Calculating Freight Car Ratios for the PRSL

[rickb773]

The PRSL was a state forced shotgun marriage between the PRR and the RDG which covered the entire South Jersey area. PRR owned 2/3 so they pretty much ran the show for 2 out of 3 years. The PRSL was somewhat strange because it was  a north-south (and east) railroad with no connections on the southern side. CNJ had an interchange mid-point but the main connection with the outside world was Camden to Philadelphia on the north end (some traffic got routed on the PRR north to Trenton and NYC from Camden). I am primarily modeling early 1950s when south Jersey was loaded with farms and Campbell Soup was a major Camden destination (with most reefers being iced/re-iced in the Woodbury yard).

The PRSL supposedly had no freight cars (but did have some cast off hopper cars to hand-load the steam engines and ex-PRR work cars that they re-stenciled "PRSL".

Problem #1: Number of Freight Cars (I currently have 748):
Anyhow, I am closing in on finishing the initial phase 3 construction and should have it tied in to the rest of the layout by Christmas. So I began to attempt to figure out how many cars and what logos I would fit on the model railroad.

The main Camden Pavonia yard holds 105 cars (and will be extend to add 18 more).
The small Woodbury yard (3 PRSL branches feed together there) holds 29 cars
Camden has 2 additional storage tracks (10 cars) and 3 industrial spurs (15 cars)
Woodbury's 5 spurs hold 20 additional cars and
Westville's 5 spurs 20 cars.

 I figure 50% capacity should keep from overloading the railroad so that is 217 / 2=~108 cars.

Does that sound right?


Problem #2: Railroad Company Ratios:
I am guessing 30% PRR;
15% Reading
5% to nearby roads: CNJ, B&O, LV, Erie, NYC, C&O, N&W (2 power plants), and PFE (need to steal their reefers).
DuPont and Shell also had plants on-line
That leaves about 15% for misc. railroads.

Does that sound about right?


Problem #3: Car Type Ratios.
This is tricky since there were 2 power plants fed by the PRSL (1 off  my modeled line and 1 on a different non-modeled branch of the PRSL). Also every town had 1 or 2 coal dealers (remember those octopus coal furnaces in your basement.) Hoppers dominated the up to 100 car trains running through Woodbury so I probably need at least 50% hopper cars.

Multiple refineries were on line. Texaco is in Westville (and Mobil Oil was on the Deepwater branch). So I am guessing 20 tankers.

20 reefers (remember Campbell and the south Jersey farms.)

South Jersey also had Owens Corning glass plants requiring sand as did the cement mixing businesses trying to keep up with post WWII road construction. Therefore I need about 10-15 gondolas and covered hoppers.

Box cars were everywhere (and a colorful part of the trains) so I figure about 40. That puts me at 140 which is about 30 over estimated capacity.

Scale down by percentages?  Ideas?

Restraints: Can't expand since I have pretty much filled a 12'x17' loft and have barely enough room to squeeze in 4 operators. No room for cassette storage unless I can find a 16' tall guy to hold them up over the steps.

I would appreciate your input if there are other concepts with which I should be wrestling.

[MVW]

All I can go by is a sidebar in Bruce Chubb's old book, "How to Operate Your Model Railroad." He consulted Jim Hediger and three yardmasters on prototype roads, and they agreed a general rule is 50% home road, 25% primary connecting roads, 15% secondary connecting roads and 10% miscellaneous or privately owned cars. So it sounds like you pretty well nailed it (and have logical reasons to deviate).

Chubb also sourced Boomer Pete, saying a 1940s "average" railroad would have 43% box cars, 20% hoppers, 17% gondolas, 6% reefer, 6% tank, 4% flat and 4% stock. I don't think it says where Boomer Pete got the info, but there's no reason to think it's not fairly accurate.

Again, it sounds like you're in the ballpark.

If you need to downsize the number of cars on the layout (and 50% capacity or less was what Chubb recommended), you already have a logical plan for what should be on the road. Nothing wrong with biasing your initial setup of cars with what you want to see run. And it probably wouldn't be too difficult to swap out 5-10 cars every operating session, so you always have something different floating around.

I'd say congratulation on a well thought approach.

Jim

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Rick, I think you might want to start from the bottom up for what cars you need.

What industries do you have on the layout? What do they need? Once you figure that out, then you just need to figure out the ownership percentages.

If you have some overhead, say, staging to staging, then take the same approach. What industries does the staging represent? It's not like you have lots of bridge traffic to represent, so you can match cars to specific customers and build a pretty full picture of what should be in your trains.

[ArtinCA]

I would think that your operations will be a key factor in how many cars and what type.

If you just want car ratios, the best article I've seen on that was written by Bill Cowling in the Oct 1981 Model Railroader. I scanned it years ago and his information is still good to this day. His roster was 386 cars. According to the article, he was modeling Mt Carmel, Ill. Modeling the NYC, Southern and a free lanced road. A good reference to have. But your rations look good in comparison.

Your operations and industries are going to dictate the type of cars you need to have, unless they are passing through from one road to another. If you want relaxed, not everything get's switched or has a drop off. Busier would be swapping every car. Busier than that would be lots of cars going all over.

