Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 304, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1912 — WATCH FREIGHT CARS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WATCH FREIGHT CARS

CONVEYANCES ARE KEPT UNDER * CLOSE BURVEILLANCE. Their Value to Rallroada Necessarily Depends Upon Their Being Kept In Use, and Perfect Track of Them Is Maintained. A freight car can move at the rate of sixty miles an hour, hut it is equal-

ly adapted to remaining stationary on a siding for weeks at a time; 15,000 miles per year is a common record for a freight car to travel, and instances occur where cars make as high a mileage, however, is probably not over 10,000 miieß a year, or about twenty-five miles a day. This is because the car

stands idle about five days for every one day it is in motion. The average life of a freight car, with ordinary wear and tear and occasional trips to the repair shop for the renewal of such parts as may have become defective, is in the neighborhood of eighteen or twenty years, but there is the possibility of the car being converted into a shapeless mass before it is a day old. At the present time there are own ed and controlled by the railroads of the United States 2,735,121 freight cars, which, according to the last report, carried 1,849,900,101 tons dilring the year ending June 30, 1911. A freight car is a great money-earn-er so long as it Is kept on the move, but from the time it stops rolling until its wheels revolve again it is not paying for the oil used upon it It is, therefore, largely upon the managing and controlling of these thousands of freight cars that the interests of a railroad are dependent, and the earnings of a road will be directly proportionate to the manner in which the cars are kept on the move. As these vast number of . cars are owned by more than 500 companies, and as each company’s cars are by no means restricted to their home road, it is something marvelous how they can be controlled and accounted for both individually and collectively. The methods, however, by which the freight cars’ accounts are kept are so systematic and accurate that it is not difficult for any railroad to have at alb* times a statement showing the location of its entire equipment. If it is desired to know the whereabouts of certain car belonging to a particular road on some specified date, by calling on the car accountant of that road the information will be. at once forthcoming. If need be the contents of the car osn be given, the number of the train and hour the car left the last station, the number of the engine drawing the train, the names of the train crew, and what cars accompanied it on its journey. Some roads are even able to tell the kind of weather the car passed through while in motion, as well as the hour of day it was loaded and unloaded. This array of figuring does not stop here, but at the end of every thirty days the mileage is computed and the number of miles each car travels is put down as a part of its history. So there is a complete record of the movements of the car in detail, from its daily location down to the cost of moving it over the respective divisions of the road in whatever service it should be required.