How Was Cumulative Locomotive Mileage Calculated ? (Some Answers)

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One of the advantages of working all-over-the-world for the decades required to grow a long gray beard, is that one comes to know all the hoods and hoodlums, the fakirs, the cognoscenti and the savants, a few genuinely good people, and those very few folks who just seem to have the answers to everything you want to know right under their thumbs.

And so the question about calculating locomotive miles was returned, answered in large part, by my old comrade from Philadelphia, the erudite and Honorable Mr. Tom Poserina, or Tomaz Pozherzhinski as we address him, or sometimes just as Captain Poz. He came up through the ranks as a Hog Head on the Reading RR, Road Foreman of Engines, then through the ranks of management until finally he received the golden handshake and the golden watch, and turned in his keys. He also sat on the Operating Rules Committee of his railroad for uncountable decades, and on the Northeast Operating Rules Advisory Committee, as well. So we talk the same kind of nuts-and-bolts, how-to-get-it-done minutae. Captain Poz is now President of the Reading RR Veterans Association, spends copious hours researching and writing on abstruse historical (like 1830s) railroad topics, and when he tires of such exploits, he sits on his front porch and graces the younger folks with advice on farming, horse racing, the lotter
 y, and women. One of his distant relatives, centuries back, was a Cardinal and was Bursar to the Vatican, so Captain Poz signs his e-mails with the following title: "Cardinal Tomasso Silvio 'Casimerski' Passerini, Hereditary Bursar to the Vatican, Official Vatican Wedding Soup Taster, Grand Admiral of the Polish-Lithuanian Baltic Fleet, Official Gardener of the Borowik Szlachetny Royal Porcini Mushroom Patch, and also Superintendent of Sand Pipes and Wheel Slippage at Port Richmond Engine House, Philadelphia."

In answer to our question, Captain Poz sends a link to a 1906 ICC document which implements the requirement that railroads bean-count all locomotive miles greater than one-half mile. The little 16-page document is an enlightening read, a tour-de-force of high-handed Government regulatory authority over people and businesses which actually produce something of value. The first ten pages simply parade the names and authority of the Washington dignitary bureaucrats, telling the railroads what they must do.  Those specifications begin on the 10th page of the document. Oh yeah... and the railroads had to compile and keep these statistical records for mileages accrued by freight and passenger cars, too !

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=acct_fed

Two points, in fine: (1) Yard engines were to be credited with six (6) miles for every hour worked. (2) The ICC does not have a category called "Distributing Engine."

( A retired ICC lawyer years ago told me that the ICC once sported a staff of 700 people making' this stuff up and enforcing it upon the railroads! Good Grief. )

To bring things up to date, to the modern world in which most (well, some) readers of this List now live, Captain Poz adds the following:

"And a family whippersnapper who is still in engine service tells me that todays modern locomotives compute actual 'engine hours' not just on the prime mover but also separately on multiple locomotive components internally including mileage which is easily downloaded and reset when a component is changed out.  I come from ancient times when one could remove the lead pencil tip from the Barco paper speed recorder graph slowly scrolling on a moving paper tape. Of course that required a special key easily obtainable if one had 'connections' at the engine house."

Still huntin' for my Distributin' Engine ...

-- abram burnett
Don't Forget to Watch the Miss Turnip Pageant on September 1 !