About Providence and Worcester Railroad Autoracks

[OmenRotcod]

When I installed Shawn Kelley's fine set of PW Autoracks, I had to look up the Providence and Worcester Railroad. Not knowing all that much about railroading, I was then curious about what P&W would be doing with Autoracks and on what route I could use them.

So, I did a bit of searching and came across this interesting discussion from back in 2009 from Railroad.net. It answers the question: "I'm curious, why does the P&W have automobile cars?"


Maybe this old hat to many of you, but perhaps some will find it worthwhile looking at it.

David

[ossie]

I'll jump in David because if my understanding is wrong, hopefully someone can correct me. As I understood the use of autoracks, they're "pooled" so they can be used anywhere and by anyone in NA. My ASSUMPTION was that any company could buy them and then generate revenue from their use in the pool whether that was on "home rails" or the other side of the continent. If that is wrong, hopefully someone can set me straight.

[OmenRotcod]

Yes Peter, from what I understand from the discussion on Railroad.net that is the case. That's something I wasn't aware of.

If I may quote from Railroad.net, this is the key post:

Autoracks are managed through a pooling arrangement managed by the AAR, IIRC, and, therefore, move freely around N. America according to supply and demand and without regard to ownership. The P&W purchased ~200 used autoracks to contribute and participate in the pool. One other interesting aspect of autoracks is that in some cases the flatcar is owned by TTX while the rack is owned seperately by the railroad, though probably not the case for the P&W's cars.

and further, by the same poster (QB 52.32):

As a follow-up to my above post, I received a PM from someone in the industry that clarified the details of the N American autorack pooling arrangement. TTX manages the pool with input from auto shippers and 10 participating railroads, though ownership is not limited to TTX cars (like the P&W's), saving over 1 billion annual empty miles. The AAR provides legal, technical & administrative support to the program.

What I get out of this is that I can use the P&W autoracks on just about any North American route.

David

[CSRX]

The autorack industry is pretty neat, you can spot their cars on any railroad in the United States that has automotive transportation. The P&W autoracks were required as the P&W ended up with a contract that receives close to 60 every other day, mainly for shipment overseas.

It's similar to the DTTX, TBOX, FBOX, etc equipment. All class ones have ownership in "Trailer train" but the cars are found everywhere.

[wwhall]

^Correct. The caveat is that autoracks can have differing interior designs to handle different types of vehicles--e.g., compact cars, large pickups, etc. That is one reason that you may see empty and loaded autoracks in the same train.

Some notes about "private car line" and railroad-owned equipment. The simple distinction--identified by the reporting mark--is that private cars are owned by entities other than the railroads. Private car line cars have a reporting mark ending in "X". Railroad-owned cars are just that. But there are some wrinkles. TTX Corporation is one of them. TTX is indeed a private car line, but TTX Corporation itself is owned by member railroads. Also, some railroads--often shortline and switching railroads--operate large freight car fleets that are used mostly off of their own rails.