Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1917-01-05
TRACING LOST CARS.
SHERLOCK HOLMES TASK FOR A
RAILROAD COMPANY.
For Some Unexplained Reason Cars
Frequently Disappear and the Job
of Finding Them Is Most
Difficult.

At times when the scarcity of freight
cars causes the railroads to place an
embargo upon certain classes of goods,
the problem of keeping track of it's
cars to see that they do not run away
and become wanderers upon the face
of the earth is a stupendous one for
each company.
When a freight car Is built, it is
given a number before it leaves the
shop, and thereafter it is always
known by that number until it is worn
out and scrapped. When new car
receives its number, and starts out
upon it's business career, it is entered
N the record book, and careful ac-
count of it's wanderings and earning
power are kept there. This record
book is a history of the car, and by
consulting it, one can learn how many
trips it has made, what cities it has
visited, how many times it has been
to the repair shop, and also where it is
supposed to be at any given time.
But in spite of all this care in keep
ng a record of each car, now and then
for some unexplained reason, one, dis
appears from sight-literally running
away. Some of the big companies EN-
ploy car tracers, but as rule print
ed tracer is first sent after the car to
bring it back home. This printed
tracer in a blue envelope, is sent to
the person in whose jurisdiction the
ear was last supposed to be, and if it
had passed out of his district the
tracer is sent on to the next one to
whom the car was assigned. This lit
tie printed tracer failing to bring the
car home in a reasonable length Of
time a man known as a tracer is sent
after it. The tracer is really a rail
road car detective.
And sometimes it is more difficult tC
track a runaway freight car than a
criminal. There are tens of thousands
Of miles of railways, and hundreds of
thousands of freight cars, and to find
the one carrying a certain number is
often like hunting q needle in q hay
stack. The tracer may arrive in q
city, where the runaway car is sup
posed to be, at the very moment wher
| the car is leaving it in the opposite di
rection. 1t may cross his track on 8
parallel line, or dodge around him or
short line. 1t may be headed north
Or rolling merrily toward the Pacific
while he is going toward the Atlantic
A runaway car apparently is as de
praved as any criminal. 1t hides or
a lonely siding, or gets lost in shOrt
swamp line One such runaway resteC
nearly year on a siding in southern
Texas simply because it got lost, an(
no one seemed to know just what to dc
with it. The nearest freight agent haC
no record of it, and no tracer had re
quested its return. Going on the prin
ciple that what is "everybody's bust
ness is nObody's business" this lOca
agent made no effort to hunt up tn,
owners. If the order had been re
ceived by him to return it he woult
have obeyed, but lacking such order
he left it on the siding. In the cours
Of time, it was occupied by a famil.
Of squatters. who lived quite comfort
ably in it for six months, and wer
routed out only when quite by acci
dent, the car tracer discovered it,
Popular Mechanics Magazine.