Before TOPS or computerisation how did British Rail know where a carriage or wagon was at any particular time?
The Yanks had it pretty much down, essential I guess when your wagons could end up thousands of miles away from home on another company's tracks. I suppose since BR knew their stock wasn't going anywhere it didn't overly matter if a few went missing, since it was presumably still there and still working for them.
There is an old story about an NYC manager boasting that he knew where every wagon was at any time, so a friend happened to pass a boxcar sat in a siding on the West Coast with people sitting in it, noted down the number and asked later him where it was - to be told promptly that it was in a town in California, being used as accommodation for Polish workmen.
Most US freight cars now have passive RFID tags (same basic idea as track balises) on both sides to facilitate automated tracking.
But yes, in pre-computer days railways needed armies of clerks to (try) and keep track of freight vehicles, and wagons carried paper 'waybills' (which of course could get lost/damaged along the way, resulting in the wagon sitting in a yard while someone tried to work out where it needed to go next...)
They didn't know, and they didn't really know much after TOPS was introduced either. It took 5 years to get to the bottom of how many wagons British Rail actually had.
I remember one TOPS clerk telling me he used to lose wagons at one mine on a regular basis, and at the same time, wagons used to reappear at this one mine. He was an enthusiast, went onto a depot over a weekend and the rake of wagons caught his eye, he had seen them from one side coming into depot and heading out, he had seem them from the other side.
It turned out the wagons had been numbered differently on one side to the other, when they were allocated their TOPS numbers. The guys had stencilled xxx01 to xxx40 on one side of the rake, clocked off and gone home, a new gang came on duty and started at xxx41 to xxx80 on the other side of the rake.
When the composition of the train was entered into the computer it depended which side of the train the yard staff walked down and what numbers they sent through to HQ.
lots of UK stock have RFID tags fitted
It's worth reading the freight section of the Beeching report to get an idea of the state of the wagon fleet at the turn of the sixties. I came away with the thought that they didn't really have much of a clue where most of the fleet was at any one time.
I seem to remember that one of the railway magazines published an article shortly after TOPS came in that having numbers shown on locos / carriages was going to be phased out, and they would have a bar-code attached to the side, that could be read by static and hand held scanners.
This upset quite a few spotters.
Who then realised it was the April issue...
I have seen reference to "Number takers" at important junctions whose job was to record the number of every passing wagon (refering to the 1920s). This seems a pretty impossible job to me and, if there were such people, I wouldn't think there reports would be much use.
I've also heard of number takers, but employed at the large marshalling yards, which would make more sense.
Not sure if true or one of the numerous railway shaggy dog stories but didn't Railtrack/Network rail lose a signal box once & an entire EMU went missing following extensive disruption due to snow?