My column in the September Model Railroad Hobbyist

My latest column in the “Getting Real” series in Model Railroad Hobbyist or MRH, a long-running series for which this is my 32nd column, has just appeared. My subject is one that, when considering possible topics for the next column, I was surprised to find I hadn’t ever written about before. The topic is how my Southern Pacific 1953 layout is operated.

I have, to be sure, described many details of layout operation, particularly my design and use of model waybills. But this is more of a 500-foot view of the events that make up an operating session.

An example is this photo of SP Consolidation 2829, making a switching move across Nipomo Street in Ballard. Just above it in the photo is one of SP’s converted 12-1 Pullman cars, now serving as a MOW bunk car, spotted on the Ballard outfit track (this project was described in an earlier post, at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/small-project-sp-boarding-bunk-car.html ).

Most of the article is taken up with describing the many Southern Pacific operating documents I collected or consulted. These range from the obvious, like Rulebooks, Timetables and Special Instructions for the Division I model, to less immediately recognized paper like a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers labor agreement, a schedule of manifest, merchandise, and perishable trains, or the “Locomotives Assigned” booklets issued quarterly by SP with divisional locomotive assignments. 

For example, here are two pages from that schedule of trains, showing at left the Coast Merchandise East or CME, familiarly known as the “Overnight,” and on the right, one of the “hot” through trains on Coast Division, the Los Angeles Manifest, symbol LA.  

A number of examples of various operating moments were included, partly to illustrate the layout, but more importantly to show the ways operating moves are carried out. One of those views showed SD&AE 103 switching at Santa Rosalia, picking up an empty tank car from the Richfield bulk oil dealer. The background of this locomotive, stationed at San Luis Obispo for years was the subject of an earlier blog post (you may view it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/03/sd-locomotives-on-sp.html ). 

The photo above also shows several of the industries at Santa Rosalia, from the Coastal Citrus packing house at photo center, to the Channel Islands Kelp Products building just visible at right (see a summary of my construction article at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/07/my-article-in-july-2022-mrh.html ), and at rear, the Pismo Marine ship chandlers.

Another example that represents quite a bit of the switching work at Shumala is this view of SP switcher 1423 making up the second Santa Rosalia Local of the day. In the background, a Warren LPG tank car is at the LPG spot of the Associated Oil Company bulk oil dealer. Just above the locomotive is the caboose track, and at right center is the yard office.

I have tried in this article to both outline the operations of the layout, and to offer illustrations. In a similar way, layout history was encompassed in my article in the Layout Design Journal magazine (you can see a summary at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/06/my-article-in-new-layout-design-journal.html ). But a real article about the physical layout and its track plan remains to be done.

Tony Thompson  

Article in Dispatchers Office about BayRails

The October, 2026 issue of the magazine of the Operations SIG (OpSIG), The Dispatcher's Office or DO, has just been published. I show the cover below. I mention this issue because of an article in it that I wrote. But my authorship isn’t what’s significant about it.

What I want to call attention to is that the article, publicizing our local biannual operating weekend, BayRails (often mentioned here previously; to see more, use “BayRails” as the search term in the search box at right). The article states that, unlike many operating weekends around the country, BayRails is open to those who “don’t know somebody” and thus can’t get an invitation. 

Originally, I think, the invitation-only character of these events was to ensure that only serious people, who had some grasp of prototype operation, would be included. Nothing wrong with that goal, except it cuts out people not already acquainted with the “select” and thus with no way into these experiences. Giving people who would like to try operation, a chance to do so, seems like a good idea, even if they are people you don’t already know.

I showed five photos of Bay Area layouts in the article, chosen to be different from the ones used in a similar article I wrote in advance of the 2025 BayRails (DO, January 2025). Here is one the magazine didn’t use, a view on Robert Bowdidge’s HO scale SP Vasona Branch layout. In the photo, from left, Lawrence Crowl, Brooks Moses, Rich Murphy, and Bryan Borough prepare for a meet at Los Gatos on the upper level of the layout. It’s set in the 1930s.  

If you’re interested in BayRails next March, either as a possible attendee or just out of curiosity, I suggest you take a look at the website, which is at: http://bayrails.com/index.php . There you can find multiple photos of the other 15 layouts not shown in the DO article, along with textual information and layout histories. Dates are March 22–25.

If you’d like to know more about the OpSIG, there is considerable information at their website ( https://www.opsig.org/ ). Joining only costs $10 a year and includes four copies of the DO (electronic form), so a terrific bargain. Give it a look.

