 900,000 autos last...
...reason for the demand is that the U.S. boxcar population has dropped from 700,000 in 1958 to 571,367 today. In the normal flow of freight traffic, railroads usually handle a large number of one another's boxcars, and rare is the half-mile-long freight train that is not a geographically fascinating string of many-colored U.S. railroad names. For each day that a line keeps another's boxcar after it is unloaded, it pays an allowance of $2.88-a fee that has not changed since 1902. That price is cheaper than buying expensive new boxcars...
Western railroads complain bitterly that, since so many terminals for their shipments are in the East, Eastern railroads are the major offenders. They charge that Eastern boxcar-napping has produced a shortage of cars for moving grain and lumber...
Railroadmen aim at having on hand the equivalent of the number of boxcars they own, even though they may be someone else's. They use a "percentage of equivalent ownership" to show their boxcar wealth, worry when equivalence drops below 90%. While such Eastern roads as the Pennsylvania had a 137.4% rate in March, the New Haven 164.8%, and the Reading 182.2%, many Western roads were clearly suffering: the Burlington had only 66.6%, the Northern Pacific 62.3%, the Great Northern...
...Eastern roads like to pirate the new, bigger, smoother-riding cars now going into service because they are easier to handle and unload. "Any new car that you build that leaves this area," complains Illinois' Wilson, "you don't see again for a long time." To discourage boxcar piracy, the Association of American Railroads will raise the rate for daily rentals, but it has little power to police its own members...