An op session briefing

Before each operating session begins on my layout, I present a short briefing, as do many layout owners before sessions. I want to make sure the layout locale and background is appreciated, and that people know how my waybill system works, along with important items like the location of the bathroom and the fire extinguisher, and the emergency exit (just one, same as the entrance). 

So what do I cover, about the layout itself? I begin with explaining where the layout is imagined to be located in California, as discussed previously (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/08/conveying-ones-layout-locale.html ). I show an 8.5 x 11-inch version of the map below, mention that the railroad is Southern Pacific’s Coast Division, and state that the era is 1953.    

We always operate on the date in 1953 that matches the day of operation, so for example if we were operating on November 15 of the current year, the day on the layout would be November 15, 1953. 

This affects primarily crops being harvested and shipped out of my packing houses (as I’ve described: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/09/seasonality-of-crops-and-traffic.html ). Especially at times of diverse crop shipment, I may show a table of crop harvest times. Below is the crop table for vegetables in the area I model (there’s also a fruit table.). Peak harvesting is shown by black bars, “shoulder” seasons in gray. 

I usually also add a little about my layout goals, if any of the operators are new or haven’t been here for awhile. My goal is to recreate freight railroading as it was practiced on the Southern Pacific in 1953 in rural areas of the central California coast, using not only period-specific and locale-specific rolling stock, but also operational procedures typical of SP at that time. 

I often mention the prototype California vehicle license plate in use in 1953. I have an actual vintage one on the wall above the door, as you see below. In the 1950s, California issued full plates every five years or so, and during the intermediate years, issued corner numbers to be added to the plate to cover the old year. As shown below, in 1953 it was white. I have modeled this plate appearance for all my HO vehicles, as previously posted (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/11/vehicle-license-plates-in-ho-scale.html ). 

I then run through my waybill system of car movement, using full-page (8.5 x 11 inch) blow-ups of each type of bill. I won’t say more about this segment of the briefing here, since I’ve already posted a full description (see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/10/waybills-part-124-introducing-my-system.html ). 

Turning to the time of day for our 1953 operating session, I explain that we use a wall clock set to layout time, not the time on your watch or cell phone. It is a 1:1 clock, so not a fast clock, but it does differ from “real world” time. I wrote about my clock choice in a post a few years ago (it’s here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/08/replacing-fast-clock.html ). 

It’s also important to introduce the layout timetable. I described my timetable components in some detail in a column for Model Railroad Hobbyist, back in October 2014 (you can still access it to read online, or download, for free, at www.mrhmag.com ). 

My timetable provides mainline train times, in conjunction with a line-up (about which, see this: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/01/line-ups-for-operating.html ), and contains schematic maps of each layout town to facilitate identifying industries and spot numbers. Here’s an example.

In that same post cited in the paragraph above, I included a copy of the train order form we use, to authorize trains on the Santa Rosalia Branch. I show the operators what the Southern Pacific prototype train order and clearance forms look like. 

I point out that pencils are available on the sorting shelves (see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/10/small-project-layout-sorting-shelves.html ), along with small flashlights to assist in reading car numbers, if needed. Plenty of blank switch lists are available for those who like to use them, along with clipboards to use if desired. 

Lastly, I mention the kinds of track switch throws on the layout, from Bitter Creek and Caboose Industries, to Star and Peco, two switches back from the aisle that use manual push-pull operation, and a few powered turnouts, and I demonstrate their operation for those who haven’t seen them before.

I also point out that if a car comes off the track, feel free to put it back on. If it keeps happening with that car, tell me. Likewise if a coupler is troublesome, or a track switch misbehaves, I will fix it if I can during the session. But tell me: it’s the only way I know what needs to be fixed. And with that, the session is off and running.

Tony Thompson 

Riding the (Rio Grande) Zephyr in 1980

I recently came across an article I wrote for a local modeling publication after riding the Zephyr that was still being operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western between Denver and Salt Lake City in 1980 (originally a joint train of the CB&Q, D&RGW, and WP between Chicago and California). I found it an interesting account, and thought I would share it here.

Background: I had organized (along with my colleague Mel Bernstein) an international technical conference on hydrogen embrittlement in metals, the third in a series of such conferences that I helped organize (eventually there would be six), which was held at Jackson Lake Lodge, in Grand Teton National Park in 1980. 

