This may be kind of a dumb question but, do railroads avoid the number 13 when numbering locomotives and cars? Many tall buildings either go straight from the 12th floor to the 14th or assign the 13th floor a special name. In addition many passenger jets don’t have a row 13.
I have also read in Bill Yenne’s book on railroad folklore that railroads have or had an aversion to the number 9. His book also mentions that nesting robins were particularly revered by the railroads and wrote of one instance where a caboose wasleft until a nesting robin’s eggs were hatched and the babies learned to fly. Do any of these superstitions survive on modern railroads? Are there any others?[alien]
I’ve personely never heard anything like this but others may have. I’m not supersticous by any means, but a couple years ago on 6-6-06 I jokingly told my engineer that if anything were to go wrong today would be the day. If I recall correctly, CSX has a unit numbered 13, and I’m almost positive I’ve seen a car numbered 666.
I know that the UP once heeded a request and renumbered a 666 to something else.
Never heard of passenger or freight cars being numbered (or renumbered) around a number, though. TTX hasn’t shied away from the 666000 series (on TBOX cars).
I wonder if CSX will ever use the number 8888 again once that SD40-2 is retired.
There’s an Amtrak Genesis numbered 13, but I don’t really believe that 13 is an unlucky number. Of course, I’ve yet to see that engine, so I may change my mind…[:-^]
…Yes, many businesses and others shy away from using the number 13…No 13th floor at WDW’s Contempary Hotel in Florida. I’m sure similar circumstances are not difficult to find.
Railroads…I don’t know, but I’d say one could find it somewhere.
Hafen und Guterverkehr Koln in Germany has a small class of big diesels, formerly Deutsche Bahn class 240. They are numbered 11, 12 and 13. Couple of weeks ago 12 burned out because of a fire in a traction motor and 11 burned out more tha a year ago. Leaving lucky number 13…
Santa Fe used to have a C44-9W numbered 666, but it was renumbered to BNSF 599 a few years ago to avoid those digits.
The C&NW ‘had’ an MP15 numbered 1313 but is was wrecked when it ran away from a crew making a pickup one night down at Crystal Lake, IL around 1990. Somehow the brakes bled off and it took off up the branchline toward McHenry. One of the Metra trainsets was stored on the mainline near the station and it crashed into the cabcar destroying both pieces of equipment.
We’re not alone. The Chinese have an aversion to any number ending in 4. (Sounds the same as dying or dead.) The hotel we had in Beijing (Peking for old timers) had no floor 4, 13, 14, or 24. We were on the ‘26th’ but were we really? And no room numbers ending in 4, either!
And the Alton (and later the GM&O) had no Train 13. There was an 11 and its counterpart was 12. But 14 was paired with 15. Thus the southound Ann Rutledge was #19 but running north it was #18.
In 1922 in England, the North Eastern Railway built an Electric loco, No. 13, which was to have been the prototype for a new class of electric locos to work main line trains between York and Newcastle upon Tyne. But after the NER was merged with other railways in eastern England and became the London and North Eastern Railway the project to electrify the main line was scrapped. Apart from a few test runs on the line from Newport (Co. Durham) to Shildon which had been electrified as a pilot project No. 13 never turned a wheel in service. She was stored until 1949, by which time she had become British Rail No. 26600. But alas her new number did not improve her fortunes and she was scrapped in 1949.