By the time Norm and I learned of the existence of the
Change Number Record Accounts, they had all been moved to what was then BN
headquarters in St. Paul, where they were held by a department called Valuation
Engineering. I did see the Burlington volumes but never spent any time with them
as Norm and I were concentrating on the GN records -- I don't remember how many
Burlington books there were. The books were broken down by account number, which
I believe was probably mandated by the ICC. Account 51 was for steam
locomotives, but by the time we were there these records had been moved to a
book called the "Drop Number Record Account," along with some freight car
numbers that had not been used for many years. Unfortunately, this book
disappeared from basement storage at BN in the late 1980's. Norm did manage to
transcribe the steam locomotive information. Account 53 was freight equipment
and I believe there were three volumes for that. As I remember, each of the
volumes were approximately 2 or 3 inches thick. The pages were 11" x 17" in size
and there were four columns across the page, each headed by the word "CHANGED."
Then the subheadings were "From," "Date," "Auth.," "To," "Date," and "Auth." The
"Auth." was the number of the Authority for Expenditure under which the change
was made. There were 50 numbers per page, so the pages alternated listing
numbers 0-49 and 50-99. This was all pre-printed and then the first part of the
number and all of the entries were completed by hand.
Volume 54 contained passenger equipment, and I believe
was only one book. Volume 57 contained maintenance equipment and was also only
one book. If I remember correctly, the diesel and electric locomotives were in
Account 52 ("Other Locomotives") and this was all in one book. As I mentioned,
Norm did transcribe the steam locomotive information and between the two of us
we transcribed the passenger car information and part of the maintenance
information. I finally (after several week-long episodes of severe writer's
cramp) asked my contact at BN if we could bring a photocopier in, and he agreed.
I purchased a small portable Canon photocopier and my wife and I then
photocopied the remainder of the maintenance book and all of the freight pages.
There were also Burlington Northern volumes, and Norm
spent a fair amount of time transcribing information from them (that's where the
information about the renumbering of 972544 from X1575 came from). I do not
remember how many BN volumes there were. About 1985, BN computerized their
change number record account information, and stopped entering information into
the books. Norm and I were primarily following diesel locomotive, passenger and
maintenance equipment, but once I had the photocopier and was there I thought I
might as well copy the freight information as well. Once we had the photocopier
the normal routine when we went to St.Paul was for my wife to run the
photocopier while I went through the computer records.
To the best of my knowledge the only transcriptions or
photocopies of the books are the ones that I have. I do not know if anyone ever
copied the Burlington books or not. If Randy Danniel reads this he might know --
Joe Douda may have obtained some of his information from them.
At any rate, with the BNSF merger, the books in St.Paul
(GN, CB&Q, NP and BN) were moved to Topeka, Kansas, and turned over to Fred
Elevier, whose title was Assistant Property Engineer -- Property Accounting. I
do not know if the books still exist, or if they became obsolete once the ICC
was ended.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 4:17
PM
Subject: [CBQ] Re: BN 972544
Lineage
KM-
Outstanding! Thank you very, very much for transcribing all that
and posting it! More than I wanted to know, but very glad I now know it.
Regarding your comment:
Norm Keyes found in the BN Change
Number Record Accounts back in 1985
Just how big a document is that?
Has it ever been transcribed or digitized and posted to the Web? If so, where?
If not, can I buy a photocopy from anyone who might have
it?
RSVP
John Phillips
Seattle
"I will put down the
informal history of the shirt-sleeve multitude," says Inez Mischitz. "What
they had to say about their jobs, love affairs, vittles, sprees, scrapes and
and sorrows. The oral history is a great hodgepodge and kitchen midden of
hearsay. A repository of jabber. An omnium-gatherum of bushwah, gab, palaver,
hogwash, flap-doodle and malarkey. The fruit of more than 20,000
conversations. What people say is history, what we used to think was history,
is only formal history, and largely false. I will put down the informal
history or I will perish in the attempt."
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