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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A FREIGHT CAR GETS LOST? | Railroad Economics 077

Railroad Economics

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**** VIDEO DESCRIPTION ****
What happens when a freight car gets lost?

In this episode of Railroad Economics, NCCX 1701 is back. After escaping railcar storage in North Dakota and returning to revenue service, our fictional covered hopper is loaded with corn and sent to Southern California. She makes it all the way to Los Angeles — and then seemingly disappears.

But how does a railroad actually lose track of a 30-ton freight car?
We’ll look at how railroads and railcar owners keep track of equipment moving across the North American freight network, how AEI tags and movement records create an electronic trail, what can cause that trail to break, and what happens when the computer says a freight car should be somewhere it isn’t.

And because this is NCCX 1701, we’ll also explore a few less-likely explanations for what she may have been doing while nobody could find her.

My name is Mark Magaña, and this is Railroad Economics — the business behind the trains.

20 Comments

@93greenstrat 23 hours ago

NCCX 1701 has boldly gone where no man has gone before.

@pomfret_and_pommes_frites_6493 1 day ago

I like the community of actual rail insiders who comment on this channel. It's very educational all around.

@johnlarsen6719 6 hours ago

. These are the voyages of the Railcar Enterprise!

I can't believe I just now caught on to the Federation Leasing.

@matthewwolff3729 1 day ago

I love the Star Trek reference.

@jefferykeeper9034 23 hours ago

This is some of the crazy things that happened with my JMIR on my layout.

@Marshall_1960 21 hours ago

Railcar chopshop. The scrapyard had a bunch of auto carrier cars come in. This guy torch cut the screens off, then cut up the rest of the car. I was a driver so I saw the beginning and the end of one of them. Wwhen I rolled in, the car looked intact, but the loader was headed its way. The loader touched it and the whole thing fell apart ti the frame. Maybe 4 hourrs work.
I worked at a Fedex hub loading airplane containers (part time, single, free insurance). About once a month I would scan a package and put it in the wrong container. We were seperating 11 areas, but they all went to one airport. If a person at that airport missed the code then the package was "lost". Once recieved at the wrong location, lost packages were set aside, until transport could be arranged to take it to its destination. That was probably two days in buildings that were supposed to checked for errant packages at end of shift, not a bigass railyard.
Interesting story.
Ignorant people know how to spell communist and have no idea what it means. Just a scary word to snowflakes 😂!

@pjtemplin 20 hours ago

I've been watching the VRF camera in Skykomish WA for years. Several years ago, BNSF had a bad order locomotive that they set out in Skykomish and it sat there for three weeks (randomly auto-starting and/or randomly running the air compressor). At one point, we heard dispatch asking some passing trains "have you seen locomotive 7283 (or whatever the number was)?" and we were all thinking "just look at the Skykomish camera and you'll see it!".

@kens.3729 15 hours ago

What a very Interesting Topic. Thanks Mark. 🤔👍🙏

@raygunsforronnie847 24 minutes ago

"Stuck on the 405 for 6 days.." that's my choice.

My dad was a claims investigator for Santa Fe and was one of the people who located missing equipment, investigated Granny's slip and fall and LAUPT, or a worker injury at the Barstow Shops. It's amazing how rolling stock can just vanish and then reappear halfway across the country without ever appearing on a train manifest.

@fredholley6248 20 hours ago

My workplace had a car 'disappear' for several months. A delivery of 5 cars turned into 4. The RR had no idea where the last one was. It was found in a Chattanooga freight yard months later. Somehow between AL and VA that car was either set aside or 'bad ordered' and lost. Finally delivered well after we needed it.

@M22OHIO 3 hours ago

Joe Hinrichs once said in an interview a couple years ago that they finally had some kind of Lo-Jack tracking system on some of the auto rack cars at CSX. He said yeah now we actually know where some of the cars (actually individual cars are, ) I mean we know what train they are on we hope😅…

@theragingdolphinsmaniac4696 1 day ago

Now that song is going yo be stuck in my head all day 🎶

@DanHPage 20 hours ago

Hilarious! Great work!

@ronaldchaidez964 1 day ago

I load chemicals from tank cars and recently I've cars with satellite tracking mounted on them powered by solar panels. Also remember when SP went out of business and half the country's railcar got lost ,return to shipper it was a mess for months

@48fiddy2 21 hours ago

There was a boxcar sitting “off spot” on the lead in Tuxedo/Cheverly, MD for several years. It was apparently the last load delivered in there before the track was embargoed due to no customers receiving freight by rail anymore. The route was owned by Amtrak (NEC), the servicing railroad was NS, the car was owned by KCS, the customer was Home Depot. After a decade a friend of mine called KCS out of curiosity. They were glad to get the information. The following week NS sent a local (the first in years) down to the complex with some MOW guys to “walk” the train into and out of the spur. They picked up the car and sent her home. Always wondered who, if anyone, had to pay KCS the per diem, or if KCS had written the car off, or what the story was on why it was left for a decade.

@ZEZERBING 1 day ago

I moved from Cleveland to Redondo Beach in 1985 out of high school. That song played in my head all the way out there.I was out there last Sept. I swear I saw a grain car lying on the beach, I wonder if that was her?

@danielkennedy1524 16 hours ago

Ahh LA is so nowhere,,, We want here back to the South East! Outstanding Mark! be well!

@cdavid8139 1 day ago

Railcars are still lost but no where near the rate as in the past. With all cars equipped with readers and with modern reporting systems including crew reporting it's far easier to find the last reported location. The most common occurances are having the cars lost inside large customers like transloaders or cars moved to storage and just not moved again. As you mentioned wisely in the video you at least know the past location, direction and date and time the car moved. So while rare, you do have far more tools available now than in the past. But as in the past, at the end of the day we still ask crews to look out for the car as they do their jobs. At other times you do still walk yards. The lost cars these days seem to often be empties but just recently worked on finding a loaded hopper car full of some chemical whose name I can't pronounce. We knew it went past a reader moving toward the end of a branch so we had it isolated at that point. Crews helped determine that they had placed it in a serving yard outside a large customer and their crews, who had access to the yard, had pulled it in without telling anyone. Lots of stories like thiat. Warp speed!