Number of Freight Cars Required


macjet

macjet

Member
I was reading another thread and something came across my mind.

I'm building a medium sized grain facility. The short of the long is how many covered hoppers do I need? If 8 are sitting at the elevator being loaded how many more are in service? I'm sure the shipper wouldn't want to wait until those 8 are moved, unloaded, and returned. So, is there any rule of thumb that says you need X number of cars for every 1 sitting at the shipper?

Of the top of my head I say 6. 1 sitting at the shipper, 1 outbound at the yard, 1 enroute, 1 at the receiver, 1 returning, and 1 at the inbound yard. Is this correct?
 
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wow! You just opened a can of worms there dude! I like your thoughts or theory. As for that magic number. I guess if you look at the 'real' world it is based on supply and demand of course. So for your layout, you need to decide. As you said if you had 8 wating to be loading then when loaded they all go at once right? So you will need that many to replenish? 8 more to fill the next order... then you take that scenario you set up. That could really add up couldnt it? With your formula based on the 8 (cars) times 6 (locations) equal to 48 cars!

Wowsa!
Let us see what others have to say about that. I like this topic glad you brought it up!
Really interesting
 
That actually sounds about right, but, because we model only a portion of the railroad, we only have to model a portion of the operations. Most of the time, double the siding's holding capabilities (one empty, one loaded)...

So I'd say 16 is good, but might get boring, so, 8X3 for some variation, in whats there are any given time, 24 cars.
 
X 3 Sounds right for modeling. One sitting at the elevator, one loaded to staging, and one empty from staging.

Any other thoughts?
 
I use to fill hopper cars where I worked . We filled Vinyl into them but very similar to a grain operation . It just depends on how big or small you want to make it. We use to have two cars filling . Two cars waiting to be filled and two cars ready for outbound !!!
 
Here's a super-mega-wild SWAG. Two to three of every road name available. That will guarantee that you will have the maximum amount of flexibility for your facility, as you shuffle cars in and out.

If you're doing the unit train thing, then all you need is 2-3 of every version of the road you're doing.

:D

Kennedy
 
Here's an interesting bit of info straight from a professional railroading magazine. The average 50' boxcar in unassigned service only makes 2 revenue trips (loaded) per YEAR. In assigned service it probably gets about 6 trips. Something in unit train service can probably get 2 trips a month, and something hot, like pigs and stacks make round trips every week. Something else to consider, if you are on the shipping side, is that they either have their own cars (with their reporting marks and most likely all the same type), or they lease cars (again same marks and type) or they use the railroad's cars whose line they are on. Where I work, with only a couple of exceptions, we only take them empties with our name on the side. If we used someone else's cars for the shipment, we would have to pay the car owner per day the car was in use for our load. The exceptions being some lumber mills and a paper mill that are also served by our competitors. So, to answer your question, you could probably get by with 24 cars. Get a couple different styles of similar capacity and have fun weathering and detailing them and try to use different car numbers. Mike
 
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