Waybills, Part 71: milling in transit

My introductory post on this topic laid out the prototype basis for this transit privilege (cost reduction), and gave some example waybill content, along with identifying a broad range of the commodities which might be subject to transit privileges (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/waybills-part-50-in-transit.html ). The following post provided details and explained in particular how Southern Pacific instructed its agents to interpret, document and bill these kinds of shipments (that post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/08/wayblls-part-51-more-on-prototype-in.html ).
     As a brief summary, in-transit privileges meant that two short trips of a cargo, for example a load of grain that moved to a storage location for later delivery, then moved to destination, suffered from the markedly higher freight rates for shorter trips. The in-transit privilege allowed the entire trip length to set the freight rate. Some of the many ramifications and details of the in-transit rules are laid out in the two blog posts just cited.
     With that background on the complexities of the prototype milling-in-transit waybill process, I worked through the aspects of the paperwork that might be included in model railroad waybills (you can review that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/09/waybills-part-52-in-transit-bills-model.html ). My final product was a milling-in-transit waybill in the 2.5 x 3.5-inch size I use on my layout.

This bill really only is altered in the part at the very bottom, which is the in-transit documentation. The remainder of this bill is the regular freight waybill (as is true of the prototype Transit Freight waybill).  But when I tried filling out this bill, as noted in the post cited just above, there was very little room to do so. I accordingly looked forward to seeing what could be done in the 5 x 7-inch format being explored for Paul Weiss’s layout (see my prior description at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/06/waybills-part-69-another-approach.html ). .
     My first step was to make a larger version of the material at the bottom of the bill shown above, mostly just allowing more width per space, with the same four “minimalist” categories in columns, as you see below. The prototype transit waybill is AAR Form AD-134 (which can be seen in Railway Accounting Rules, Accounting Division, AAR, and in my “Waybills Part 52” post, linked in the third paragraph of the present post). It has 9 columns and three lines, compared to my 4 columns and two lines.

     With this addition, and a “transit” header, here is an example of a 5 x 7 version of a Transit Freight bill, in this instance for Nickel Plate. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

     I won’t go into how such a waybill is filled out, because I’ve already shown that in some detail in the three prior posts about milling-in-transit privileges (Waybill series Parts 50, 51, and 52 (links to all three posts are provided in the first three paragraphs of the present post).
     I don’t anticipate that too many model loads will use this waybill, particularly because it requires additional filling out, yet adds nothing to actual layout operating information. In that sense, using this bill, even more so than the standard freight waybill, is furnishing “typographical scenery,” as Al Kalmbach called it. The degree of play value achieved is something every modeler would have to decide for themselves.
Tony Thompson