B&MRRHS Home

B&M Freight Cars Home

Boston & Maine Freight Cars - ICC Valuation data

Index

• Files you can download
• ICC Valuation Data Discussion
• Spreadsheet Notes
• History of this web page

Files you can download

The Spreadsheet of transcribed data
is available here as Excel file
or here as PDF file

ICC Valuation Data Discussion

While I have been to the NARA in Suitland to look at ICC Valuation data, my copies of the ICC valuation data for B&M freight cars came from copies made/distributed by William Edson, probably in the late 1980s. Note his copies included more data than I am presenting (Engines, passenger & MOW cars, etc.) for most New England railroads (In think the NYNH&H is the only major road he didn't include in what he sent me)

Again, I am only including railroads that eventually became part of the B&M "proper" (as opposed to the StJ&LC, M&WR, etc.)

Note in the "B&M" section, cars are listed being "owned" by many leased railroads. While I assume this is a "bookkeeping" assignment (all cars had B&M reporting marks) I would be interested to see the actual (legal) lease agreements, as I *SPECULATE* the lease agreements included clauses to the effect that "a certain number of cars" (or "a certain percent of the B&M cars") will be assigned to the leased railroad (so if the lease is ever terminated, the railroad is not left with *no* cars)
By this time the Eastern RR had ceased to exist as a separate corporation (I'm not sure if it was leased, then bought, or just bought outright) but in any case there are no cars "owned" by the Eastern RR

There are some interesting quirks in the data.
For instance, the typist apparently didn't know "St." could be used to abbreviate "Steel", so there are builders "Standard Street" and "Western Street".
Also, in the Fitchburg RR section, 290xx series "stock cars" are marked as "being used as ore cars" (?!)

Anything in "square brackets" (i.e. "[ ]") are my comments

Car numbers - ranges vs. individual listings.
Originally, as most cars were listed individually by number, I converted a number range ("1 to 5") to individual numbers
Once I got to steel cars, where there were 100 cars in the range, I stopped doing that (more or less).
But for a "2 car" ranges ("21 - 22") they still listed cars individually. Sometimes I converted that to a range, sometimes I left them listed individually.
Call me "MISTER consistently inconsistent" :-)

The log trucks (C&M "026xx" series cars) have a serious mis-match between the number of cars listed (38) and the "total count" (66). Some may be due to their using a "range", but not using the word "to", but that does not fully fix the issue.

As with any document and transcription of this type, I am sure there are errors. While I did proof-read it to catch most of them, I'm sure a few remain. If you notice anything strange, let me know and I'll double-check the data. (it could be an error in the typed ICC data, or it could be my error in transcription)

Data marked "[N/A]" was not specified in the ICC records.

Spreadsheet Notes

Spreadsheet column info

Val Sheet #	The "Sheet number" as listing in the header of the page. I prefix this number by an abbreviation for the "owning" RR (as the same numbers were used over and over) Some pages did not have a number listed, so I "assigned" one (these have the "[ ]" notation)
Index	Index of car number [or car number range] on page. As (typically) multiple cars were listed per line, there are multiple "Index" numbers per line of typed text
Car Type	As indicated in the ICC data. Does not always agree with ORER description.
RR	"Owning" railroad, as listed in the page header
Car #	Car number (or range of car numbers)
Built Date	Sometimes a range
Builder	Sometimes more than 1, or "Various". Sometimes not listed ("[N/A]"). Especially confusing dates/builders may be listed in "Notes" column
Capy	in 1000s of pounds (i.e. "60" = "60,000 lbs.")
Underframe	as listed
Body	as listed. Sometimes not listed ("[N/A]")
Notes	Any other notes

The ICC pages also include the following data that I did NOT transcribe:

• Condition (percent)
• Percent of cost new
• Unit (typically "each")
• Number of units (total for each "group" of cars)
• Cost of reproduction
  • Per Unit
  • New, total
  • Less depreciation

Revision History