Tony Thompson 

An excellent new freight car book

As regular readers will know, I’m sometimes called a “freight car guy,” and there’s certainly some truth in that. In that capacity, I was delighted to receive a brand-new book with a breathtaking collection of builder photos of freight cars.

The book is called Canadian Car & Foundry, subtitled “Freight Cars 1900–1960.” It’s by John Riddell, long-time noted Canadian modeler. It’s an 8.5 x 11-inch book, softbound, containing 200 pages with some 370 photos. Here is the cover:

It is published by the Bytown Railway Society, Inc., and is available from them for $64.95 (U.S. dollars). You can order it online at their site, which is https://www.bytownrailwaysociety.ca .

A striking feature of the book is the excellent photographs, which are very well reproduced on coated paper. The company photographers undoubtedly took large-format negatives, and the results really are stunning. I will show just a few examples here.  

 To begin, here is CN 503565, a 40-foot single-sheathed box car with two-piece Dreadnaught steel ends. It’s one of 1600 cars built in spring 1929, number series 503500–505099. This is just one of many very large orders built for CN and CP by CC&F. 

Built at almost the same time was an all-steel box car group for Canadian Pacific, the famed “Mini-box” steel box cars. They were just 8 feet, 7 inches high inside, giving them a 3000 cubic foot capacity. The car shown was the first of a 1500-car series, 24000–241499, and has a recessed two-piece Dreadnaught end.

I was intrigued with the variety and number of tank cars produced. Shown here is an interesting one, part of an order of eight cars built in 1930. It’s an acid tank car, AAR Class TA, as the dome appearance immediately suggests. Its capacity was 7000 U.S. gallons, and was intended for sulfuric acid. All eight of these cars remained in service until 1970, when they were sold to Union Tank Car.

 

And yes, they built cabooses too. This one obviously built for Canadian National, one of 50 cars built in August 1924, numbered CN 77850–77899.

This really is a delightful book to page through, and it definitely adds to our knowledge of North American freight cars. Of course only a tiny fraction of CC&F production could be shown. Some of us will be hoping that there is a Volume 2 some day.

Tony Thompson 

New book on steam facilities from Firecrown

I’ve just received my copy of an excellent new book from Firecrown Media (successor to Kalmbach Media and all its assets). This book was created by Jeff Wilson, but as Jeff explains, it really was the dream of former Trains editor Jim Wrinn, who didn’t live long enough to do the project himself.

It really is a very handsome volume, with excellent photos featured throughout. An 8.5 x 11-inch book, it contains 208 pages, and is available for $29.99 at http://shop.trains.com/ . Here’s the cover: 

The book, naturally, draws on the very extensive resources of the former Kalmbach Library, particularly the part associated with Trains magazine (thus the Trains logo on the cover). 

Of course, you have to be interested in steam locomotives to fully appreciate this book and its photographic quality, but an image like the one below is surely quintessential railroading. (It’s Milwaukee Road 2-8-2 no. 354, taking water at New Lisbon, Wisconsin in July 1953; James G. LaVale photo.)  

The many photos of the interiors of roundhouses and shops are endlessly informative, as are the photos showing the scale of such facilities. I enjoyed this aerial view of the Santa Fe locomotive facility at Albuquerque, N.M., including the heavy repair shop at left (Santa Fe photo). This is just one of the numerous double-page spreads in the book; I apologize for the gutter image at center. 

And many of the activities associated with locomotive servicing are shown throughout the book. Here is just one example, showing a Union Pacific self-propelled crane, unloading coal from GS gondolas at a coaling dock. (Trains magazine collection). As the book notes, the Utah Coal Route gondola nearest the camera represents a jointly-owned operation of the the Utah Railway and UP’s Los Angeles & Salt Lake. Originally the UCR owned 2000 of these gondolas.

I continue to browse the book and find more and more interesting and informative photos. Kudos to Jeff Wilson for making this book a reality, and to Firecrown for publishing it in the size it deserves.

Tony Thompson 

My article in the new Layout Design Journal

Those among the readers of this blog who belong to the Layout Design SIG (Special Interest Group) of NMRA will be familiar with the organization’s publication, the Layout Design Journal or LDJ (and its predecessor, Layout Design News). The newest issue of LDJ, no. 75, has just been issued, dated Second Quarter 2026.

