Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1881 — FINDING LOST OARS. [ARTICLE]

FINDING LOST OARS.

How the Many Lettered Freight Cars are Traced. Philadelphia Press. Travelers up and down any line of railway having a terminus in this city are in the habit of seeing daily hundreds of fugitive freight cars extending in broken lines along the side tracks and reaching many miles out of the city. They belong to a hundred different railroad companies, each car bearing the initials of the proprietary road, and in the general office of that company, whether it be in New York,Pittsburgh, or San Francisco, there are records which show just where that car is standing, and -why it is there. For instance, if the car is detained an unwarranted length of time at Germantown Junction, the Pennsylvania Railroad receives a “searcher,’* either by telegraph or train service, asking why the car is not sent home... In this way a great railroad stretching half way across the continent, and with its rolling stock scattered over every State in

the Union, keeps an account of its stock, numbering in the case of the Pennsylvania Railroad more than 30,000 freight cars of all kinds. Occasionally one of the number is lost altogether, and then the complicated railway detective service is set at work. The last clews to its whereabouts are traced out, and in time the lost car is found somewhere between Texas and Montreal. Yesterday afternoon Superintendent Reilly, of the Transportation Department, was notified of the recovery, at Worcester, Mass., of a Pennsylvania freight car that has been missing since November 7.1880, and had in the meantime traveled thousands of miles over New England railroads. Speaking of the matter, Chief Clerk McCully said: “The New England railroads seem to entertain the idea that our cars are sent np there for their convenience. As soon as the car is unloaded it should be started back to the road from which it came, but in New England they turn it over as the common property of the road, and it is run back and forth carrying local freight. It is not an uncommon thing when a car is loaded here and sent to an Eastern point that it is not again heard from three or for mouths. In the meantime there are more than a hu adred clerks in this office employed on the car accounts, and week after week searchers are sent out from here for the missing car.” Yesterday letters of inquiry were dispatched to all parts of the country aggregating 2,992 cars that had gone astray between the Ist and the loth of this month. Every freight conductor on the road sends in a daily report of the cars that have been in his charge, and a fa'.r idea of the magnitude of these accounts may be had from the fact that the entire movement over the Pennsylvania Railroad exceeds 40,000 per day. The accounts are entered in different colored inks to distinguish loaded from empty cars. There are received at the Fourth street office 2,500 conductors’ reports every day, and 120 clerks are employed in the freight department alone. When a Railroad train is sent out over another line the conductor reports the number ol each car and its destination. The absent cars are in this way traced from road to road, as, for instance, by the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway to Chicago,thence by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific to Council Bluffs,and by the Union and Central Pacific roads to San Francisco. In the course of two months the car returns by the same route, and, if any accident on the way destroys the car.it is charged against the road on which the accident happened. Lost freight cars, which were formerly hunted up by traveling agents, are now traced by “searchers,” official documents, which contain the number and description of the lost car, and the date at which it was last seen on the Pennsylvania road. These documents are forwarded in the wake of the car, receiving many official signatures on the way, and finally overtake an agent who has the car in charge.