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From: ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.railroad
Subject: Re: Reporting Marks
Message-ID: <749@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Mar-84 12:22:13 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.749
Posted: Thu Mar  1 12:22:13 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Mar-84 18:49:53 EST
References: <5899@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: NTT Systems Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 23

Bruce G. Alcock's interesting article on reporting marks includes this:

	They can be from 2 to 4 characters in length.  Some roads such as
	B&O use the ampersand.  This is the only non-alphabetic character
	that I have ever observed.

When I lived by a CP Rail (ex Canadian Pacific Railway), I kept a list of
railway cars seen and their reporting marks.  So I couldn't miss observing
that the Southern Railway uses "SOUTHERN", while CP Rail's US subsidiary
(whose full name I can't think of right now) uses the full usual form of
its name, "SOO LINE".  Of course, it may be that only 4 characters are
significant, and the rest is just comment (as we would say).

For those of you who live far away, the first word in the placename Sault
Ste. Marie (Michigan and Ontario) is pronounced Soo -- it's either an old
or a bastardized French pronounciation -- and hence the railway name.

Some railways use more than one reporting mark, by the way.  CP Rail has
"CP", "CPAA", and "CPI".  This classifies their cars in ways that matter to
them, for instance, when they enter the United States.  In this case AA
stands for "as (if) American" and I for "international".

Reporting: Mark Brader