The problem that Switchman Tommy had was he didn't know where to draw the line
between scrounging and stealing. One day he found a nice ladder leaning up
against a building beside the tracks. After loading the ladder on the waycar
and leaving the scene, I often wondered how those roofers got down off that
roof. Another time they were backing across the Belt Line between West Alton
and Alton when they came upon some real fine Beagles hunting rabbits along the
track. After stopping the waycar and tying up the dogs on the waycar, three
big burly hunters with big shotguns suddenly materialized and asked Tommy what
he thought he was doing. Tommy never skipped a beat as he told them how he was
concerned for their safety and didn't want to run over them so he was doing
what he could to protect them. The best one though was when he was picking up
used ties at Ft Bellfontaine and the sherrif stopped and asked him what he was
up to. Tommy told the sherrif he was a railroad employee and swore he had
permission to do so. So the sherrif handcuffed Tommy and drove him over to the
depot at West Alton to ask the agent if he could verify Tommy's story. The old
agent was so tempted to play dumb, but finally vouched for Tommy. I'm sure
every division had a Tommy or two. Archie
----- Original Message -----
From: qutlx1@aol.com
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 7:40 PM
Subject: [CBQ] Shopping
There was a long period of time when almost all lumber moved in box cars. 40
and 50 footers. Getting the lumber in and out of those single 8' and double
16' doors was a labor intensive ordeal. So........... there were lots of
pieces
of lumber left in cars that were MTY. On the Earlville turn I used to p/u a
few 2X4's coming out of empties from Plano and Sandwich lumber. But the all
time
leader,to my knowledge, was grandpa,E.B. Smith, who picked up his lumber from
empties coming out of White & Todd Lumber, Fox River Supply and Builders
Supply all customers located on the "Alley Job". 8-10 years after retiring he
was
still building pallets for a local plastics company out of 2x4's that were
scrounged from mty box cars ! Saw it first hand.
Leo
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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