Leo, The gondolas used for scrap remind me of how we would pick up empties
from the Illinois Terminal yard at Federal that had been pulled from Olin
mills. They always had plenty of brass or copper shaving and scraps on the
floors. Tom, who was an old East St Louis switchman carried a broom and canvas
bags on the waycar and would make a haul each morning if we beat the IT clerk
who checked the yard to the treasure. When we were late it was the clerk who
made a killing. When Tom got there first, that old clerk would give us the
dirtiest looks as we pulled out of town. I'll tell you a couple of stories
about Tom when I send another posting. Archie
----- Original Message -----
From: qutlx1@aol.com
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:36 PM
Subject: [CBQ] Shopping
Archie, Your story is indeed sweeter than mine. But as expected it brought to
mind another. Scrap moved in gons(not near as often today). One of the
sidelines many yard and road crews had was making sure an mty. gon about to
placed
for scrap loading was truly empty. There was almost always a little scrap
left
in cars that the magnets missed. The car would be inspected at a spot where
the left over material could be thrown out and placed into a truck or car
trunk
for later delivery to a local scrap dealer. The gon would then be spotted at
it's destination for loading. The crew would split the proceeds and many had
nice side incomes from this type of activity. Poor departed C.L. Lynd made a
good income at Rochelle from "mty" gons going to Del Monte for tin plate
scrap
loading. Often wondered how that '65 Chevy left the parking lot as loaded
down
as it was. Each day at lunch he would run by the local scrap dealer,dump off
his #1 Heavy melt and collect several $s.
Now one day the Aurora switch crew,who had the above practice down pretty
good, had a gon to deliver to one of the scrap yards they served. Upon
"inspecting" the car they found that is was far from empty and in fact was
still a
partial load of scrap. But it was shown as an mty and going to a scrap yard
for
loading.
So................... they shoved the car into dealer A,had the car
weighed,unloaded,reweighed and split the proceeds for the "nonexistant
scrap". They
then placed the car at dealer B where it was designated to be spotted on the
RR
records. Everything was working fine until the Eola YDM called asking about
the
gon as the customer it had been pulled from stated it had been pulled in
error and was still a partial load and they needed it back for unloading.
Never did hear how this was explained. Suspect the frt. claims dept. paid off
on that one. Pete what say you ?
Leo
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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