Modeling the distribution of car
types in the modern fleet
by
Jim Moir (c) 1992
We all know that if you want your
railroad to reflect a
certain
era, and "look right", one thing that is necessary
is
to have the right cars for that time period.
As well, it
helps
if your car fleet has the various types of cars in
about
the right proportion to each other.
This is especially important if you are
modeling the
recent,
or modern, railroad scene, because the distribution
of
car types has changed significantly over the last 20
years.
Covered hoppers are by far the most numerous kind of
car
today, one car in four. Box cars
are now fourth, behind
tank
cars! Another development is that
private ownership
now
represents about 38% of the total fleet, reflecting the
greater
number of covered hoppers and tank cars.
In 1991, the
1,197,419 cars of
which 453,059 were privately owned.
The
railroad-owned
fleet declined 33,101 cars (4.3%) from the
previous
year, while the privately-owned fleet increased
12,323 cars (2.8%).
Some of these numbers are from
abstracts
from Railway Age on Compuserve's
TrainNet.
On a car-type by car-type basis, the
fleet consists of:
Car Types
% Total
% private
Covered hopper
24.6
46.3
Hopper
18.2
12.6
Tank
15.7
99.3
Box car
14.8
8.7
Gondola
11.5
27.2
Flat
10.7
33.8
Refrigerator
3.3
7.8
Other
1.1
17.0
Some notes.
Railbox boxcars represent 85.7% of the
privately
owned boxcars and Railgon has 1% of the gondolas.
TTX Corp, formerly Trailer Train, owns
31% of the flats.
The railroad-owned fleet of covered
hoppers represents 12.1%
of
the fleet. We might expect that
most of these are used
in
grain service.
The number of hoppers may seem high for
a railroad set other
than
in the coalfields, say in the northeast. (We're talking
the
"real" NE ...
does
locality affect these proportions?
The following table
shows
the distribution of some car types in three fleets.
% of fleet by Kind(3)
Railroad
N&W
CN(1)
B&M
Car Types
Covered hopper
-
21.4
11.1
Hopper
58.2
6.82
8.3
Total cars
62152
73255
2136
% of total fleet
5.2
6.1
0.18
Notes:
1) Includes CNWX/ALNX assigned covered hoppers
2) 21% are ore hoppers
3)
Source: ORER, January 1989
The N&W fleet of hoppers, alone,
represents about 16.5% of
the
total hopper fleet. Compare that
to the B&M and CN
fleet
proportions of about 7 to 8%.
It may be interesting to note that
CN's fleet of covered
hoppers
is not out of proportion to the
This in spite of the fact that any
visitor to
harbor
can come to believe that there is no kind of railroad
car
in the world other than the MIL/NSC cylindrical hopper.
We even see them by the trainload here.
If we take out
"distortions", (sorry Appalachian modelers!)
such
as the N&W hoppers, by setting the percentage of
hoppers
at 8%, then the "average"
thus:
Car Types
% Total
Covered hopper
27.7
Hopper
8.0
Tank
17.8
Box car
16.6
Gondola
12.9
Flat
12.0
Refrigerator
3.7
Other
1.3
This adjusted list still puts the
boxcar no better than
third
by number and still only one car in six in a modern
fleet.
If a modeler were to put together a
modern car fleet based
just
on these numbers, a model fleet totaling about 640
cars
would consist of ...
Car types
% Number
Kind of cars Total
Covered hoppers, private
12.8
82
Covered hoppers, Class 1
14.8
95
177
Hoppers
8.0
51
51
Tank cars
17.8
114
114
Box cars, Class 1
11.3
72
Box cars, other railroads
3.9
25
Box cars, Railbox
1.3
8
Box cars, other private
0.3
2
107
Flat, railroad
8.3
53
Flat, TrailerTrain
3.7
24
77
Gondolas
12.7
82
82
Refrigerator, railroad
3.4
22
Refrigerator, private
0.3
2
24
Other
1.3
8
8
Huummmm...
Guess I'm still going to have to trade off a few
boxcars
for tank cars and autoracks.
And say, that's a lot
of
covered hoppers. Maybe, if we all
sit down and write a few
letters
to Mr Walthers showing
him this table, we just might
see
a model of the MIL/NSC "grain" cylindrical covered
hopper
car.