A question on car loading.

[FCIN]

(...) but I can say that some shady stuff happens once in a while...

You can say that again Having worked as an agent (among other things) for several years on the L&N - it about drove me nuts trying to keep the customers happy, the company happy and comply with all the various accounting type rules.

At least once, I needed a bunch of 50 foot box cars for shipping used whiskey barrels to Florida for further movement to PR. I was sent several foreign road cars that should not have been sent in that direction. The Superintendent said use them anyway so I did. About a month later, I got a call from the accounting department who proceeded to chew on me at great length for using those cars. You can't win!

Can't say for sure what happens if you hijack a foreign road car and send it some place where it shouldn't go, but I suspect that there is some sort of fine involved - IF anyone catches it (in my case they did). It's very possible that those MEC gons were okay for the shipment you mentioned. If this occurred sometime in from the early 1970's on, it's quite feasible that the MEC gons were free runners - hard to say.

Oh yes and when I was doing the yard check - I opened the door on one of those "EMPTY" box cars to see if it was clean and discovered it was full of GE clothes washers. Railroad error or shipper error? I never found out, just notified the main office and sealed the car and sent the car back to Louisville.