erikem wrote:
That gets back to one of my criticisms of Levinson's book, that he didn't say much about the early experiments with containers. As far as narrow gauge lines went, I'd guess (and strong emphasis on guess) that the useful lives of some narrow gauge lines could have been extended by a decade - though Durango to Alamosa probably would still have been abandoned by 1970. Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing the 1931 report from the ICC.
One thing that Levinson did get right is that chance does play a major role in the course of history.
The New Haven was the first railroad to use containers, beginning in 1847 and lasting to 1896. They were small -- 160 cubic foot -- but successfully competed for FAK service between New York and Boston water-rail via Stonington, and on other New Haven routes. The NYC service began in 1921 and was emulated in 1928 by the PRR; both services rendered uneconomical by ICC requirement that class rates be used instead of FAK rates. The NYC containers were 6x9x7.5' in size, weighed 2,800 lbs light (which is very heavy considering a 20' steamship box weighs 4,500 lbs.) and carried only 6,000 lbs. of lading. This containerization service began and operated in the most densely populated and industrialized section of the U.S., not in the thinly populated, unindustrialized Rocky Mountain West.
The question I have for you, just what were D&RGW customers supposed to ship in containers? The overwhelming preponderance of traffic on the narrow gauge from 1880 to 1950 was products of mines, forests, and fields: coal, ore concentrates, lumber, and livestock, none of which is conducive to shipping in an NYC-style container, which on tare weight alone would have exhausted one-fourth of the capacity of a standard 40,000 lb. capacity, 30 foot deck, narrow-gauge flatcar of the 1930s, nor even in a 4,500 lb. 20' steamship container of the 1950s. (After 1950 drill stem, oilfield pipe, and crude oil appeared in substantial quantity, also non-amenable to containerization.) There was hardly any commodity moving on the D&RGW narrow-gauge in sufficient volume, regularity, and high-cube, low-density characteristics to justify even a boxcar -- D&RGW had substituted bus and truck lines in an effort to keep the revenues in-company rather than let the FAK business go to competing truckers, which is where it was rapidly headed.
The narrow-gauge was a high-cost, low-traffic operation. Had these lines been standard-gauged by the 1930s instead of persisting as narrow -- obviating the need for freight transfer and extending the market reach of commodities loaded in the narrow-gauge territory further into the standard-gauge territory -- they would have been abandoned at almost an identical time as the base metals and precious metals mines were exhausted, Colorado's and northern New Mexico's modest ponderosa pine forests cut-over, and the domestic coal heating market disappeared. A couple of lines might have lasted later -- the Ouray Branch from Ridgway to Ouray comes to mind -- but the main lines via Marshall Pass and Cumbres Pass, I think not.
Intermodal freight was a boxcar-substitute almost 100% until the mid-1970s, and slowly became a transportation product in its own right only in extremely high-volume lanes. The plethora of piggyback circus ramps that used to dot the countryside have evaporated in favor of 50 or so megaterminals in big cities. Some states have no intermodal terminals at all.
RWM
