Early NYC container system?

I came across a photograph from the New York Library of a group of New York Central gondolas with what appears to be 4’-6”x 6’-6”x 11’-0” containers. Were these units part of an early NYC shipping container system or were they reserved to a particular industry? On the back of one of the gondola I was able to discern the number S-337711. The containers may have a similar number and appear to have an ‘A’ logo on the sides. I include snippets from the original photo that dates from the late 1920’s.

I think the CMRR -- Catskill Mountain Railroad -- has one of these containers. Try asking over in their forum (elsewhere on this site).

These type containers predated my NYC employment; I was there for the Mark I's. Did see & use many of the containers pictured above. They had been relegated to storrage duties at Rip Tracks & the Car Dept used them to store rerailing equipment; jacks, cable, and oak blocks and wedges. Had locking mechanisim that was a vertical pipe with locks at top and bottom and handle about 1/3 from bottom; very much like tractor trailer door locking hardware. Containers were usually painted silver (signal dept aluminum) although some at the West End in DeWitt made it long enough to be treated with PC green.

Thanks Russ and urrengr2003. It would be interesting to know urrengr2003 if this container system was subsequently relegated to the task you described, because the system had become obsolete due to advances in intermodal shipping or was the original purpose of the containers to serve MOW. I assume other railroads had similar systems. Lo and behold I found a HO version of a container setup used by the Erie on EBay. I’m not sure of the accuracy of this rendition.

I don't know about the history of such containers on the NYC, but the PRR had a similar arrangement for handling Less-Than-Carload (LCL) shipments which was shot down by the ICC sometime in the 1930s. During that period (and after) the ICC's attitude was "find out what the railroads are planning to do and stop them." I've forgotten the details now, but as I recall, the ICC perceived that a container operation would hurt the trucking industry, which was seen at the time as struggling truckers at the mercy of the big, bad railroads, and found some legalistic justification for prohibiting it. The scene was replayed in the 1950s, when it took years of litigation to persuade the ICC that railroads should be allowed to handle highway trailers on flat cars.

Origional purpose of the containers was to provide what the railroads at the time were begining to recgonize as LCL (LESS than CAR LOAD) freight service. Containers having the additional advantage of being loaded/unloaded at customer facilties away from rail yards. This system was superceeded in the middle 30's with the advent of Freight Forwarders (Acme, Universal, Carload, etc) that combined LCL freight and brokered it to the railroads as car load lots. With the advent of the trucking industry the railroads atempted to capture this business in the early 60's with specialized containers like NYCS Super Vans. This too, account of specialized equimpent, evolved into piggyback which got its big boost in the late 60's when several railroads formed the Trailer Train Corp to provide standard 86 ft flat cars capable of handling two highway trailers complete with their running gear. Trailers were then loaded 'circus style' using bridge plates between cars to load strings of cars at one spotting.

The picture of the Erie container cars reminds me that in 1959 I constructed a Walthers HO NYC Container Ca kit with four containers. Kit was basswood with wire and castings to represent the hardware on the containers. The car was painted box car red consistent with the directions in the kit.

Actually, railroads handled LCL traffic from the beginning of railroads; the containers of the 1930s were an effort to reduce handling costs by consolidating individual shipments with the same destination into a small container which could be handled as one piece. I don't recall what grounds the truckers cited for objecting to the operation, but whatever it was the ICC went along with it and the railroads had to revert to handing individual barrels, boxes, and crates on hand trucks.

What’s interesting is the containerization of railroad shipping help save the rail freight business from the trucking onslaught. With piggy backing of truck trailers and the eventual use of large ship containers for transporting goods, rail freight was back in action. Today you don’t see many box cars in the yards. When did the NYC start transporting the full truck loads and more modern sea going container system?

The New York Central began intermodal container service circa 1923. This was about as soon as it was possible to do so. Basically, that was as soon as a truck that could take a 10,000 pound load was readily available. Other railroads, specifically the Pennsylvania, followed and container service was growing rapidly. It did reduce the railroads' cost of moving the freight by an astonishing amount - around 75%. That's not a "typo". What had cost $1.00 to move in a boxcar system cost $0.25 to move in the new container system. (Those are Interstate Commerce Commission numbers.) The railroads manage to hang on to about 1/3 of the savings. The other 2/3 went through to their customers due to competition.

Who would oppose such a thing? The incredibly stupid US Government, that's who. In 1931 a jerk named Harry C. Ames, an Attorney-Examiner for the ICC, recommended that the railroads be forced to increase their rates on container business. The entire commission went along. (The Attorney-Examiners did the real work at the ICC with the commissioners usually following their recommendations, no matter how stupid they were.) The case was 173 ICC 377. Harry C. should be dug up and shot.

His "recommendation" blocked the railroads from modernizing and locked them into the inefficient loose car system for decdades. This did tremendouse damage to the US economy by driving up logistics costs and began the downfall of the NYC and Pennsy. They were locked into the old loose car sytem by governement regulation.

I'm looking around for a library that has the bound volumes, but in the meantime I'm curious about the justification used by Ames for his recommendation. Based on the attitude of the ICC around that time it could have been "lower than necessary to meet competition" or that the railroad failed to prove in advance that the system would improve profitability. Some time ago I had occasion to read through some ICC decisions from the 20's and 30's and was struck by how many times they said that it was not the Commission's role to substitute its business judgment for that of the railroad. Invariably the next paragraph began "However ...", and they proceeded to do exactly that.