Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1894 — THE CAR SEARCHER. [ARTICLE]

THE CAR SEARCHER.

Borrowed Cara, Like Umbrellas, Often Go Astray. If you want to get an idea of the immensity of American railroading, talk to a car searcher. The United States cover a pretty large area, as some one has observed, but the railroad men, and particularly the car searchers, know their way about it as a policeman knows his beat. A car searcher, be it said for the benefit of the uninformed, is an official sent out by one of the companies to look for cars which have been borrowed by other lines and treated like borrowed umbrellas. Of course these officials are experienced men, a great trust is reposed in them and they have a great weight of responsibility to carry on their shoulders. One of these men whom I met a few evenings ago talked of one car “somewhere around by Eagle Pass,” or a chance of finding another at Portland, Oregon, as if these places were only a few squares the other side of Broadway. He had been sent out by one of the big lines that cover the territory between New York and Seattle to find certain freight cars that had been running up long bills for “demurrage”* against their borrowers. “Demurrage” is a charge made by the owners of a car, at so much per day, for the time the car is kept away from its own line. “They’ll take a car,” he said, “somewhere down South, and, instead of sending it back when they’re done with it, will use it for some other work. That goes on and on until, first thing you know, the car gets in a smashup.” ‘ ‘ Then you have no more chance of finding it,” I interrupted. This was where I displayed my ignorance. “Haven’t I, though? I go to where the car was sent and make them show me the books. Let me tell you about one car belonging to our line that got away down South, and nobody could trace it. The agent at that depot was a little bit of a man, all beard. When I showed him the entry on his books and asked him where that car was he said he didn’t know anything about it. ‘One night,’ he says, ‘I left it here on the siding, and when I came next morning it was gone. Some of those freight conductors must have come in here in the night, and looking around for a car, they just took thatone.’ ‘You’re a liar,’ I said. ‘l’ve been railroading all my life, and I know that conductors don’t go rawhiding about a yard at night time looking to get cars. They ain’t so anxious to find extra work as all that. Now,’ I said, ‘you just tell me where that car got to, or, I will report that you lost it.’ Well, he commenced whimpering about his family, and how he’d lose his job if I got him into trouble about that car. At last he owned up that one day they were short of cars in the yard; they took and loaded, up our car with agricultural machinery for Atlanta, Ga.; the train was wrecked and the car was all burned up. ‘lf you had told us that at the time,’ I said, ‘you would have had to pay S3OO or S4OO. Now you’ll have to pay about $7,000 for demurrage, and serve you right. As for your family, I’ve got a family, too. If Igo back and tell the company I can’t find that car, what is my family to do?’ And I was right. They had to pay about $7,000.” — [Louisville Courier-Journal.