Basic operations question

[jwb]

I don't think you can rule anything out. I heard a presentation by a manager at the Ohio Central who said they were making money by moving cars between industries within sight of each other. It wouldn't be "the usual", and the guy was certainly implying that this was unusual, but it happens, and I would guess especially in the steel industry. You've mentioned that you don't use bottle cars, but one typical steel move would be bottle cars from the blast furnace to a rolling (or whatever) mill -- I think the bottle cars can retain their heat for 24 hours, and the move is usually direct, sometimes across cities like Youngstown or Chicago. Same would apply to slag cars moving from a furnace to a dump. Or for that matter scrap cars from a scrap yard to a furnace, though from what I've seen, scrap cars come from a distance and are left at a yard near the mill, where they're then switched to the unloading area.

So I wouldn't rule anything out, especially where a common carrier like the EJ&E or Union RR does switching for a mill.