You can’t always be sure ahead of time exactly where the train will stop. The snow may melt fast on one mountainside, so the railroad has to send the snow train to another place where the skiing is still good. A snow train has a baggage car that is fixed up like a store where you can buy or rent any kind of skiing equipment. It also has a diner where you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner or have hot soup when you get cold. [Illustration] For long trips to deep-snow country, you start Saturday night in a sleeping car and get back early Monday morning. AT THE HEAD END At the head end, a streamlined train has several cars that are different from passenger cars. One of them is built for the people who work on the train. It has berths where they sleep, shower rooms, lockers for clothes. The stewardess and the conductor may have offices there, too. (The men in the engine crew, of course, don’t stay with the train. They change at division points.) Some trains take a Railway Post Office car along at the head end. It does the work of a small post office. Regular mail clerks in the car sort letters and cancel the stamps. They toss out bags of mail at stations where the train doesn’t stop. At the same time, a long metal arm attached to the car reaches out and picks up mailbags that hang from hoops beside the track. The men who work in the Post Office car have learned to be very accurate and fast. They need to know the names and locations of hundreds of towns and cities, so they can toss each letter into exactly the right sorting bag. [Illustration] [Illustration] The Railway Express car carries packages of all kinds. It has refrigerated boxes for small quantities of things like fresh flowers and fish. The idea for express cars started long ago, before the government’s regular post office system had been worked out well. In those days, people often wanted to send valuable packages or letters in a hurry, but they had no way to do it. So some young men, who were known to be very honest, took on the job. Sometimes they carried parcels or letters in locked bags--sometimes in their own tall stovepipe hats! Gradually they got so much business that they had to hire a whole car from the railroad. They were the grandfathers of the Railway Express that now owns hundreds of cars. In springtime, the express man often travels with noisy cargo. That is the season when chicken farmers begin sending baby chicks in boxes all over the country. [Illustration] Pet animals usually ride in the baggage car, along with suitcases, trunks and bicycles. All kinds of pets travel on trains. You check them, just the way you check a suitcase, and the baggageman takes care of them. He is used to dogs and cats and birds, but once a baggageman had to mind a huge sea cow all the way from New York to St. Louis.