At this conference, we gave registrants T-shirts, the image on which is shown below. The upper emblem is that of the Metallurgical Society of AIME, a sponsor, and the lower one is Carnegie-Mellon University, where I was employed at the time.

After the formation of Amtrak in 1970, the D&RGW would continue to operate its part of the Zephyr until 1983. When it was discontinued, it was the last privately operated passenger train in the U.S. Because of the spectacular scenery through which it ran, it was often photographed. Here is a single example, an on-line photo in Utah not credited by photographer but dated 1981, the year after I rode it. 

Here is the text I wrote at that time, published in my local NMRA division newsletter.

“Yes, Virginia, there still are passenger trains in America . . . ones that leave and arrive on time, that serve good food, that have clean windows and clean interiors. But as you would immediately guess, they don’t have ‘pointless arrows’ on them.  

“You may have already realized that I’m referring to Nos. 17 and 18, the Rio Grande Zephyrs. Certainly a highlight, if not the highlight, our family vacation this past summer was a ride from Salt Lake City to Denver aboard No. 18. 

“To any railfan, the trip has to be a delight, from the moment you board the ex-California Zephyr or CZ cars like Silver Pine, Silver Mustang or others, and spot the three F9’s on the point. The cars are in just amazing condition, looking scarcely a third of their 30-year age. The same can’t be said for the F’s, which are prone to big bursts of black smoke at every throttle change; but orange and silver F’s can’t be all bad. And they do move pretty well, outpacing cars on parallel I-15 for miles south of Salt Lake. 

“One also discovers that the Rio Grande is a pretty busy railroad. We passed 15 freights headed west in 13 hours. I asked the conductor why we never overtook any headed east. He smiled: ‘They have the same schedule we do.’ 

“Most of those freights were fairly short, 25 to 40 cars, with three to six SD-40’s on the head end, and sometimes a couple on the rear end. In fact, I didn’t see any power on the road that wasn’t an SD-40, though the yards hold plenty of Geeps and other engine types.

“Several of the meets were ‘on the fly,’ both trains moving, no doubt a big help on the long grades.And I hadn’t appreciated how much of the traffic today is coal. Many of the trains would fit perfectly into a Chessie or N&W scene with no trouble (except for lettering, of course!)

“For those with an historical bent, there are lots of signs of the past. Many of the D&RGW’s fleets of GS gondolas and 40-ft. box cars are still around, most stenciled ‘MW,’ and there are still many of the orange-and-silver box cars running, too. Buildings and tanks in several places were still stenciled with old, round ‘Scenic Line of the World’ emblem usually 15 feet high. Most of the terminals still have turntables and roundhouses; just this summer, the Grande has been pulling down the last remains of water tanks and coal docks in some sidings.  

“But the real news is the Zephyr. An eight-car train with five domes, with all dome seats unreserved, means that everyone who wants to watch the scenery (and railroad operations) can do so with no hassle. Unlike what one usually encounters on Amtrak, the glass in the domes is unclouded, uncracked, and clean. The same goes for windows downstairs. 

“We ate all three meals in the diner, since No. 18 leaves at 7:30 AM. The food was pretty darn good. Incidentally, the menu still has the notation which it bore in CZ days: ‘It will be a pleasure to serve any dish not listed that you may wish if it is available.’ They mean it, too: we saw a couple ask for and get lamb chops that weren’t on the menu that night. The prices were reasonable, comparable in my memory to Amtrak, though the quality seemed higher.

“I talked with both the Salt Lake agent and the conductor about patronage of the Zephyr, and they agreed that it tends to be steady year-round, with skiers in the winter, fall foliage, and of course the summer vacation trade, which is heaviest. Train size varies from five to ten cars.

“On the question of how much the D&RGW loses on the train, both said that it isn’t much ‘now that the fare’s been raised.’ Four tickets for our family totaled $100.16, so it is not an expensive ride, even today. And both said that the railroad means to continue the train for the time being.

“I hardly need to summarize that it was a lot of fun. And as my wife observed, it was more relaxing than a trip of half the time on an airplane, and you didn’t have to eat out of your lap. Don’t miss it if you have the chance.”

It was fun for me to re-discover this small essay, about an interesting slice of time, and of course, to re-live that very pleasant journey. 

Tony Thompson 

Naperville 2025

The Naperville freight car meeting, as it originally was, was founded by Martin Lofton of Sunshine Models, partly to provide a venue at which he could sell his kits direct instead of all by mail. But the three-day meeting included a full clinic schedule. He had a talent for finding and inviting a wide range of speakers for the clinics, many of them previously unknown to a national audience. The first meeting was in 1994, and it has continued ever since except during the pandemic. 