The lead article in this issue is about my layout and its history. This had its beginning some years ago, when long-time LDJ editor Byron Henderson asked me if a track plan had ever been published for my layout, or any layout article. I replied that no track plan existed, and only part of the layout had been described in Railroad Model Craftsman in June 1990. Byron replied, “Write an article for LDJ and we’ll do a track plan — if you’ll commit to giving us your first layout article.” Sounded good to me,, so I said “Deal.” 

Well, as I said, that was some years ago. But finally I got to sketching out what I wanted to say, and ran a first draft past Byron to see if it it was what he wanted. His response was interesting: he thought it might be a better article for LDJ if I recounted my original goals for the layout I had built in Pittsburgh in the 1980s, and how and how why I changed it after moving to Berkeley in 1994. Lessons learned, in other words. So that’s how I wrote it.

Here is the cover of Issue 75,  The magazine is 8.5 x 11 inches and contains 40 pages. The top photo and drawing on the cover are from my article, designated (by Byron) as “A Layout Tale in Two Parts.” 

In the article itself, there are several drawings of what the Pittsburgh layout was like, including a sketch version of my exceptional amount of staging. Byron selected the photos for the most part, from past blog posts and other sources, and wrote all the captions. So in some ways, he should be recognized as almost a co-author in bringing this to completion.

Below is page 1 of my article. Note that now the full article title is “Compact Calif. Central Coast — Again,” with a sub-title that is sort of the name on the cover. No problem, it’s all clear. And note also the article’s division into sections, with Byron’s section titles. For the most part, I think they are excellent additions to the piece, so I’m not complaining. 

Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of the magazine issue can purchase it on their website, which is located at: www.ldsig.org/publications . 

I like what resulted from this set of interactions, and it provides a picture of my layout history more clear than my usual recollections, because I re-examined my thoughts and decisions comparing the old with the new layout, and sure enough, there definitely were lessons learned.

Now it remains to provide a broad description of the layout as it now is, including its range and types of industries, and how it is operated. I am starting work on that project now.

Tony Thompson  

Acquiring knowledge of your era

Many serious modelers choose a specific era for layout or rolling stock modeling. Richard Hendrickson chose to model rolling stock, mostly for the Santa Fe, for October 1947. Jack Burgess’s superb layout depicts the Yosemite Valley Railroad in the third week of August, 1939, because that was the last period that the YV operated a through Pullman to El Portal, at the National Park’s entrance.

Of course many people want a looser time constraint. I can understand the person who wants, for example, to be able to model some prototype scrapped in 1965, and also to model some new equipment that arrived in 1968. That person might say “I model 1965–68.” But the danger lurking in looser constraint was well expressed once by Tony Koester, who said, “If you say that you model the 1950s, what you’re really doing is modeling 1959 badly.”

But however your choice falls out, especially if it is a period 75 years ago or more, how can you research its character, details, and style? We are all familiar with histories of railroads, locomotives and rolling stock, and likely also with histories of line changes, depot abandonments, etc., for our favorite railroad. What else do we need? What products can you include on billboards? What about clothing for the figures on you layout?

There have, over the years, been effort by various publishers to create “yearbooks,” books highlighting everything of “importance” in a particular year. (I put that word in quotation marks because one person’s importance is another person’s trivia). But certainly these books can provide some information, even if not exactly what we want.

I have such a book for my modeling year of 1953, and in fact that year is in its title. I show the title page below. This is a 6 x 9-inch hardbound book of 448 pages (Unicorn Books, New York, 1954).

To convey its coverage, I show the Contents pages below. 

This kind of source is quite general. One may also need quite specific information. For example, let’s imagine that you want to put a builder logo on a transformer load. Your first choices (in the 20th century) would be General Electric and Westinghouse. But as you may know, the Westinghouse logo changed over the years. This is a good example today of how “Google is your friend.” You will quickly find on-line sources like this one: https://1000logos.net/westinghouse-logo/ .

This would then result in a correct pre-1960 logo on a load like this one (Richard Hendrickson built this  Milwaukee model of a gun-type flat from a cut-down Roundhouse short flat car). 

Another example is advertising. Some companies have retained essentially identical graphics for decades, and these are convenient to use. National brands have the advantage of great recognizability.

Consumer products are the most commonly advertised, so showing advertising images of that kind is appropriate. A good example for a product familiar to everyone is Coca-Cola. I have a period image in the form of a billboard alongside Bromela Road on my layout (one of my interchangeable billboards; see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/interchangeable-billboards.html ). 

