Re: Wine traveling on the Overland Route in 1949
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Sorry, it's the scientist in me, but a number is not "correct" because it is PLAUSIBLE. What you have found is information
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that COULD be true, because it is not inconsistent with what you've found in an ORER or other roster source data. But how on earth could you possibly cross-check the CONTENTS of freight cars unless you have the original waybills to correlate to the conductors' books? I trust the records much more that Clark Propst and others have posted, which contain much more detailed information about cargoes, origins and consignees. It's all about how do you really know what you know. If the conductor transposes a few numbers on his sheet (are there no dyslexic conductors?) or confuses SLRX with SRLX or something like that, are we certain that we'd always find it? Tim O'Connor ----- Original Message -----
From: "dmamfahr" <mamfahr@...> After analyzing many thousands of entries in various UP conductor's time books (source of the hand-written train consist records), I can tell you that they're surprisingly accurate. I've entered many records into Excel spreadsheets, then cross-checked the reporting marks, car numbers, car types, contents, destination codes, icing instructions, etc and I'll say that I've noted relatively few obvious errors. Sure there are mistakes, but after reviewing a typical book containing 2500 or so car records (total of ~13,000 data entries) I'll note something on the order of 50 errors, < 1/2 %. Take care, Mark |
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