Within a few years of its inception, the meeting became one of the emerging Railroad Prototype Modelers (RPM) meetings, an idea warmly endorsed by Martin. After Martin passed away after running the meeting for 16 years, it was taken over by others, who have carried on the tradition very well. Currently Frank Hodina is in charge. The meeting last weekend was the 31st, by my count. Before the pandemic, I only missed a couple of them.

As has been the case for several years now, the meeting took place in the Northern Illinois University’s Naperville Conference Center, a spacious and modern facility. It includes a huge room which was used for vendor tables and model displays. A view of most of that room is below. 

Among the exhibition of very nice models was this mammoth display by Fenton Wells, in part to support the clinic he gave about kitbashing reefers. It’s perhaps appropriately titled “Reefer Madness,” with every model accompanied by a prototype photo. 

The meeting rooms are in a two-story wing of the facility, and it happens to have a two-story-tall entrance hall, in which the Midwest Mod-U-Trak group set up a large HO layout (shown below, viewed from the second floor). Their N-scale compatriots had an even larger layout in another large space. 

Many of the individual modules were very nicely done. Below is a photo, most of which shows the Willow Springs module, with a Santa Fe freight passing under the working signal bridge.  

As always, there was quite a program of clinics, most of it put together by Steve Hile. Below is a single example, Joe Binish about to start his talk about Great Northern’s FT diesel units. I gave two talks myself, on realistic operation for small layouts, and about the new OpSIG Achievement Program (see, for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/10/questions-about-opsig-achievement.html ).

Another nice aspect of this meeting is that layout owners in the area organize a few operating sessions. I operated again on Bob Hanmer’s excellent Great Northern and DMIR layout (which I’ve commented on before: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/an-operating-weekend-around-chicago.html ). I’ll say more about Bob’s layout in a future post.

On Saturday night I was invited for the first time to operate on John Goodhart’s Lake Erie, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad. I was lucky enough to draw the Hamilton switching job, a lot of fun and with interesting challenges. Here’s my switcher, in the middle of some complex moves.

This was another fine Naperville RPM meeting. I enjoyed it quite a bit, as I always have. Next fall, if you’ve never attended, you might think about trying it yourself.

 Tony Thompson 

Making a silk purse . . .

Recently I was given a box of old HO toy trains and brass track from my neighbor, Andy Laird, who had passed away. Most of the models were ancient Athearn and Tyco locos and cars, many with missing or broken parts. But one model caught my attention. An Athearn reefer from the days when these cars had “operating” doors, it could perhaps be made into a “scenery” car, being loaded at a packing house with doors open. 

Here’s the model. It’s classic Athearn, and  has its original horn-hook couplers (in a coupler box with a screw lid, not the later Athearn steel clip) and the usual Athearn black running board, ice hatches, and crude brake wheel, all of which should be boxcar red. 

Similarly, the interlocking piece of the side over the door, which anchors the roof, is roof color, not side color. A couple of hatch covers are missing. But all that is easily fixed, and maybe I can do something with the doors. 

Note that the car is lettered FDEX, for the small number of double-deck cars rostered by Fruit Growers. Why Athearn chose this scheme is unknown, but maybe it could be kept. 

But how about those doors? The hinge representations are huge, and a couple are broken. One option would be to discard these doors and remove the “hinges,” then make new styrene doors. If the idea to model open doors is pursued, an alternative is to use the old door, but thicken the door to represent its insulation in the prototype.

To decide how to model these doors, we can begin with a notion of what an open steel reefer door looks like. The photo below, taken during lettuce crate loading at Salinas, California (PFE photo, CSRM), shows open doors clearly. You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

Note that the insulated door thickness at the top tapers right to the outer edge of the door, and the inner surface is wood (varnished, as is the car interior). This would be easy to represent on replaced doors.

(By the way, these insulated doors form a “plug” in the insulation when closed. That’s why reefer terminology in the 1950s distinguished between “sliding” and “swinging” doors; all were plug doors.)

Now to the model. I began by working on the roof features. First, Athearn’s poor rendition of a steel grid running board is removed, as are the hatch covers and the hatch “hinge” areas. I showed this upgrade in a blog post long ago (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/08/ujpgrading-old-models-athearn-reefers.html ). 

