Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 155, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1910 — TRACING FREIGHT CARS. [ARTICLE]

TRACING FREIGHT CARS.

How Time-Freight Rolling Stock Ha* Been Tamed and Subdued. A freight cap Is essentially common property. It has to go from one line to another in the course of its business. It has to carry loads from Jacksonville, Fla., to Spokane, Wash.; from Phoenix, ArL, t<tAugusta, Me. If all the freight • cars in the United States were owned by one big company and if that company charged the railroads for the exact amount of use which they made of each car the alt-Y nation would theoretically be more reasonable than It is to-day.-But In any case the wanderings of freight cars will always entail an enormous amount of labor with pen and pencil and telegraph key and typewriter and long-distance telephone. The modern hunter of freight cars Is not satisfied with knowing where all the cars on his own line are at the end of each day’s run. the Technical World says. Modern business life has

become so rapid that In the Case of certain kinds of “freight It is necessary to know Just where each car is every few hours. This kind of freight Is called time freight. Ordinary freight Is dead freight. Time freight consists only of certain materials. These materials run alphabetically all the way from asbestos, through cranberries, egg-case fillers, ink, peanuts and varnish, down to zinc. All cars in time freight trains are reported by telegraph from all clvlslon points. You can stand in front of a big board on the wall-cdt is like the board on a stock broker’s, office except that it has little holes in it —and watch the progress of the cars in a time freight train from point to point. As the telegrams come In the pegs are moved from hole to hole. If you started a carload of varnish from Chicago to Omaha last night you can come In to-day and see just where that car Is. You can watch It all the way to Omaha on the board. It Is a cruel humilation for the freight car. It used to be a wild, stray animal, but now It Is tamed and domesticated. Just as we now have municipal lodging houses for tramps, so we have telegraph record boards for freight cars. Pretty soon nobody will able to escape from the sjluthorittes. It' Is only occasionally, under modern method’s, a freight car tracer has to go out and bring it home by force.