Railroaders' Nostalgia > Now, what's your excuse?

A late friend was responsible for entering Canadian Pacific's vast fleet of rolling stock into that corporation's main computer.
This was a room sized IBM with all those blinking lights and reel to reel tapes. He was the ideal man for the job, both a railfan and a computer geek. He looked very much like the 1960's version of a mad scientist in a white lab coat. He was also a very skilled computer technician. It didn't hurt that he was the grandson of one of the founders of the corporation, either.

Through great tenacity, he had tracked down the location and disposition of all but 22 pieces of CPR rolling stock. Try as he could, my friend and many yardmasters across Canada could not find these cars. By this time, all the big US railroads had also searched their data systems for these 22 cars. No luck.

The CPR CEO of the day was also concerned, and frequently asked my friend about them.

Finally, he came up with a solution. For computer purposes, he "located" them in Havana,Cuba at the time of the Castro Revolution.

I think it likely that his counterparts on other railroads liked the concept, and probably a considerable fleet of virtual rolling stock was shown on the FCC in Cuba.

Of course, all this took place over 50 years ago, so the virtual cars have been virtually written off as "scrapped or destroyed on another property".

Seatrain ships might have taken them there and couldn't get them out after castro went in

I'm told there may be some rolling stock in Yankee Doodle Lake on the Denver & Salt Lake>

Bob Wilcox
Charlottesville, VA
My Flickr Shots

The missing cars could have been routed to the La Salle & Bureau County. The people there that were repainting Conrail box cars into LS&BC might have misread the "CP" for "CR". 8>)

mapboy

My great uncle worked for the Bessemer and Lake Erie. Some missing cars were last recorded as being on Valley Camp Coal Company's line so he paid them a visit. A short walk up the line revealed one day they had shoved 7 cars in a tipple track that held 6. One of his cars was down in the creek "with the prettiest waterfall coming through it." A little farther up the line he found another at the shops with pieces of steel cut out of it for patching other cars. After a couple trips around it he patched the numbers together and figured out it was his other car. He sent them a bill for the missing cars.