Then small pieces of styrene strip were used to close the openings where the latch bar connections were, the hinge gap is puttied. Here’s a repeat photo of the earlier project, with one hatch cover still to be added, and prior to adding latch bars. The mo del shown below has an etched metal running board installed. The FDEX cars were built with wood running boards, but eventually received metal ones. I may do the same.

After consideration, it was evident that the old doors weren’t worth saving. So I simply made new doors using styrene sheet, 0.060-inch thick and two scale feet wide (like the prototype), then filed at a 45-degree angle at the top (see prototype photo above). Here’s such a door. Since only the inside will be shown, there is no need to add the outer door surface details. 

In  the prototype, the edges of doors were given a flexible canvas covering over a “spongy,” compressible material that would be compressed when the door was closed, minimizing air leakage. Color photos of this canvas show a dirty gray color and the inside surface a natural wood color. But painting and installation of my model doors will be covered in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Small project: layout sorting shelves

Every layout faces the challenge in an operating session, of having a place for crews to examine and sort paperwork, especially waybills or car cards. Doing so on the layout surface is not only inelegant and probably in the way, but may put scenic items at risk. More importantly, often there is not enough space to really look at what a crew needs to do. 

One thing that can help is for crews to use clipboards, though this has its own limitations. Clipboards that are full size are cumbersome additions to throttles and anything else being carried, and even a 5 x 8-inch clipboard is not really a convenient object to handle along with running trains. I do have both sizes of clipboards in the layout room, and offer them to crews who want them, but not everyone does.

A few years ago, I picked up on something I saw in a special issue of Model Railroader (entitled How to Operate Your Model Railroad, it was issued in the summer of 2012 and remained available for purchase at Kalmbach for years). In it, they showed a design for a “sorting shelf,” as they termed it, made of hardboard or Masonite. I liked the idea and built two of them for my layout.

Here’s the idea: wedge-shaped back supports and a fairly wide bottom lip allow easy use of the shelf. An overview of the idea is this (from page 27 in that magazine), with a 12-inch wide back. 

Specific dimensions for essentially the same shelf, slightly different from what is shown above, were included in the magazine on page 79; this one is only 10 inches wide, but otherwise much the same. Here it’s called a “rack.”

I looked at this and realized it would be really easy to make. I simply reproduced the above ideas in a simple sketch in my Project Log (a 5 x 8-inch Moleskine book called a “modeling journal” in a previous post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-modeling-journal.html ). Note that I realized the two wedges could be cut from a single strip of the right width and length. 

This was a really quick project. I glued the parts with carpenter’s glue and clamped them. My shelf is 11 inches wide, thus similar to the ones in the article, though I think that more width would be welcome by those who use the shelves. Below is a completed one, on the fascia at Shumala on my layout. I used the “shields” for the screw heads to avoid the screw slots being a hazard to anyone’s hand. 

The photo above shows a pencil, an uncoupling pick, and a small flashlight on the shelf. My 3.5-inch high waybills fit nicely on this size of shelf, as you can see below. To the left and right of the shelf are “J strips” for holding waybills. I prefer that waybills in use are placed in the J strips instead of leaned against freight cars, simply to preserve the layout visuals.

These have been in place on the layout for some years, and continue to be useful. If I were to do it over, I would just make them bigger. They certainly do what I wanted them to do.

 Tony Thompson 

The SP articulated triple-unit diners

A famous part of Southern Pacific food service after 1939 was the articulated triple-unit dining cars, comprising a coffee shop and a dining car with a kitchen car between to serve both adjoining cars. Designed by SP and built by Pullman-Standard, there were initially two triple-units, assigned to the Daylight. A thorough history of these cars is provided in Volume 4 of the series, Southern Pacific Passenger Cars, covering Dining Service Cars (SP Historical & Technical Society, Upland, CA, 2010).

In 1941, SP would purchase two more of these triple units, and in 1949 another two, making  a fleet of six of these 3-car sets, normally used in Daylight, San Joaquin Daylight, and Shasta Daylight service, with occasional relief service  in the City of San Francisco. All cars were classified into Class AD (articulated diner).

Shown below is a Bruce Heard photo of the kitchen-passageway side of the second triple unit, SP 10253–10254–10255, in the San Joaquin Daylight. From left, the cars are the diner, the kitchen, and the coffee shop. Note that one of SP’s full-length dome cars is coupled at the left of the photo. The full-width diaphragms between cars of the triple-unit are  evident. 

