Wait. Railroads usually don't own the cars? | Railroad 101

There are roughly 1.6 million rail cars in the united staes

So what you are saying is I could buy a custom rail car and put logos on it. Genius advertising.

The exception to this is passenger railroads. Those railroads tend to own their own rolling stock. I'm referring to the modern government-owned passenger railroads.

X on the end of a reporting mark means it's not a common carrier so BNSF is a common carrier while FURX is a private company. Basically means that BNSF cant really deny a load while FURX could.

So fun fact Hyce, there's a wartime ad from the Pennsy that actually talks about where a specific boxcar's been over the course of a year. IIRC it actually winds up in Portland or Seattle or something like that at one point.

I was just thinking ‘I’d love a new Hyce talky video’ and here one is!

I remember reading in Trains or Model Railroader that almost all car carriers are hybrid owned. The car is a flat car which is owned usually by TTX and the superstructure which holds the cars is built and owned by the railroad.

glad to see that "Treat it like a Rental" applies to more than cars.

New Drinking Game: Take a shot any time Hyce says 'nuance' 'nuances' and/or 'nuanced' This applies to any of his previous videos as well

Ok, as a railroader I'm about to show my foamer card so here goes. The Rocky Mountaineer out of Denver (if I recall correctly) used to use power from UP and got tired of UP basically screwing them over. They also had some bad experiences with lease power for the exact reason you said. The company that owned the lease power wasn't familiar with railroad stuff and couldn't be asked to actually pay to fix the broken stuff. So, the Rocky Mountaineer got in touch with a leasing company we've done some work for before (one where the people running actually know the ins and outs of repairing and maintaining locomotives) and asked to lease some power from them. The company in question had an SD-18 and SD40M-2 (I'm pretty sure) laying around that weren't operational. They didn't have the capacity to do the work that was needed so they sent them to us to do the final needed repairs. They then tested them by running them on a few of our trains to make sure they would function. After all was said and done, we prepped them to be shipped across the country and sent them on a train to (I think) Bellevue, where NS took them further west to (I assume) get picked up by UP and taken to Denver. So, if any of you guys out west see the Rocky Mountaineer being pulled by an HZRX 187 or HZRX 8600, now you know that those two locomotives were made operational again in Brewster Ohio and then shipped all the way across the country because the Rocky Mountaineer was tired of junk lease power and getting screwed over by UP. Also, 11:48 yeah that's definitely a thing. Also, also, 12:26 we actually still have quite a few SD40-2s rolling around in the green and silver FURX scheme.

Work at a small recycling refinery. We lease about 20 tank cars. Very much true we are responsible for wear and tear damage and damage that is our fault. Usually any part that we have to deal with as part of our loading operations (gaskets, manway bolts and the like). We do, per regulations, pre and post loading inspections, Some defects that we notice we have to call an AAR certified repair crew to fix since we are not certified. Basically any welding or pressure valve work, and oddly enough the reporting marks and lettering on the car. This is all done for every car we touch. Weather we lease it or not. Any major repairs such as running gear and breaks is billed to the leaser and done off site if the railcar can safely travel. The only time my hobby and career choice have ever really crossed paths. Keep up the good work.

Fun Fact about TTX: It was originally a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad made to build cars for their trailer trains, In fact the company is literally named Trailer Train Company. The Pennsy is quite famous for its many experiments in inter-modal shipping from early attempts at containerization, to its trailer trains that TTX was made for. Considering how ubiquitous they are now, I'd say TTX was a pretty successful experiment.

used to work at a shop repairing tank cars, super dangerous work but good times. got a lot of stories out of it lmao.

This is so cool. It feels like when I was a little kid and sat down with my grandpa to hear his stories (he was a section foreman for C&O/Chessie/CSX with 40+ years). It's that same feeling, except now I'm hearing it from someone younger than me! 😂Keep up this series, it's great.

BNSF shop crew: The hell are you doing here? NS Locomotive: I don't wanna talk about it.... This video reminds me of a sight from my childhood. I'm originally from Galveston, Texas, and close to the bridge that connected the island to the mainland there was a railyard, and it was full, I mean completely stuffed, with Santa Fe boxcars. In a decade of living in that area, I don't think I ever saw them move. Until recently I didn't know that Galveston still had a rail connection to the mainland, since no rail bridge was visible from the causeway, so little me was always puzzled as to why they were just sitting there. I wonder what happened to them, since that yard is long gone now.

Lots of leased power in the northeast on CSX back in the 2000's era. I rarely seen a train that DIDN'T have some kind of leased power. "Rent a wrecks" I believed the crews called'em.

I like how Hyce is "here's how things work and are basically fine if a bit nuanced" and Well There's Your Problem is like "here's how things work and are completely fucked and constantly kill people"

Interestingly with the autoracks, I think most of the flat cars are owned by TTX but the tracks on top of them are owned by the railroads.

Private 3rd party owned cars have the last letter X ex: UTLX / GATX and when you have CSX, a class 1, not a third party, had to have the classification: CSXT

In my 11 years with the Missouri Pacific and Union Pacific trading power was a nightly occurrence. KCMO being the second largest rail hub in the US, most major railroads have a yard of significant size with some sort of a diesel shop. So every night, the yardmaster or Road foreman of engines would be on the phone either providing power or asking for it. These guys knew each other they were together every day. If you had extra power, you would give it away if they had extra power, they would give it away because it changed who was asking who was receiving from night tonight sometimes nobody had power then trains just sat in the yard Other times had plenty of power and no trading was going on great point.