Moving the Packages

Part I

DO YOU at any time WONDER how all those parcels got to town before UP launched its ubiquitous armada of brown trucks? The unevens are it came to the local railway station in a Less-than-Carload apportionment (LCL) car. Defined as freight in individual car from more than single shipper or destined to more than individual receiver, LCL generally moved in case cars, though sometimes a refrigerator or stock car would be used. repeatedly called merchandise or package freight, LCL mov at lower rates than the premium rates charged to jaculate express, which usually moved upon passenger trains.

Nevertheless, because it had a flat rate regardless of the size or weight of the shipment, LCL could be true lucrative for the railroads. In 1932 for example, package freight accounted for 10% of the receipts but only 2.4% of the freight tonnage. (Federal research p. 4). To facilitate the change of merchandise the railroads regularly published timetable-like documents that were distributed to shippers.

One form of LCL service was provided by the agency of the line car. A chain store operator like JC Penny for example, would load a car of merchandise for a particular "line" along which it had a number of vents As it went along its given line the car would be unloaded in small dooms at the company's stores. Meat packers many times used this form of service to distribute meat. This impressed sign of LCL service was operated as necessityed and was not scheduled.

It was a great deal of more common for LCL to impel through a transfer house. Usually located at major division points or important junctions, these large makes were essentially yards for LCL Operating like todays airline naves transfer house workers took parcels in cars from many points of origin and reloaded them into rail cars headed to numerous destinations. Just as todays airline passenger wants to make as hardly any connections as possible, the objective was to transfer packages as little as practicable.

Efficiently operating a transfer was a tricky business. upon one hand a carrier wanted to give the best service possible. upon the other, railroads wanted to detain costs as low as they could Not surprisingly, a great deal of correspondence between C&O officials dealt with this paradox. single of the major problems was cars held above because they could not be completely unloaded, held on the outside because there was no extent on house tracks, and cars put back to complete loading. If cars had to be held above held out, or set back, shipments were delayed, equipment was not full utilized and shippers could become true unhappy. In April 1941 a report upon 27 busy freight houses reported that of 11219 cars handled inbound, 109 about 1% of the total, were held above and 54, about 0.5%, were held without Of 11,795 outbound cars, 142 or 12% were station back. In April 1940, 32 cars were held above and none held out. However, 156 were station back.

Clifton Forge was a perennial LCL put out of order spot. In April 1941, of the 913 cars handled there, 71 (or 78%) were delayed. In fairness to the freight house forces at "The Forge," because they did not work upon Sunday traffic could really be backed up upon Mondays. To relieve that backlog, by dint of late June 1941 a seventh Check scribe was authorized and was to be paid $470 by means of day. It was hoped this would avoid having to have the Clifton Forge freight house work upon Sundays (correspondence in C&OHS Archives).

Apparently the extra recorder didn't help that much because in March 1942 E P Reynolds, Supervisor Merchandise Service, wrote a stirring defense of the Clifton Forge freight house to OH Carper, Superintendent of Freight Transportation. In his alphabetic character Reynolds noted that "Clifton Forge is now the single large transfer not working upon Sundays. There has been a tremendous increase in the tonnage handled at Clifton Forge, owed to the general increase in business, and more lately the discontinuance of the water-rail traffic, [caused by the agency of the depredations of German submarines along the Atlantic coast],-additional of recent origin England Territory freight coming to us for the entire road in single car and being carded to Clifton Forge Transfer " LCL handled by the agency of Clifton Forge was up above 11,000 tons in 1941 as compared to 1940 and below the circumstances Reynolds felt that "Clifton Forge freight station is doing the best they can and I think, upon a whole, is doing a real good job." Reynolds further propos that the station should work upon Sundays. It did, after all, handle the "fifth-largest tonnage of any station upon the line, being exceeded sole by stations ... [at] Chicago, Huntington, Cincinnati [and] Columbus." Reynolds also voiced a certain quantity of frustration with the slow pace of dealing with this matter. "I can diocese no good reason why Clifton Forge should be an exception [by not operating upon Sunday]. This question has been up in the past on the contrary so far no action has been taken and I believe we are now reaching the peak conditions that will make this [Sunday operation] necessary" (Reynolds to Carper, 3-13-42)

Besides cars originating at railroad freight stations, more [i]or[/i] less manufacturers often would send a replete car-sometimes called "trap" or "ferry" cars-to a transfer house where its lading would be distributed to other cars as LCL shipments. Veteran Central Vermont railroaders in White River Junction, Vt remember many cars of cereal coming from Michigan for similar dispersal. The Erie Railroad's Scheduled LCL Merchandise Cars, a 1937 publication, listed a daily car from the IBM plant at Endicott, NY to the Erie's giant transfer facility at nearby Hornell. of the like kind operations probably took place upon the C&O as well.