The second pair of triple units built was quite similar to the first pair. Here is a builder view of the first of the two sets built in 1941, AP 10256–257–258, classes 70-AD-3, 57-AD-2, and 70-AD-4. Again, this is the kitchen-passageway side, with the high windows on the kitchen car.

These cars are iconic equipment for anyone interested in SP passenger service modeling in the transition era.  Awhile back, Broadway Limited produced a triple-unit model, which they chose from the second pair of these units, the 1949 ones shown above. Broadway  modeled SP 10259–269–261, which were classes 70-AD-3, 57-AD-2, and 70-AD-4.

Here they are on my layout with the coffee shop at right, coupled to an Athearn 77-C coach at right, and the new Rapido full-length dome car at left (I’ve posted about this new dome car: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-new-rapido-sp-dome-car.html ). 

Usual practice was to run the coffee shop forward in train consists, thus the implication that this train is moving to the right in the photo. But as I’ve mentioned several times, my layout’s staging is limited in length, preventing operation of prototypical-length passenger trains, so instead I operate the occasional deadhead move to balance passenger equipment between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In that sort of move, the triple unit could operate in either orientation, and the train shown above may be moving either direction.

 The Broadway Limited model is very nicely done, with effective design of the articulations between cars, including nicely-designed adjustments to the between-car diaphragms to permit operation on model-size curves. I have enjoyed including it from time to time in my operating sessions.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 124: Introducing my system

At a modelers’ meeting not long ago, I was asked an interesting question, one I couldn’t readily answer without visual aids. The question was, how do I introduce my layout’s system of waybills at an operating session, to those who may know nothing about it? I do have an introduction (with visual aids) that I’ve been using for years, and perhaps it would be of interest to show what it is.

I chose a number of waybills that would illustrate the main features, and printed them out on 8.5 x 11-inch paper (the waybills I actually use are only 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size).  The photo below shows that this method yields “visual aids” that can be appreciated by a group of people. 

My first pair of waybills is intended to illustrate the overall prototype format (a vertical division between the destination and consignee on the left, and the shipper and place of origin on the right; and with cargo shown below). Car initials and number are at the top, along with AAR car type (the latter not being prototypical). Here are a pair that I show (you can click to enlarge).  

These are an inbound load at left, to be delivered to an industry on the layout, and an outbound load at right, which will be picked up at an industry on the layout and moved to the SP main line to be taken to San Luis Obispo and put into a through train.

 I then show an additional pair of waybills, which were chosen for a particular purpose, beyond illustrating the prototype locations of information. The one on the left, in particular, dates from an early operating session, and the conductor who had this waybill came to me and said, “I can’t find Carlson’s Furniture.” I quietly pointed out the additional information after the name: “HS. TRK.,” of course meaning “house track.” In other words, conductors need to read the whole waybill. The same message applies to the second one; here the vital information is “TM. TRK.,” naturally meaning “team track.”

These waybills of course contain all the information a crew needs to handle them. But this isn’t true of every bill they encounter. The Empty Car Bill, modified from an SP document, looks like this for an inbound car:

This bill shows the town to which the car is destined, but does not identify the shipper. This is because the empty car was ordered by the agent in that town, and the agent knows which shipper get the car. That in turn means the crew has to stop at the depot and consult with the agent. In the model situation, there is no one acting as agent, so an agent’s message is provided (for background, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/06/operating-with-agent-messages.html ). Below is a sample, showing where PFE 40559 should be spotted.  

Next I show a perishable bill. This form was recommended by the AAR to be printed on pink stock, and the SP followed that recommendation. This also could tell the crew that they need to spot the car for  initial icing, that is, filling the ice bunkers before the car begins its journey to destination.

At this point, I show a pair of tank car bills for a privately owned tank car (in this case, General American). A private owner could request that empty cars move to the desired destination on a regular freight waybill instead of an Empty Car Bill, so that movement would be expedited, rather than wait for each successive railroad which received the empty, having to prepare an Empty Car Bill.

Lastly, I show a card that is waybill-size and requests a re-spot of a car. This was modified from a UP route card. The car initials and number are shown toward the bottom, and the places from which and to which the car is to be moved are shown.

With all this being spelled out, I have found that crews understand and use the waybill system very well. So I guess the key elements must all be there.

Tony Thompson