[bbussey]

FGE reefers, not PFE.   Pennsy was one of the owner roads of FGE, which by default had a strong northeast presence.

[Atlas Paul]

If you can find car switch lists or consist lists, you can compile a listing of what actually did appear on the area(s) you are modeling and go from there.

[Rossford Yard]

I will second the above and say that after reading your post, it appears you are about on the right track.

I would have cited the same books and articles, and think those ratios are probably correct.

Have fun tweaking your ops sessions!  Its a whole different part of the hobby and like everything else, I figure you will keep tweaking it through op session experience.

One thing I have found is that depending on how you stage, certain cars - like coal and grain - probably can be represented by fewer cars.  Specifically, you need a full loaded and full empty train, plus whatever you hold at the power plant.  Even so, that won't throw your overall ratio of cars out of whack by more than a few %.

[PGE_Modeller]

FGE reefers, not PFE.   Pennsy was one of the owner roads of FGE, which by default had a strong northeast presence.

But be aware of the point of origin for produce shipments.  Produce from the East would undoubtably be shipped in FGE cars.  However, produce from the Pacific Northwest could well come in WFE (affiliated with FGE, IIRC) cars while produce from California would most likely be in SFRD or PFE cars - and PFE was quite aggressive in ensuring that its cars were returned to one of its own facilities very quickly after unloading.

Meat products would most likely be shipped in private owner (e.g. Armour, Hormel, Swift) cars.

Cheers,

[bbussey]

It depends on the industries being modeled in question.  If the industries are shipping produce out, then FGE cars would be used more often than not.  If incoming produce originated in any of the eastern states close to or next to the Atlantic, or in any of the midwestern states, then FGE/WFE cars would be the norm.  While perishable produce could ship from California to southern NJ and probably did on occasion, it's more likely that such produce would ship from Florida which is FGE territory.  If you look at various photos of eastern freight consists from the mid 20th century, you'll see far more FGE reefers than PFE, and the wood-sheathed ice cars ran well into the 1970s.

Campbell is based in Camden NJ, isn't it?  So soup products would be shipped out in FGE cars.
 

[kalbert]

There is an interesting article on building a covered hopper fleet that touched on ratios in the CNWHS Modeler from a while back. Dennis Eggert created a pie chart showing the percentage of each covered hopper type in grain service in 1976, and based all his remaining calculations on that. He doesn't go into his exact numbers, how long his trains are, or how many cars fit at the elevator, but says that after doing the prototype math he could clearly see that he did not have enough 4750's in his fleet. I use a similar method to determine what kind of cars to buy and it helps keep mr wallet happy. It's not without it's compromises, suppose my facility held 10 hoppers, and my prototype inspiration owned a fleet that was 50% PS 4750, 25% PS 4427, 20% ACF 4650, and 5% miscellaneous. Generally that the %5 are probably the most interesting to research and model but by the numbers I'd only need to have one or two in my fleet!

Page 9 here is the article: http://www.cnwhs.org/cnwhs_modeler/Modeler_3_2.pdf

[Ed Kapuscinski]

People keep acting as if car appearances on a layout are a random thing, and that the goal needs to be to properly seed the pool of cars to match a theoretical proper balance.

But that's not the way it works in reality.

It's not like there's a giant staging yard with a lottery that dispatches cars. Rules of thumb are one thing when thinking in the abstract, but if you want to accurately portray reality, you need to get into the details.  Within a single variable, randomization and percentages might make sense (like which specific type of 4000-5000cuft home road covered hopper shows up), but the fact that there are ~4500cuft covered hoppers at a facility from the home road vs another road is not a random thing. It's dictated by national rules and customer dictums.

So, I maintain my original position, that merely taking a formula derived to approximate any point in the national system and applying it to South Jersey will NOT give an accurate representation of the cars that were actually present in that place at that time.

Do the homework, look at train sheets and photos, it's a fun part of the hobby.

[bbussey]

Era-specific train sheets and seasonal photos, and the industries being depicted on the layout.  For example, there were many more XIH boxcars on the rails during the winters of the 1950s/60s than during the summers due to potato harvests, and far more in New England than in other areas of the country. 

[garethashenden]

Where does one find train sheets?

[Rossford Yard]

Ed,

I agree in principle, but all that work causes headaches.....

Also, it takes a long time, even if committed to do it, so the "typical ratios" are a suitable stand-in for that decade between starting a layout and having time to get trains running, and then running 99% prototypically, so its a good question.

Lastly, a truly prototypical layout would probably have about 80% run through cars to off line industries, not have most cars stop at local industries, and the average freight car fleet for any era/area would probably be pretty representative of "typical" traffic.  Agreed that you should look at train sheets for a reasonable idea of frequency and type of trains in an area.

[MVW]

Gotta agree with Rossford Yard on this one. Ultimately, the question is, are you building a museum diorama or a model railroad you plan to have fun operating?

I love historical research as much as the next guy. Probably more, actually. But my opinion is that sooner or later there comes a time when you say "close enough" and get busy running trains. Exactly when we reach that point is a matter of personal choice.

I guess it's up to the OP to decide how he'd prefer to invest his time.

Jim