Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 266, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1914 — FREIGHT CAR SERVICE [ARTICLE]

FREIGHT CAR SERVICE

ItOOM FOR IMPROVEMENT IN IMPORTANT MATTER. Many Suggestions Have Been Made, Among Them That a “Clefring House" Might Help to Bmooth Away Difficulties. The subject of car shortage has for years interested railway officials, but as yet no general policy has been adopted. Every harvest season, and every season for the shipping of great quantities of winter fuel, (finds the railroads more or less unprepared because of a scarcity of cars. This condition has Jed to investigations and numerous recommendations. The Interstate commerce commission, several years ago, endeavored to correct the demurrage rules, but some railroad men felt that thereby the situa-' tion was made more difficult. J. R. Cavanaugh, an Indianapolis railroad man, recommends, in the Traffic World, the pooling of freight cars, that is that a freight car “clearing house” should be formed to take over all the freight cars in the country. Ownership would remain the same, but management would be centralized. The clearing association would operate under the rules of the American Railway association, would receive reports from every part of the country and would be enabled to act nationally instead of locally. The idea is to equalize car interchangev There are many thousands of cars idle in one place when they are needed in another. It would be the new association’s purpose to remedy this condition.

The proposal is in line with ideas expressed by other railroad men. It is said that for at least two-thirds of the year 100,000 freight cars stand idle on the sidings. These represent an investment of perhaps slEio>Mo,ooo. The average daily freight car is estimated to be but twenty-dye miles. Under the present complicated system of demurrage, it Is declared that, out of every nine days, a car is in actual transportation service only two days. The other seven days are takqn up in loading, unloading or storage.

One investigator, writing in the Technical World Magazine last year, gave it as his opinion that there are too many freight cars —that is, too much capital Is invested In this sort of equipment considering the returns. It is evident that the railroads lose millions of dollars annually* because of the lack of system in car handling. Perhaps this loss has something to do with the “hard times” which the railroads are experiencing.