# Trackage rights



## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

I understand that trackage rights allows a foreign road train to use the owing RR tracks to get from A to B.
My question is how is this done? That is, every time the foreign power wants to use, its charged a fixed rate like a toll road and/or number of cars and locos? 
Can the owner restrict the foreign power to so many uses per day/week/month and/or only between X and Y time periods?
Do (almost?) all RR have "gentlemen agreements" reciprocal rights over foreign roads in case of accidents, floods, acts of God?
And of course the ye olde "It all depends" is always in play here.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Trackage rights are specific agreements (i.e. business contracts) between two railroads.

The number/limit of trains that the "guest" railroad can run, and rates paid to the "host" railroad are all agreed to in the contract between the two railways.


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## OilValleyRy (Oct 3, 2021)

While I’ve not seen a trackage rights agreement first hand, most contracts are kindred to great extent.
Notably there would be a duration, presumably between a 6 month agreement up to several years, at which point it would have to be renewed/renegotiated.
I would also confidently presume that the leaser would have stipulations/restrictions. They might have old bridges and prohibit 4 axle power, or siding length dictating a maximum (i.e. shorter than usual) train length, etc.
As for the number of trains per day…. The Leasee is unlikely to flood the system, only a port would have that much demand. The trains per day/week/month would be determined by traffic/demand of customers on the line, which is more or less fixed by the market & business’ capacity. To use a crude example; DOW Chemical may have 20 cars per day to ship out. The Leaser may grab them and sort them in the yard by destination, let’s say Westbound & Southbound trains. The Leaser handles Southbound trains, passing the train off to CSX while Westbound cars are picked up in the yard by the Leasee railroad twice per week, and shipped West to an interchange with CN.
Sometimes large industries will have their own tracks designated for a given railroad, i.e. Storage track 1 is grabbed by RR X and storage track 2 by RR Y, so the Westbound cars exampled above would bypass the Leaser’s yard & head straight to the Leasee yard.

I wanted mainline traffic as simple as possible, so the agreement is mainline transit only. All customer cars are “pulled” from respective industry spurs by the “home road” and foreign power takes them from either Oil City yard or more often from New Castle Junction. The two largest industries co-own the OVR though, so they ship at operating cost, which is preferable. A decent portion of the lines income stems from trackage rights leasing.

In my opinion, trackage rights agreements primarily exist to eliminate monopolies & give customers a choice. Which is fine. For smaller roads it’s also a revenue generating method.
I know there are a few 1:1 operators here. They may have better explanations, or even correct me if/where I’m wrong. Alas, bottomline is “see Rule #1.”


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