Post, Freight and Carriers

What is the difference between a through freight train and a local freight train?

What is the difference between a local freight train and a through freight train? Please let me know thank you.

Public Comments

1. A through freight travels across a full subdivision with out stopping and a local freight stops to pick up or set out cars along the way. Most Unit trains (ex. coal, potash, or inter-model), are through freight. Were as a local freight will be a mix of anything.
2. A "through" train would stop only at it's end destination & nowhere else along the route. A "local" would stop at every small town station or loading facility along the route. For example, a through train from Detroit to Chicago would make no stops along the way. A local would stop a most every small town along the way. Also, "local" freights might travel within a single metropolitan area, such as the Chicago freight yards or between 2 manufacturing plants across town from each other.
3. Most freight schedules run long distances, but by way definition of this term, if the train travels through one or more terminals before the schedule arrives its final terminal, it is a "through" train, having "run through" those terminals. Keep in mind, the crews, and sometimes the power, too, will be changed at intermediate terminals, but the train keeps going to destination. Local freight (was once called way freight) is a part of the gathering-distributing network, where cars are left with various shippers. Some are loads of bulk material going into the plant for some sort of manufacturing process, and then pulling out these empties, or delivering empty cars for loading, then pulling these cars out when loaded. In operations such as with a pulp / paper mill, all of the above traffic types go in and out. That is why there is a need for good crews on the locals, with very complex, and at times confusing, switching moves to make to safely get the job done within the allotted time. These jobs usually go on duty at the same time each day (under normal circumstances) and usually for six days a week, most always with the same crew each day, unless one of the regular crewmembers takes off for sickness, vacation, etc. In most instances, they will go on duty and return to the same point when going off duty. However, there is a class of local freight called a "road switcher." Basically a local, but with a l2 to 16 hour layover at an away from home terminal that is usually around 130 to 150 miles away from the home terminal, then working back home on the next day. That newspaper you read this morning? It's been on a local....
4. Hoghead got here before me. But I will add that I work a Local Road Switch most of the time. We stop at regular accounts in most every town up to 110 miles east of our home terminal. (Another Local does the same thing going west.) Our cars consist of center-beam-flats for a lumber mill, propane tanks for a distribution station, box cars for a bean warehouse, gondolas for a scrap iron yard, cars for interchange for another railroad, and hoppers for a couple of grain elevators. All these cars are strategically placed in the train where they will be easiest to set out at the various locations. By the time we have gone the 110 miles there are no cars left in the train. We spend the night and then return the next day picking up the loaded cars as we go, if the are ready. If not, then we get 'em on the next trip. And has Hoghead has stated it is a lot of switching and moving cars around at each stop. You don't know the problems you'll encounter until you get there and look it over. It's a whole different dimension in geometric problem solving that takes a long time to learn. With the added degree of safety and efficiency thrown in.