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Another possibility, when we see freight cars moving in the "wrong" direction concerns a like known facet of railroading. The AAR had a freight car service bureau. The function of this agency was to supply cars where needed. If a railroad had more traffic, requiring a certain kind of car, than it had in it's supply, it would make a request to the bureau, which in turn would put out a request to member roads. Any road that had a surplus would send them to the requesting road. The
supplying roads were happy to do this because it let them collect car per deim on otherwise idle cars. The best example of this was when eastern roads would send boxcars west to the granger roads during the grain rushes. It didn't work very well with coal cars, because the eastern roads required a lot of cars at the same time mid-western roads did (winter). But stock cars were some times sent to other roads, this way. Another example was the so called "heavy duty flat cars". Several eastern roads (PRR, NYC, NH, Erie, et.al.) rostered many of these cars, not only for their own traffic, but to rent to other roads. The AAR handled these requests as well. On , "John D. Mitchell, Jr." <cbqrr47@yahoo.com> wrote: Bill Just one small note on your post; a "section house" was a house for a section foreman or in some cases a section laborer. The place where a
motor car was kept was always known on the railroad as a "car house" or a "tool house". John Mitchell, section foreman's grandson On Sunday, December 22, 2013 12:00 PM, William Barber <clipperw@gmail.com> wrote: Leo Phillips and others,
A few weeks ago, in message no. 45069 posted on 12/12/13, Leo noted that there was a photo on E Bay of #5621 (Leo's message identifies the locomotive as #5631) pulling a train eastbound on the C&I. In the consist are a half dozen empty stock cars with the doors open, apparently belonging to GN and or NP. The questions raised were why were empty stock cars going east, where did they come from and why? I don't believe any firm conclusion was reached in the following discussion. (BTW, the slide sold for $114 and some change! WOW!) I was going through some photos in my collect a couple of days ago and came upon the very same photo as sold on E Bay. Grouped with it were four other photos taken on the same day of the same train and locomotive, complete with the white lime all over the rear of the boiler. One of my photos identifies the date as October 16, 1956. The first photo in the group shows the train arriving in Shabbona. The stock cars are NOT in the consist. Following the locomotive is the single sheathed box car, then what appears to be a Q PS-1 steel box car and then a very distinctive C&NW yellow over green reefer followed by another orange reefer. Following those cars are a hopper car, another box car, a gondola, and then a flat with a load covered in a white wrapping. In the back ground on the south side is a box car red building and a section house for a track speeder. Further back, appears to be a grain elevator. There appears to be only one track in this view. In the next two photos, the locomotive and a portion of the train are standing on as secondary siding on the south side of the main at a cross walk. The main line and the main siding are to the right of the locomotive. To the left of the locomotive there is another fourth track which appears to be no longer in service. In the first of these two view, the engineer is looking back and you can only see the single sheathed box car behind the locomotive. In the second of these two photos, the view is close to head on. The brakeman is on the ground talking to the engineer in the cab. The train detail is limited, but it appears that the stock cars are now behind the SS box car. One of the stock cars in the E Bay photo appears to have gray or white paper or canvas hanging out the door. That white material can be seen in this photo. Next comes the photo on E Bay. Now buried about 20 cars deep in the consist is the C&NW green and yellow reefer. The orange reefer behind it is missing. Besides the stock cars, it appears that the train picked up a number of other assorted cars including some more box cars and one additional hopper car. The fifth and final photo that I have shows the train approaching Waterman from the west. Again the six stock cars are there with the truss rods on the first one and the gray material hanging out of the door of the third. The stack is clean and he appears to have her hooked up pretty well headed for Eola. Talking with Bob Campbell, who worked the C&I frequently, the train is probably a local freight that regularly ran from Savanna to Cicero. He recalls that there was a stock pen at Shabbona as well as in a couple other towns along the route. The track that the locomotive is sitting on at Shabbona was used to switch several businesses in the town. It would seem that the stock cars delivered cattle or other animals to someone in Shabbona. Possibly there was a feed lot in the area that fatten animals up for eventual sale and slaughter. The train in these photos was, most likely moving the stock cars to Eola to build them into a westbound train for return to their home RR. Unfortunately, I don't know who took the photos that I have and I certainly do not have permission to use them or post them. I just wanted to share the rest of the story. I wonder if the photographer took any more photos on that day? Bill Barber Gravois Mills, MO __._,_.___
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