A reporter from the Washington Post called me the other day. He wanted to know how the model railroad business was doing. Before I’d answer his questions, I wanted to know what he thought of the real railroad business. It seemed to him the railroads were a bywater of transportation, a mode whose day had come and gone. So my first job was to straighten him out!

I started with some research, of course. I found a very interesting online article by the U.S. Government at: www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_freightrr.html#one. He didn’t know, and perhaps you didn’t either, that most of the ton-miles in American freight are carried by rails (42%), trucks (28%), pipeline (17%), and water (13%). So, right now, today, as we speak, railroads are far and away the ton-mile kings.

Before you dance around your living room, consider the accompanying stats: Revenue for these four forms of transport is astonishingly different. Eighty percent of freight revenue goes to trucks. Railroads, which haul 42 percent of the ton miles only draws 10 percent of the revenue.

Stop and consider what this means. Trucks haul 28 percent and take away 80 percent of the money. Trains haul 42 percent and come away with only 10 percent of the loot. Why is this and what does it mean? First, railroad shipping rates are not only cheaper, on a per-ton basis they are seriously cheaper. Second, your UPS truck filled with lightweight parcels represents high-dollar freight; a UP coal train is just the opposite. Third, even truck companies turn to trains to save money!

If you are modeling intermodal service, you have entered into the world of mixed mode freight, sometimes on a ship, sometimes on a train, and sometimes on a truck. Railroads are at their very best when shipping commodities. When parcels are in the pickup or delivery vehicle, they are motor freight. When the parcels are packed into containers for cross-country shipment, the containers are a commodity.

My reporter friend from the Nation’s Capitol was a little surprised to hear this. Then I hit him with the bomb. Railroads today, with about half the track, haul nearly three times the ton-miles as railroads did in World War II. According to an October 2004 report from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), in 1940, railroads handled 375 billion ton miles, and by 1950, that was up to 592 billion. In the year 2003, railroads carried 1.61 trillion ton-miles. This doesn’t sound like an industry that’s fading away.

David Newall, of Aristo-Craft Trains, has said on several occasions that people model what they see. They see huge, long double-stack trains, pig trains (piggyback trailer on flat car), general merchandize trains, and most of all, coal trains. If older or more interested modelers read books about the past and see old steamers, then that means they want to model them. People also see trains snaking through the infrastructure of their lives. Small wonder they want to model that. So, a lot of new model railroaders want to model just what they see, modern railroading. Some of us old timers vision it differently. That’s what makes this an interesting hobby.

In 1916, American railroads spread out of 254,000 miles and carried less than 400 million ton miles. By 1945, the year WWII ended, we had 226,696 miles of track. Today, we’re down to 141,509, only 62 percent of what we had in 1945. Obviously, we’ve disposed of a lot of relatively unnecessary trackage, but it’s equally clear that we could stand to have some of it back. If you have a small layout and too many cars to run on it, now you know how the railroads feel.

While the shipping varies from one road to the next (not to mention one era to another), as a general rule about 43 percent of tons originated is coal. The second largest commodity shipped is chemicals and such (tank cars for the most part) at 9.2 percent. After that comes farm products at 7.7, and mostly in covered hopper cars, non-metallic minerals (rock products in hoppers) at 7.6 percent. Next is Miscellaneous Mixed (also known as Intermodal) with 6.2 percent.

As you look at the AAR report on this, you discover some interesting things. First, although coal accounts for 42.9 percent of the tons, it only accounts for 20.2 percent of the revenue. Clearly, this is a volume builder. On the other hand, Mixed Intermodal with 6.2 percent of the tons rakes in 14.8 percent of the money. Wood products and pulp/paper products gather twice the income as their tonnage by percent. Autoracks drag in over four times their tonnage in money, explaining why you see so many autoracks everywhere.

So if your railroad is going to make money, you’ll need a coal train or two to build the ton-mile volume. Chemicals and other tank car loads tend to make a pretty good profit. Lumber, wood products, pulp, and paper should be modeled, if you want to enrich your business. You should have some autoracks and definitely get into double stacks and piggyback trailers on flat cars.

Today, boxcars carry dry foods, a good market and they often get less than Car Lots (LCL), dry goods, or baled waste paper on the backhaul. I hate to say it, but minerals, whether metallic or not, tend to be a break-even business at best.

A lot of what you handle is based upon whether you are modeling a short line or a Class One. In between are the regionals, such as Wisconsin Central once was or Central Oregon & Pacific still is. Short lines are further divided into terminal services and line-haul. If you like switching and don’t want to model any particular road, you could be a terminal service utility, moving cars around for a handful of industries in a small area. It can be yard-like, but it also has factories and other businesses. In my own area, we have White City Transportation Utility, which serves several mills and other on-line companies, feeding these cars into CORP. CORP then puts these cars into trains going north or south for Union Pacific or BNSF.

You could also model a line-haul shortline. There are several hundred of these in North America, ranging from only a few miles in length up to the limit of regionals. I think a line-haul shortline offers a lot for a small model railroad layout, with some switching and also some runs through the countryside. But railroads make money any way they can, and it’s your railroad.