Another era-identifier is trucks and, especially, automobiles. For my 1953 layout, I have carefully avoided any later vehicle model year after that date. And of course you can reinforce the year with billboards like the one below, alongside Nipomo Street in Ballard on my layout:  

Today, the internet contains astonishing amounts of information about the history of about anything you can image. Remembering to search on historical topics to make sure you have it right is important if you are going to accurately present your modeling era.

Tony Thompson 

 

Writing by a railroader

From time to time in this blog, I’ve mentioned writing by railroaders, especially ones that convey what the jobs were really like. A favorite railroader author, Linda Niemann, stated that you don’t really understand the work until you’re passing signals down a long yard to the switch engine with a hand lantern at 2 AM under a steady rain. (For more about her and her work, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-appreciation-linda-niemann.html .)

The book I want to present today is by Canadian Pacific railroader Jim McLean. This was the first book of his poems, printed in 1982 by Coteau Books of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Jim’s home town and his place of work for the CP.  The cover of the 6 x 9-inch book is below. Several on-line booksellers list the book as available. Another book by him was published in  2016.

I won’t include a whole lot of his poems here, just a few I especially like. For those of us who know and enjoy Timetable & Train Order (T&TO) railroading, this one is quite enjoyable:

Another one I liked, since it has to do with switching, has an introductory explanation so you understand the lingo:

Lastly, one of his I’ve always liked, one that that tells you something about Canadian immigration, not so different from immigration anywhere, working on the railroad:

As I mentioned, this book is for sale on the internet from several used-book dealers. I know most of my readers would enjoy it if they choose to find it.

Tony Thompson 

Still more on shipping of tanks

I apologize for the sort of “real time” back and forth on this topic, but information I thought I knew and understood is getting changed in every bit as much real time. The comments by Jim Eager to my previous post on this topic (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-note-on-shipping-of-tanks.html ) led me to re-examine the information I had, and to update it. 

First of all, in that previous post, I showed a page from the 1953 AAR loading rules pamphlet MD-7, and I misinterpreted the drawing shown (as Jim pointed out, it is not actually the outline of an M47 tank). The accompanying text directions do state that the gun barrel should face forward, in contradiction to the drawing, but as Jim mentioned, it may be that this text was erroneously carried over from a previous edition of the pamphlet. 

Jim mentioned a recent book about this tank, by David Doyle, the cover of which is shown below. This is one of a considerable number of fine books on armor subjects, and stands out because it contains some excellent photos of shipping arrangements.

This is a large-format book, 8.25 x 11 inches in size, with 94 pages. It is copiously illustrated with. historic photos, and contains 167 of them. Publisher is Guideline Publications Books, which also publishes the military modeling magazine, Military Modelcraft International. They are a UK company, but market in the U.S. (see the site at: https://www.guidelinepublicationsusa.com/index.php?INNERWIDTH=1220&RET=1 ).

The book contains numerous excellent images of M47 tanks, including the portrait below (Patton Museum), of an M47 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, in August of 1951, undergoing test and inspection. The forward position of the turret on the tank body is evident.

As mentioned above, there are also several photos of M47s being readied for shipment. The one below (Stellantis Historical archive) is especially interesting. It shows M47s being loaded onto railroad flat cars at the Detroit Tank Arsenal, operated at that time by the Chrysler Corporation. 

In the photo, the foreground Milwaukee Road flat car is part of a 750-car group numbered 650000–650749, 50-foot cars of 100,000-pound capacity. The 46-ton M47 was appropriately loaded on such cars. Note that the nearest tank being loaded, and those in the distance, all have turrets turned to the rear.

For this and other reasons, already discussed, I re-photographed my Roco model of an M47, and turned its turret to the rear for shipping, as you see in this view on my layout at Shumala.

This little discussion of shipping details for tanks reminds us that shipping arrangements were era-dependent. One should not generalize from any one era, what was done in another.

Tony Thompson 

A note on the shipping of tanks

In a recent blog post, back on February 12, I showed my assembled HO scale Roco kit for a U.S. Army M47 tank (new in mid-1953, the year I model). I then showed the model being shipped on a flat car. (You can see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-new-armor-load.html .) Below I reproduce the flat car photo. 

 There ensued half a dozen comments to the post (you can see them at the bottom of that post), three of which pointed out that tanks like the M47 were shipped with main guns facing to the rear. You will also see my reply, in which I admitted I had not checked loading diagrams.

