The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1908-02-01
PICKED UP BOX CAR
REMARKABLE HAPPENING DE-
SCRIBED BY RAlEROADER.
Blown by Wind Across Line, Engineer
Was Forced to Smash Through
It - Solving a Number
Mystery.

What is the queerest thing that I
ever knew of happening to box carp
repeated the old railroad man who had
come up in the service from the loco
motive cab. 81 think that I myself
gave one of them the queerest hap
pening that can come to the box car
In its checkered career. ..
1T was on the Lehigh valley road
number of years ago. I had a 100
ton engine by the throttle and we
were making As miles an hour in the
rain and wind, with about seven
heavy coaches behind. The wind
was blowing gale into our teeth, fair
ly powdering the rain as it fell in
| sheets. We were nearing the top of
long grade when suddenly a lone
box car on country siding, driven
by the wind, trundled off the side
track and bumped over the rails and
ties until it was diagonally across the
main line, dead ahead of us.
II put on the air, but it was too
late to accomplish much I hit that
$4,000 pound car almost in the mid
die, tearing through the flooring with
tremendous shock, and lifting it into
the air. When I recovered from the
shock that car was astride the boiler
and damned up against the top of the
cab, riding there as snugly in balance
| as a cowboy in the saddle. And we
had to leave it there while at IL or
Is miles an hour we crawled into the
| next station, six or eight miles up the
| line"
Cargo Right, but Number Wrong.
This queer happening, which re-
suited IL the wrecking of the car and
sending it to the scrap heap, hardly
was as queer as the mistake which a
painter in the repair shops of a south
ern Illinois road caused to a coal car
several years ago.
Il was in the fuel supply depart
ment OF that road" said an official
of Chicago system, land my bust
ness was to keep a check record on
the coal which was delivered to us
at one of the supply stations. One
day that record showed a car num-
bered so and so had been shipped in
train loaded with so many tons of
coal, and that car wasn't in the train
at all. But in checking up the train
we discovered car of another num-
Der loaded with the amount of coal
ollled Tor the car that wasn't there.
Solving the Deep Mystery.
I'VE wrote letters about it, but the
company owning the cars couldn't ex-
plain. We worried about it for weeks.
One day one of the profane men in the
office announced that he was going to
run down the mystery. He had dis
covered that the missing car always
was of certain number and that the
unexpected car was of a certain other
number. The next time the train
with the missing and the unexpected
car pulled in this man went out to
inspect the car that hadn't been billed.
! The thing had looked for weeks like
joke
There was the unexpected car of
the unexpected number, honestly load
ed. 1t was a car newly overhauled
and in good condition, showing it's
white numbering clearly. These mum.
| bers, however, always had been read
! from the one side of the track. It oc-
Cured to the investigator that he
might look at the other side of the
car and he crawled under it.
There the mystery was explained.
The careless painter had put one num-
Der on one side of the car and another
number on the other side. The coal
company had taken the car number
from the one side of the car while we
had read it always from the other
side"