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John—I agree with you on the "motor car" term. Used to work in the Chicago and North Western's Engineering Department and they were called motor cars there. The things were long gone by the time I started in 1978 but there were still motor car houses (the official name for the buildings) along the right-of-way. Also, a friend in the engineering office started with the CNW in 1969 and said they did have motor cars then, and that's what he called them, including the Soo Line versions that they were using into the 1980s (I saw one of the Soo units in action at Eau Claire, Wisc. while I was restaking the CNW-SOO diamond). When I was working on the tie gang in 1983 the little trailer cars ("push cars") that were formerly pulled by motor cars (and later by hi-rail trucks or track machines) were called "dumpies." Our tamper pulled a dumpy loaded with replacement tie plates, and one of my tasks was to load plates at the beginning of the day, and then peddle them as needed. Some of the existing plates were cracked or bent so they needed to be replaced. And, some plates just got lost in the weeds when the old ties were removed! Kurt Hayek Kurt Hayek __._,_.___
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