But the chief freight points of that particular system and its connecting points have regular stands, upon which nightly are placed cars bound for these points. Each city (in the case of a large city each freight-house), each transfer point, has a number, and its through car stands opposite that number. When the infreight arrives and is unloaded piece by piece, a checker, who is nothing less than an animated guide-book, gives each its proper number, and it is promptly trucked off to the waiting car. It is mail-sorting on a Titanic scale.
Nor is this an absolute order. Certain towns demand an occasional through car from time to time, and a car must be assigned number and place at the transfer-house against such emergencies. Sometimes there is more than enough freight to fill the car allotted to any given point, and then one of the switching crews must drill that out and find another empty to replace it. Beyond that, the yardmaster's superiors are all the time demanding that he show judgment in picking the cars to be filled.
When a freight car gets off the system to which it belongs it collects forfeits from the other lines over which it passes, if they do not expedite its passage; this the railroaders know as "_per diem_." The great trick in operating is to keep _per diem_ down; and so the "foreign" cars, so called, must be promptly returned to their home roads.
"We load out of the transfer-house a through car over the Northwestern from Chicago every day," the man who has this yard in charge explains. "It's up to me to have a Northwestern empty for that when I can. When I can't, I do the best I can." He scratches his head. "Perhaps I'll use a Canadian Pacific, and so get her started along toward home. If not, something from the Sault; just as I am going to start that New Haven car over toward Connecticut to-night. If I were to send that New Haven car out beyond Washington there'd be trouble, and I've got to dig out something empty from the Boston & Maine to take that stuff over to Lowell. Mos' generally, though, when we've got a turn of Western stuff, I've got my 'empty' tracks stuffed full o' them New England cars."
We mention something about the transfer-house being a mighty good thing.