Morning journal and courier., 1881-09-23
Before the driving blast
Finding Lost Cars.
How the Many Lettered Freight Cars
 Traced.

How the Many Lettered Freight Cars Traced.
 From the Philadelphia Press
 Travellers up and down any line of railway having terminus in this city are in the hab- it 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 hundred different railway companies, each car bearing the ini- tials of the proprietary road and in the gen. eral office of that company, whether it be in New York, Pittsburg or San Francisco, there are records which show just where that car is standing, and why it is there. For instance, if the is detained an unwarranted length of time at German town junction the Pennsylvania railroad re- ceives 'ssearcher' either by telegraph or train service, asking why the car is not sent
 home. In this way a great railroad stretch ing half way across the continent, and with it's 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 10000 freight cars of all kinds Occasionally one of the number is lost althogether, and then the complicated railway detective service is set at work. The clues to it's whereabouts are traced out and in time the lost car is found somewhere between Texas and Montreal. Yesterday afternoon superintendent Reilly, of the trans
 
 recovery, at Worcester, Mass, of Pennsyl- vania railroad freight car that has been miss- ing since November z, 1S80 and had in the meantime travelled 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 sent up there for their con- venience. As soon as car is unloaded it should be started back to the road from which it came, but in New England they turn 1t 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 for three or four months. In the meantime there are more than 100 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 1st and the 10th of this month. Every freight conductor on the road sends in a daily report of the cars that have been in his charge, and @ fair idea of the magnitude of these accounts may be had from the fact that the entire move ment over the Pennsylvania railroad exceeds 40, ,OOO per day. The accounts are entered in different colored inks to distinguish loaded from empty cars. There are received at the Fourth street office 2,5OO conductors reports every day. and 12O clerks are employed in the freight department alone. When Penn sylvania railroad train is sent out over an- other line the conductor reports the number of each car and it's destination. The absent cars are in this way traced from road to road, as, for instance, by the Pittsburg, Ft Wayne and Chicago railway to Chicago, thence by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific to Council Bluffs, and by the Union and Gen. tral Pacific roads to San Francisco. In the
 1ry4 41,a 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 travelling agents are now traced by ''searchers, ;" official documents which con- tain 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, receiv- ing many official signatures on the way, and finally overtake an agent who has the car in charge.