While looking through the newly arrived Eagle on single digits the photo of business car 9 on page 30 reminded me of working in Osawatomie in the late 1970s. I was working in the yard office/customer service training the demurrage clerk on a new demurrage program when a train came through with one of the business cars tacked on the rear of the train. I don’t recall who was riding but it was either Downing Jenks or John Lloyd. Osawatomie was a crew change point and the outbound conductor walked in and handed Bob Vest, the agent, a waybill he’d pulled out of the group for his train It was a waybill for the business car with the commodity description shown as a ‘carload of baboons’.

The conductor had handled previous trains with business cars and knew Jenks or Lloyd liked to look over the waybills to see the business details. Bob gave me the waybill and asked if I could find out the clerk who’d billed it. Every employee has a userid so it was easy to call St. Louis and track down the culprit. It turned out to be the trainmaster’s daughter who was working second shift. We decided to just give the waybill to the trainmaster and let him handle it.

Am sure that was an interesting conversation between father and daughter. I just wish I’d kept a copy of the waybill…