With all of the travelling I do I rent probably a dozen different cars in a year. Now I understand that the basics of driving are basically the same no matter what car you are in, but each car has its own little nuances. For example, last week I was in Virginia at the NS Short Line Meeting, and I had a Lincoln MKZ, which is the Lincoln version of the Ford Fusion, which happens to be what my wife drives. I’ve driven her car many times since she got in in December, and I am pretty comfortable with the layout and where the controls are. When I got into my rental car I had to take a couple of minutes to figure out where all of the controls were. I’ll admit the steering wheel and pedals were easy to find and figure out how to use them, but starting and shifting the car was a different story.When I learned to drive you started your car with a key that went into a keyhole on the dash or steering column. After almost thirty years of driving a car, I had to get used to a start button on the dash when I got my new car this year. It took almost a week for the muscle memory to stop kicking in looking for the key to turn. Shifting a car into gear was done with a shift lever on the column or on the center console. Not on this Lincoln. It had a row of buttons down the left side of the center console (some of you are saying right now “I had a Chrysler like that in the sixties”) that you used to select the gear. I won’t tell you how many times over the week I reached for the gear shift that wasn’t there…Railroads aren’t that much different than the car rental industry. Why, you ask? Well, we basically rent a good number of the cars that are used to the shippers. Most of these cars are boxcars, and the Class 1 owned fleets are large. The problem is, they are also diverse. For example, while NS has eight different types of boxcars in their fleet, those cars have seventeen different types of fittings or doors. Not good if you are trying to improve the velocity of your fleet, because you are constantly trying to sharp shoot which car type goes where. In the end, you are lucky if you get one turn a month on a car.So what is NS’s intended solution? Standardize the fleet, as much as they can. If they were in an ideal world, all of their boxcars would be 60’ plate F double-door cars. They have found that they are a good middle of the road solution for their needs. Unfortunately, they, like the rest of us are not in the ideal situation, and because of height restrictions on parts of their system that would prevent the 17’ plate F cars from getting to their destination, they are going to need a second car type in the boxcar fleet. That will probably be a 60’ plate C (15’ 6” height) which will fit just about anywhere.One of the interesting things here is that the days of the 50’ 70-ton plate C boxcar are done. They will go the way of the 40’ car, and the retirements are already starting. By the start of the 2030s, they will be a thing of the past. As they say, time and technology move on…
---By Steve Friedland
Steve Friedland is a child of the railroad industry. Following summers and vacations working on the track gang for the family-owned Morristown & Erie Railway, a 42-mile New Jersey short line, he started full-time in 1994. He has worked in all areas of the railroad, including track, mechanical, signals, and operations, and currently is a member of the management team for the company as director of operations in Morristown, N.J. In 1999, he founded Short Line Data Systems, a provider of railroad EDI and dispatching software, AEI hardware, and management consulting to the short line industry. He currently serves as the ASLRRA representative to the AAR's Wireless Communications Committee and is chairman of the joint AAR-ASLRRA Short Line Information Improvement Committee. He also is a member of the ASLRRA's board of directors.
Steve Friedland is a child of the railroad industry. Following summers and vacations working on the track gang for the family-owned Morristown & Erie Railway, a 42-mile New Jersey short line, he started full-time in 1994. He has worked in all areas of the railroad, including track, mechanical, signals, and operations, and currently is a member of the management team for the company as director of operations in Morristown, N.J. In 1999, he founded Short Line Data Systems, a provider of railroad EDI and dispatching software, AEI hardware, and management consulting to the short line industry. He currently serves as the ASLRRA representative to the AAR's Wireless Communications Committee and is chairman of the joint AAR-ASLRRA Short Line Information Improvement Committee. He also is a member of the ASLRRA's board of directors.