John, That reminds me of the night I was working at Buckeye yard in Hilliard, Ohio. Conrail had just become Norfolk Southern and our respective computers were not talking to one another from the NS side to the Conrail side. I was inspecting cars in the receiving yard on third trick. I noticed a foul smell much worse than the normal foul smells in a rail yard. As I approached a reefer car the smell was getting much much worse. I noticed a trail of an oily substance in the ballast that ended under the plug door track. I shined my lantern on the door and noticed it was shimmering. I though that maybe something was leaking so I looked a little harder at the door. Much to my surprise the plug door and a few feet on either side of the door was covered in maggots! The shimmering was hundreds of thousands of the squirmy worms. I called the car number in to the yardmaster and found that that car had been missing for several weeks. The fuel tank was empty and the car had a load of meat. The car was directly across from the engine house fuel pad and those guys were throwing a hobo fit about the stench. The yardmaster spotted the car on the shop lead and eventually the haz mat company they use came out and removed the rotted meat and steam cleaned the inside of the reefer. After that any refrigerator car that came into the yard had to have at least 200 gallons of diesel in the tanks, if not, they were switched out and spotted on the caboose tracks for fuel. Doug
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