Cars get mis-sorted on railroads, containers get mis-handled at the docks, packages get mis-handled by UPS and FedEx, letters get mis-handled by USPS.
Shipping happens and nobody is perfect.
My wife worked for a lumber broker in Portland Oregon a few years ago and one of her tasks was to route cars on roundabout routes so as to give the broker time to sell that carload. That way the car was traveling eastward getting closer to the eastern markets yet wasn’t sold when shipped.
There’s at least one of us still around. Don’t remember all the details, but remember the gist.
Fence posts ? Used cross ties ?
Interesting question I can’t answer. But I have to say that it sounds like mail coming to Long Island from some spot 10 miles away on Long Island - goes to New Jersey, then maybe upstate New York, then a few more places, and someday, maybe, makes it the wrong post office on Long Island, then maybe a few days later gets delivered! 
I have no idea, but I infer from your footnote that it’s something that used to be important but has been made obsolete by later technology – like communication? Utility poles come to mind; in remote territory the railroads had to put in their own poles for telphone or telegraph wires, and they were lined up like fence posts along the track. No?
Found it !! (7/5/2012)
[quote user=“jeffhergert”]
In my post about holiday operations, the railroad always says it will slow down operations except for certain lines of business. The exceptions for things that still must move means just about everything except the lowest of the low manifest, locals and yard jobs. Sometimes even they still work, too.
In my listing of the business lines, I threw in fence posts for a couple of reasons. One to illustrate how the exceptions render a holiday slow down kind of moot, that we’re only going to move “priority” things but everything is a prioritiy. Also to reference an old joke about fence posts.
I’ve heard it told years ago on the Rock Island. I’ve seen it in print in Trains about 25 or so years ago (IIRC the author, Ken Brovald in his story about an Omaha Road Brasspounder, I know Bruce knows what that is.) and an even older Railroad Magazine story by Peter Josserand, Night Chief Dispatcher on the Western Pacific. I’m sure many old heads on many railroads will claim it happened on their railroads, too. The story goes something like this.
A train was overtonnage and had to reduce before leaving the yard. Certain loads are more important than others, like perishable or livestock, high value merchandise etc. Looking over the train list for what could be set out, the yardmaster came across a load of fence posts. Now in the scheme of things, it’s hard to imagine fence posts being a hot item. So the load of fence posts, along with other low priority freight was set out.
A few days later, the yardmaster got a reprimand for setting out the most important car in the train. It seems the superintendent had personally gauranteed delivery to the consignee on a certain date, and setting out the car it missed that date. So after that, whenever a train had to redu
Made me think of the abuse of X priority in stuff going to Los Alamos in the war years.
If I remember the story correctly (it was embellished over the years) critical material for weapon development was ‘bumped’ for toilet paper, because the sender of the critical material used the ‘Cullinan Diamond’ method of hiding the importance of the shipment by giving it lower letter priority, and ‘all and sundry’ stuff going to secret-project land was routinely eXpedited…