Guns Stolen From Boxcar in Atlanta


Airslide

Airslide

The Flange Squeal
this happened in the yard where i normally do a lot of railfanning. needless to say ill be steering clear for a while.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/report-100-rifles-stolen-train-car-17844589

however, there seem to be a few holes in the story so far.

1. Tilford is a bulk freight classification yard, its always pretty busy, and the CSX Police hQ is on site.
2. The average joe cannot just open a boxcar door - even with tools, i think it requires some training or know how to open a boxcar door...inside job perhaps like the taking of Pelham 1-2-3
3. boxcars are typically used to haul bulk freight or raw materials, not finished goods, not since the introduction and wide use of intermodal. cant imagine why "guns" would even be in a boxcar.
4. other than runaround or bypass, i have never seen intermodals parked in tilford and i have been railfanning there since about 1995.



seems pretty strange but i guess the investigation is still ongoing so further details are being withheld..
 
Say Airslide,
It was interesting to hear what you said about the fact their were special tools required to open a box car, intended as a safety precaution, I'm sure.

That being the case as well as Tilford yard being as busy as you say it is I would assume that unless this particular box car was parked at an out of the way spot it would be very hard for anyone to break in and steal 100 rifles. It sure does seem like an inside job to me too.

Of course there is another possibility, suppose that down the line prior to getting to Tilford the box car was comprised and the rifles stolen but only reported once the car reached Tilford!?

Interesting situation.
 
To the average joe a container is a boxcar, or a box on a rail car.
I would think if there were rifles being transported it wouldn't be an entire car or container of them, so they must have had to dig for them.
The inside job theory certainly fits here.
 
I agree.

Boxcars haven't been used for LCL freight for 50 years or more. So it must have been a container and the person writing the article made up for info they either didn't care to know, or were too clueless to ask. You would think they would prefer to get the nomenclature right at least. :eek:

People in the press never cease to amaze me how they can mess up an easy story. Events that I knew of first-hand always turned up muddled in articles -- worded as if it had happened in some alternate universe.

I became aware of this problem when my dad was an executive in a large medical company and info he would hand them on a ‘silver platter’ came out all convoluted. Same for me, later in the late-Cold War era, of projects I worked on that were reported in bizarre ways even after briefings.
:confused:
 
AK style, i.e. AK-74, AK-74M, AK-47, AK-101, 102, 103, 104 or 105. Short barrel, long, warsaw pact style. Wonder which ones they were?
 
I remember reading a newspaper article that referred to an " automatic assault rifle". It was actually a Ruger model 10-22 carbine with a small rotary magazine using 22-rimfire cartridges.
 
Airhead "reporters"

The problem of ignorant reporters is universal. The local TV hairspray substrates gabble on about a drive-by shooting leaving the street littered with "bullet shells". The same sort don't know the difference between automatic and semi-automatic, and further don't know that "automatic" by itself is usually a reference to an automatic pistol. The same sort of folks - even on national news outlets - refer to any naval ship as a "battleship". Evidently they don't know the difference between a destroyer or frigate and a battleship, and have never learned the generic term 'warship'. These folks can't describe any fire without the structure being "involved" (in a relationship?) or "fully engulfed" (redundant), any explosion without saying "war zone", or any tornado that didn't sound like a train.

The same sort - and disappointingly even on NPR - use beltway terms like "optics" when they mean "image", not lenses and mirrors, or use Gucci gulch bandit terms like "tranche" instead of the plain English direct translation 'slice'.

I'm not an NRA member or even sympathizer, but if you're a reporter you ought to bother to learn what you're talking about.
 
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