GHOSTS OF OLD TRAINS

Rex Burress

Halfway between Chico and Oroville, California, sitting out in the open fields like an old married couple weathering the storms of life, are two old boxcars, retired from the railroad.

The ancient freight carriers stand out darkly in the treeless grasslands, steel doors closed as if hiding secret cargo. Once the relics moved from place to place over long stretches of steel rails polished smooth by the grinding of metal wheels. Sometimes they rolled as an empty holding a horde of Hobos in times gone by. Without being attached to an engine, they are powerless and sit still, like a human body without a heart. The secret of boxcars and bodies is to have an energy source.

We will never know how many million miles those boxcars traveled over hills and dales of America. Neither will we know how many tons of merchandise they carried from city to city, just as container cars are now used to shuffle goods from country to country, spreading industrial products to far away places. Containers are transferred from ships to trucks and sometimes to rail carriers, although 2014 statistics show that there was 1.25 million boxcar loads transported in North America.

We wonder if those two rusty hulks were once pulled by a steam locomotive belching smoke on its way through perilous canyons or rumbling across the endless plains. The modern train power comes from two or three diesel engines pulling a long string of boxcars, oil tankers, and container cars usually with a lot of graffiti-art painted on the exterior. No romantic cabooses trail along at the train's end today.

Just as with old, worn-out boxcars, cabooses are parked in many places for their historical curiousness. There is a caboose at Oakland Camp near Quincy, CA, parked near the dining hall, and the common joke is that it spun off the nearby railroad and nearly got the chow palace! Jim Lenhoff has one at his Cherokee, CA museum, and a few are found around Oroville.

As I gazed at the pair of boxcars all alone in the foothill fields, it seemed as if they were trying to defy the take-down of time. I wondered anew where they had been pulled across the country. Since rails crisscross America, perhaps those two cars had passed by my Trenton, Missouri homeland where the Rock Island Line once was active and trains rolled through the nearby town of Spickard where I was a telegraph operator in 1956. Actually, it was a one-man depot, and I was also expected to attend any freight coming or going.

Once a week a farmer brought two, ten-gallon cans of cream to send to the city via boxcar, and the entire train had to stop while I pulled the hand-cart alongside and placed the load aboard. It took a touch for the engineer to calculate where to stop, and I had to calculate how to manage the cans! That job vied with my operation of the telegraph and the necessity of handing up train orders on a forked stick for the engineer to grab--from a train going 60 mph with me trying to stay upright!

Some of those outdated boxcars were dumped in the river to prevent erosion, and one such place was in Grand River called “The Boxcar Hole.” Big fish were said to be there, but an all-day fishing trip with my cousins was futile. The ghostly catfish must come out of their boxcars to haunt the night!

A boxcar is used in interchange service for 50 years before being scraped, or sold as a storage unit, although non interchange cars can be in local circulation longer. In 2014, 125,000 boxcars were in use in America and 101,600 were taken out of service. Only about 60,000 new 50-footer boxcars are being built each year at a cost of $114,000 each, leading to diminished circulation as container carrier cars are used more.

The first boxcars were made of wood in the 1800's before steel became the norm after 1940. They weigh about 40 tons with wheels and sell for scrap at about $6,000, and a 35-year-old model will cost you about $12,000.

I suspect that the two old metal hulks dominating the meadow near Oroville harbors some animal life since a shelter is eagerly sought in open space. Just in passing on the highway I have seen hawks perched there, and underneath is probably a vole bonanza. Insects and spiders must lurk there, and bats if they can squeeze inside. Wild animals are very opportunistic and are not reluctant to use abandoned boxcars or buildings if that will work. Our very houses, old boxcars--our bodies!, are hiding places for living creatures!

“Life is like a mountain railroad,/With an engineer that's brave./We must make the run successful,/From the cradle to the grave./Watch the curves, the fills, the tunnels,/Never falter never quail,/ Keep your hand upon the throttle,/And your eyes upon the rail.” --Old song