Larry-

I think I have a pretty good grasp on the whys- my understanding is that ICC ordered the valuations as principle tool in helping to judge the reasonableness of various rates.

My main interest is in how the ICC and the railroads determined valuations for equipment where the individual company did not have any original cost records to help make such determinations. The specific example I'm currently working on is the McCloud River Railroad...pretty much all of its records were lost in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 18 April 1906, which made all costs incurred prior to that date unobtainable. This did not stop the 1917 valuation from assigning some pretty detailed costs to the equipment purchased before the fire that survived to 1917, including at least one incident where the valuation assigned purchase costs and freight charges from the Baldwin plant to a locomotive the railroad purchased used from another California shortline around 1897. My question really is the methodologies the ICC used to determine costs in cases such as this one.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV