The Railway Express Agency, or REA, was an outgrowth of a number of prior express companies, dating back to the 19th century’s days of stagecoaches and intercity steamers on the east coast, with express companies undertaking to deliver packages and parcels (for a fee) to certain destinations. These gradually grew into a number of much larger companies, among them Wells Fargo and American Express, surviving today in related business areas.
An adequate history of REA is provided by Vic Roseman’s book, Railway Express (Rocky Mountain Publishing, Denver, 1992). Considerably more coverage of rolling stock, though not of corporate history, is available in Pat Wider’s excellent contribution to Railway Prototype Cyclopedia (Volume 7, 2002), which is entitled “BR and BS Express Refrigerator Cars.” I will summarize the background, as I have done previously (see, for example, my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/01/express-refrigerator-cars.html ).
During World War I, when the U.S. government took over railroad operation under the U.S. Railroad Administration or USRA, a simplification was accomplished by compelling the merger of railroad-owed express companies and the four major private companies at the time, Adams Express, Wells Fargo, American Express, and Southern Express, into a single company, American Railway Express (ARE). After the end of the USRA, it was expected that the ARE would be disbanded and the business returned to the prior companies; but this proved impractical, and the ICC approved continued operation of ARE.
But both the ICC and Congress wanted this business to be operated by the railroads, not a private company, and accordingly in 1929 a new corporation was formed, owned by 86 of the largest railroads, and named Railway Express Agency. Offices, employees and rolling stock of ARE were all merged into REA. The right to operate all express services and related services was held by REA, and all revenues were distributed to the owning railroads.
In addition to ARE-owned rolling stock, REA also obtained the use of 665 express reefers that had been owned and operated by General American Transportation Company as a lease fleet. These were wood-sheathed cars originally built by GATC. An example is below, REX 1227, photographed at Oakland, California on February 16, 1952 by Wilber C. Whittaker.
After World War II, REA realized it owned a great many cars of wood construction that were over 25 years old. In 1947–48, they went to American Car & Foundry for 500 new, all-steel cars, nicknamed the “100-mph cars.” Their original rather flashy aluminum, green and red-banded sides soon proved too prone to dirt accumulation, and were repainted dark green, like the car in this view (New Haven, Connecticut, February 1954, Bob’s Photo collection). The rippling of the welded sides is evident.
With regard to express refrigerator cars, nearly all railroads with significant ownership of such cars voluntarily provided them to an REA pool. Distribution and movement of the cars was under REA direction. That meant that if you were a shipper and wanted an express reefer, you called REA, not your local railroad; but nearly all railroad station agents were also REA agents, so in reality you called the person you always called for an empty car, and he or she put on a different hat to take your order.
When REA cars were loaded, the local agent acted as the car clerk to apply any placards that were needed. I will show two examples, loaned to me by Michael Litant from his collection. Both are 5.5 x 8.5 inches in size. The first, below, was applied to REX 7465 in Santa Maria, California (very near the location I model on my layout) on June 17, 1967. The stamp at lower left is for salt additions, and is marked as 1 percent salt for this cargo, routed on the Santa Maria Valley to the SP at Guadalupe, and then by “best route” to Boston. Unfortunately the cargo is not shown on this placard design.
Both these placards were placed on cars in the 1957-built car group REX 7400–7899, 54-foot riveted cars with 6-foot sliding doors and BX trucks. Below is a photo taken at Dallas, Texas by Dick Kuelbs in August 1961, showing REX 7833.
To return to the topic of the pool, shown below is a listing of the REA express reefer pool roster in 1953. It is Table 5-4 from the PFE book. Note that of the 2500 cars in the pool, over 1600 of them had REX reporting marks. This is well over half of the pool. Express cars of other ownership sometimes came into REA use also.
It is known that the pool arrangements were that REA would only be responsible for minor repairs. Anything consequential was the responsibility of the car owner. Thus although the REA pool operated nationwide, and indeed an express reefer of any ownership might travel anywhere, the majority of each owner’s cars were kept in more or less the owner’s geographical area to facilitate maintenance.
The modeling consequence of this is that whatever area you model, local railroad express cars would predominate, along with REX cars, which could go anywhere (and the table above shows how they numerically dominated the pool). On my layout, express cars are operated in just this way. I will return to the modeling and operating uses of these cars in a future post.
Tony Thompson
No comments:
Post a Comment