Re: (erielack) Water Bottles

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

It reminds me of the practice of dumping raw sewage from passenger cars 
prior to the mandate for retention tanks. This was especially unpleasant for 
mechanical people having to service the undercarriage of these cars. Nobody 
cared what was dumped along RR ROW's.

Paul B

Drew / PVO wasn't the only waste-water operation on the EL.  There was once
an Avon perfume plant on the Piermont Branch about two miles east of SF
Tower (Suffern, NY).  The EL got a tank or two of waste water now and then
from it.  One of the Ford Drills would go up the branch and retrieve the
car, and place it in Hillburn Yard for pickup by an eastbound road freight.
One summer evening in 1967 I was hanging out at Rutherford station (NJ) and
an eastbound freight came by with a tank car near the head end spilling some
liquid out of an open spigot in its belly.  The stuff was splashing all over
the roadbed, and I thought it was all some terrible mistake; perhaps the
town would have to be evacuated because it was toxic waste or was causing
poisonous fumes.  But no, no one at all was upset about it.  It hardly had
an odor to it.  About a year later, an EL towerman told me that he saw the
same thing a couple of times; it was wastewater out of the Avon plant, and
the spigot was opened intentionally.  In another year or two, the state and
federal environmental agencies got up to speed, and wastewater dumping in
transit because history.

Jim Gerofsky




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