| Show LOOKING AFTER LOST CARS A product of by bitell track is 1 kept of stick car chasers are among the most important employed emp loyes of the great trunk lines of railroads the title exactly describes i their business on some railroads they I 1 are called traveling car agents the department part ment head who employs thorn them is also called variously the tha car ag agent e nt tile the car accountant or the 6 superintendent u perin of rolling stock these officials have as many as a dozen assistants on some of the great roads nine or ten being clerks clerics at 30 or 40 a month and the rest being chasers who travel all over the country on free passes hunting bunting up missing cars and who receive or a month and expenses great railroads have immense linberer of cars the central railroad of ne new jersey lias has about of all I 1 i sorts tile the pennsylvania railroad or these cars are at the present moment in every state in the union they go wherever the freia freight with which they are loaded is billed to and thus are scat scattered tere d from winnipeg to mexico and los Us angeles to bangor A most minute and d thorough system obtaining on all railroads except tile the very smallest records every movement of every car the system operates at all junction janc tion points point where the agents record the ownership and number of every car that passes from their road to a connecting line and immediately notify the roa roads w whose he se cars are motions thus in moti motion 1 as well as the car accountant of their own road the theao go notifications are mada by postal card in each general office car account books are kept and tile the movements of the com banys own cars are recorded from day to day whenever a loaded car is if emptied on a foreign road that road uses it to carry a load of freight back in the he direction of tho the road to which the car belongs it pays at the rate of seven elg eighths babs cents a mile for this uso use of its neighbors property in this way and if it should happen that eliat there was no freight to ti be shipped in that direction within a reasonably short time the empty c apty pty car is sent along and mileage is paid m on it as if it were laden it is when a number of cars aro are lost sight of that a traveling adent is is sent out i sometimes it happens that that tho the cars are on oa little branch roads idle and overlooked sometimes they have lallan into the hands bands of a company that is short of cars and full of budness and is using i every ever y foreign car it can get and Forn etim es other equally simple causes delay it if it is in uso use by a company short of cars that company pays mileage on it until it sometimes happens happen that a car is worn out and paid for bebow it is returned or else it is never returned at all if a car chaser demands the return of his com banys cars they are sent bo home me but often others are beizem and put to uso use when his back is turned and lie he is traveling elsewhere if a car is smashed up in a railroad accident it is either rebuilt a new one is made or the price of the car is paid to the he owners by the colli company pany on whose hose track the smash up occurred every contingency is pro bided for bior in in tile the sy system stein that has grown up among tho the great roads recently tho the master car builders of tho the country aniced on oil a sot set of schedule of prices for every conceivable damage to cars and the result is going to be that tho the rolling stock of all tile roads roada will grow grov more and more uniform in style and quality since it is agreed that only serviceable parts shall be put on oil cars that need mending C no matter how bow expensive and fanciful those parts may have been originally new york sun |
