| Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad E9 9995 westbound at Naperville, Illinois on March 10, 1965, Ektachrome by Chuck Zeiler. Baggage cars were not typically part of the consist of the Dinkys (commuter trains) on the CB&Q. Growing up in Naperville, I was once a paperboy, and had first hand knowledge of the purpose of the baggage cars. The Sunday supplements (the funnies, magazine section, and advertising inserts) were printed ahead of time, and sent to the local news agencies for insertion into the Sunday paper usually on Saturday evening. One of my jobs as a paperboy was to go to the Naperville station and collect the supplements which generally arrived on a Wednesday or Thursday. If there were a lot of supplements, usually around holidays, the Burlington would have to add a baggage car to handle the load. There was a minor problem with this, from my point of view. As the train arrived, the baggage handler would open the door and when he saw the platform, he began kicking out the bundles of supplements before the train stopped. At first I thought the guy was just a jerk, but I later found out that this was to prevent delay of the train. If the train was delayed, the conductor would have to fill out a Delay Report, which he would rather not do. If the wire binding did not hold the bundles together as they were kicked out, the paperboy (me) would have to go along the right-of-way and collect all the loose supplements. |