It nagged me that I had shown this load without checking a loading diagram book; after all, I have one. It’s shown below, and is clearly aimed at DoD shipments. Note the effective date of the book, AAR Pamphlet No. MD-7: it is October 1, 1953, clearly just right for my modeling era. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

There are two applicable loading diagrams in this book for tanks like the loads I have modeled. One of them, Fig. 90 on page 247, for lower-weight tanks, is shown below; it is rather obviously the profile of a Sherman tank. 

The accompanying description for this diagram states explicitly that guns are to face forward, and that if no gun brace is available on the vehicle, that one should be made with a piece of 2 x 6-inch lumber, secured to the gun with steel banding. And there are period photos of Shermans shipped just this way.

Note also the diagonal tie-downs in the diagram. I have omitted these on my removable armor loads so that the loads are not too fragile in handling, though of course they would be there in the prototype. 

 But the issue we are addressing is not Sherman tanks, but the newer M47. In this same loading pamphlet, there is a separate category for heavier tanks. In that case, diagram 92 on page 253 applies, and it’s shown below. This is very clearly the profile of an M47, with its distinctive long turret gun and rear turret overhang. 

And not only is the gun shown facing forward, but the text in the pamphlet reads thus: “Turret gun should be in straightforward position, and turret lock handwheel and elevating mechanism handwheel, must be wired to prevent rotation.”

I do not dispute that in later years, many different tanks, not just the M47, were shipped with guns facing rearward. I merely point out that such was not the case for the M47 in 1953. 

Tony Thompson  

 

A look back: David Weitzman’s steam book

Today I want to say a few words about a wonderful book I’ve admired and treasured for many years, Superpower, by David Weitzman (David R. Godine, Boston, 1977). It’s descriptively sub-titled, “The Making of a Steam Locomotive,” and that is very much what the book contains.

The dust jacket features an illustration that wraps all the way around the book, of the first “superpower” steam locomotive, Lima’s 2 -8-4 for the Boston and Albany, always called “A-1” at Lima. It’s an 11 x 13-inch book, horizontal format, hardbound, containing just 108 pages.  The jacket foretells the illustration style of the book: just the subject of each image, no background, nothing more. 

The story line is that of a young apprentice, just starting out at the Lima Locomotive Works, who is shown the various components for building the A-1. He even meets Will Woodard, the designer of the superpower concept. I will just show a few examples of the 35 drawings, which can only suggest the power of them in the book, as they often run across the gutter of this large-format book.

An early example is the cylinder castings, shown being examined before assembling the pair of them into the cylinder saddle. The right-hand cylinder is on the facing page, its edge just visible here.

Another interesting example is the foundry work for casting the frame halves. The partial image I show below is the sand casting mold, being prepared in the lower area for the molten steel to be poured into the mold, and the upper half of the mold above it. This is most but not all of this large drawing.

Other locomotive parts were forged from steel. The work making one of the main rods is shown, with a typical modest-size forging hammer. Again, this is most but not all of this drawing.

The last drawing I will show is the assembly of the boiler onto the frame and cylinder saddle, when the locomotive parts first begin to all come together. 

What a book! I have been through it  many times, and thoroughly enjoyed it every time. Of course, I’m a steam-era guy and all that, but the illustrations are so well done, and the processes so well shown, that I think anyone with an engineering bent of any kind would like it,

Tony Thompson  

Route cards, Part 31: Grading box cars

I have posted previously about this topic, grading the condition of box car interiors so they are suitable for particular commodities. I was recently given a copy by Michael Litant of a Union Pacific employee document for this work, which forms the subject of today’s post. My previous posts contained quite a few examples of the cards attached to cars to indicate their grade, usually to route card boards, thus the series topic above. I list five of these below. 

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/07/route-cards-part-19-grading-freight-cars.html

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/08/route-cards-part-20-more-grading-cards.html 

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/09/route-cards-part-23-varieties-of.html 

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/09/route-cards-part-25-still-more-grading.html

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/route-cards-part-27-back-to-grading.html 

Below at left is the cover of this screw-post UP book, 4.5 x 7 inches in size. At right is the first page, describing the contents. I will be posting the entire contents on Google Docs, but will show a few pages here to indicate the scope. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

Then pages 4 and 5 give a verbal description of the inspection process, referring to the UP grading card, Form 4151-1, which I will show blow. 

Both sides of the card itself, probably reproduced full size at 3.25 x 5 inches in dimensions, are shown  below, pages 6 and 7.   

Lastly for now, I show here a bit more of the instructions including grading specifics (page 9), referring to car interior photos on following pages. The photos are washed out and pretty uninformative, so not presented here.  

