The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-02
GOSSIP OF
 RAILROADS A Freight Cars History
 Interesting. K SCRAMBLE ON FOR THE CARS Big Lines Squeeze Onto the Boxes
 Always. Mr. Brown, of Local Western Freight 0fice, Now Soliciting Freight Agent of CentraI--Change
 Tn Despatchers.

About the mosf intensely interesting thing that could possibly be written would be a graphic, minute description of the wanderings of an ordinary freight car, and if that carscould talk and write the story itseif-~well, for genuine thriller, 1t would have the yellow hacked penny dreadfuls put away.
 local car accountant Thursday re- ceived notice from a road up in Penn sylvania that it had one of its cars; thatN said car was in bad order, and they wanted to send 1t back to Mont gomery.
 That car" said the accountant, has been away from our road since 1904. It has evidently knocked about over this big country from Maine to Cali fornia and must be in pretty bad fix by now"
 though" he continued. When they get hold of a car they swing to 1t un- til it gets too dilapidated to run ana then they are kind enough to notify us that they have one of our cars that they wish to return.
 .At the annual meeting of the Ma tfonal Car Accountants last July, rad- acai change was made. Up to that time the ner diem on foreign cars was 25 cents. That Is, a road having In its possession a freight car belonging to another line would have to pay 20 cents a day for its use. This was peaches to the big roads, for with the tremen- dous business that they do the earn fugs of a freight car on their line would be at the smallest average $5 a day. so by paying the 25 cents for one of their neighbours cars. they would make a clear profit of $475 day.
 .At the meeting last July a move was made to try to help the smaller lines. The per diem was made 50 cents a day and penalty of $1 day 1T car was kept over one month. This proved d boomerang for the big lines. Using hundreds of foreign cars in their freight service every day at DO cents uar car, soon brought a lusty howl from the big traffic men. They were losing too much money and not even waiting for the annual meeting In July they managed to get special meeting e. few months ago, froze out the tramc men from the little lines by out-voting 4bern. with the result that the per diem was put back to 25 cents and the montn- ly penalty of $1 cut out.
 sslyow any of the big lines that can szrah a. car from another line can keep ft indefinitely if 1t wants to be paying 2s cents day for 1t, and the instances are very rare that road has enough TnfItnR S~etght husiness without the help of o,,fside cars. "Of coarse, the cutting of the per diem in half. in measure s.Alns the smaller lines, but rom Atrairhtout business proposition IL hurts them As rule the smaller roafg do not have any too many freight cars and if they have any Dusi- ness at all they need every one or their own cars. A..
 '.The big lines generaily swing on 10 nll of their own cars that they can ana make wholesale grabs Of the foreign ears. the result being that the first signs of a ear famine are generally feit by the smaller lines. the big lines feeling the shoe pinch later. The anaIler lines were making money out of the Bo cents per diem. and, another thing. they had the use of more of their own cars, for 1t was pretty ex- pensive even for the big fellows wno had money to chunk to the birds to have to pay 50 cents day for hun dreds of cara"