http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090825/ap_on_re_us/us_drug_war_trains
Interesting article. Any comments?
Just wait til the oil and highway lobby gets hold of this…“get rid of trains because trains allow for the smuggling of contraband into the US.” Its the same story one gets when fear is spread that a passenger train may someday run on the tracks in town!
Imagine the logistics of trying to find and retrieve a shipment of drugs that some yay-who put on a train somewhere in Mexico, and then marked the car with graffitti! [(-D]
To do list:
- Figure out where the marked car went
- Figure out how to identify a car “marked with graffitti” in a yard of cars marked the car with graffitti.
- Casually stop by the yard and retrieve said drugs from secret hiding spot on car before someone else does
4)Explain to the local Mafia Don why his shipment is late or gone missing. - Make out last will & testament
[(-D]
The question that comes to my mind…WHAT IF…Said Railroad loses the car, who takes the hit?
A rock Island boxcar that sat on a spur track on President’s Island until about 1999.
An L&N boxcar that was billed to a company in Az, and turned up still loaded,but bad ordered in NJ about two years later.
Of couse plenty of contraband crosses the borders in OTR trailers as well…
Carne, you’ve got to learn that I am an old cynical and sarcastic SOB!
Murphy, what you have listed as #5 should be no later than #3.[:)]
Johnny
Eh…call me an optimist. I put at least as much thought into my list, as that journalist did on the story.[;)]
Welding secret compartments into boxcars to carry drugs? [(-D]
LOL!!! Look at the caption under the photo… [:P]
[(-D]
[(-D][(-D] I did not fall out of my chair, but you almost made me do so.[(-D]
I wonder–was the reporter fed a line or two and swallowed without chewing, or was the reporter speculating as to possibilities (not probabilties)?
As to RJ’s comment about the caption under the picture in the news story, it may be that the caption writer, amazingly, remembers what the road was before it was swallowed up.
Bedtime
Johnny
Seriously, though, consider that a package of cocaine or heroine isn’t going to be all that large, and there are plenty of places to stick stuff.
I wonder how much help the smugglers are getting from the other side of the border. It’s entirely possible that shipments could be routed to points well beyond the border if the smuggler is associated with the shipper and is privvy to such information. Now the receiving dealer doesn’t have to know the graffiti - just the reporting marks on the car. And if they’ve enlisted help at the receiving industry, they’ve got all the time in the world to pull the stuff from its hiding place.
As for the caption - it’s not the first time…
A few weeks ago there was a news story about employees at an ethanol plant finding a large package of marijuana hidden on a rail car. Still, that’s probably better than what the elevator people at Denison, IA found being smuggled in a covered hopper about 7 or 8 years ago.
Jeff
Customs found a box welded on the hull of a cargo ship arriving in Miami a number of years ago, so welding compartments into boxcars sounds quite believable to me.
?
I live close to the border and the amount of drugs smuggled on rail cars is nothing compared to what comes across the border by back pack or road. Practically every day there is news in the local media about large drug seizures in the area. And it is estimated by law enforcement that for every pound caught, there are probably 1,000 pounds getting through.
I don’t recall it being that far back, but the bodies of 7 or 8 people that were trying to enter the US in a UP boxcar from Mexico were found in the boxcar, parked in a siding at Denison, Iowa.
Smugglers will use any available resource to accomplish their task…
Train - Truck - Car - Body Cavity - Bra
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/08/26/Woman-accused-of-smuggling-cocaine-in-bra/UPI-86001251305422/
Covered hopper. They took the car in a special train to Hull Avenue yard in Des Moines. To get the bodies out they cut the side of the car open.
There were some indictments but I’ve lost track as to the outcome.
Jeff
See now? RIGHT HERE IS A BLATANT EXAMPLEof the hippocracy in the moderation of these forums.
If 'hobo" threads are veboten because “hobo’ing is trespassing, and trespassing is a crime” then why shouldn’t this thread send you all off on a snit? Afterall, in order for the smugglers to place and retrieve the packages DO THEY NOT HAVE TO TRESPASS in order to do their “thing”? and isn’t that traspassing at least as illegal as hoboing? Not to mention the fact that the cargo itself IS A FELONY and the smugglers are making the RR into aN ACCOMPLICE in the commission of a felony, interstate distribution.
Seems pretty cut and dried to me, assuming the arguments we’ve been fed up to now are legit.
Silly me. What was I thinking? I’ll report this to the moderators PDQ. [oX)]