The instructions essentially state that the card should be attached to the car with the uppermost side being the type of grade.  Below is an example used card (Litant collection), slightly different in format and listing different commodities than the ones shown above, dated July 12, 1968 and stamped by the inspector, A. Lish, at Pocatello. 

I continue to find car grading an interesting topic, even though it is rarely applied in model railroading. Good to see all kinds of prototype practices, even if we don’t use this particular one. 

Tony Thompson 

An excellent new book

A really excellent railroad-experience book has just been published. Entitled Life Along the Tracks, it’s published by Basalt Books (an imprint of Washington State University Press). The dust jacket is shown below. The career stories are those of the Mike McLaughlin (1937–2012), assembled and brought to press by Jim Providenza. Jim also coordinated the outstanding map efforts of Dave Clemens. 

The cover photo, one of many in the book from the talented camera work of Phil Hastings, is revealing: it’s not the Overnight Express roaring down the track, or even the dispatcher, king of all he surveys. It’s ordinary railroaders, probably doing track inspection. Very much in tune with this book. 

It’s an 8.5 x 11-inch hardbound book, 242 pages long. with both a glossary and index. It’s nicely produced. I was a little disappointed that the publisher chose to use uncoated instead of coated paper, but it doesn’t greatly matter here, as the photos are really illustrations, not reference material. And about the photos: considerable effort, mostly of Jim Providenza, located and selected the many fine photos in the book, since Mike’s own photos disappeared.

Some of us in model railroading have experienced what it takes to manage a large yard. I enjoyed Mike’s comment (page 157) about how it was, back in the day: “Yard offices were a madhouse, with clerks trying to decipher train lists and yard checks made in the rain, yardmasters screaming for the train list to make up their switch lists, crew callers, janitors, and a lonely cry from the corner: “Where IS that damn car . . .’ ”  

The content is especially interesting to me because although it’s a rich variety of railroader recollections, it's not the Operating Department. Mike worked on track and signals, and late in his career even in traffic management, spread over seven railroads, including Great Northern, Denver & Rio Grande Western, and Rock Island. But to me, all of it is good reading.

I have to say a little about the superb maps by Dave Clemens. Many railroading situations involve kinda complicated geography, most of it not particularly evident to the general public. Dave has created map after map which brilliantly show exactly what the reader of the book needs to know, and little more. I will illustrate with his two maps of the railroad lines around Bellingham, Washington. First, the local tracks:

Here we see the GN passing through the area, the NP just reaching it, and the Milwaukee having a ferry slip to serve their “island branch” trackage. How does this connect to what’s a little farther out of town? Dave has shown us that too:

All in all, really a well-done, well-illustrated, fun book to read. I’m sure many modelers will have the same reaction, even if they might not get excited by the book before looking inside. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Tony Thompson 

Handout for “Modeling SP Operations”

This is the on-line handout for a clinic entitled “Modeling SP Operating Practices.” The purpose is to provide documentation of the various published items shown in the talk, along with links to a number of blog posts which cover some points in the talk in much more detail. They are grouped below by topic area.

My point in the clinic was to indicate that many of us enjoy trying to operate model railroads in a prototypical manner, as in the photo below (Pat LaTorres at left, and Ed Slintak, switching at Ballard on my layout). I attempted to indicate how we can go about such imitation of the prototype, choosing the specific railroad that I model, the Southern Pacific.

Print Publications

Armstrong, John H., The Railroad – What It Is, What It Does (Chapter 8, Railroad Operations), Simmons-Boardman Publishing, Omaha, 1982. [there are several subsequent editions with updates; the original is closest in time to the era I model] 

Coughlin, E.W., Freight Car Distribution and Handling in the United States, Car Service Division, Association of American Railroads, Washington, 1956.

Grant, H. Roger, The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2022. 

Koester, Tony, “In search of the perfect waybill,” Model Railroader, February 2012, p. 82.

Niemann, Linda, Boomer, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990.

Rehwalt, Dan, Westsider, Grizzly Press, Oakridge, OR, 2004.

Sprau, David, and Steven King, 19 East, Copy Three, Operations Special Interest Group, WoodDale, IL, 2013, 

Thompson, Anthony, “Prototypical waybills for car card operation,” Railroad Model Craftsman, December 2009, pp. 71–77.  

Thompson, Tony, “Getting Real: A More Prototypical Waybill for Model Railroads,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, pp. 31–46, May 2012. 

Thompson, Tony, ”Getting Real: Operating with Prototypical Waybills,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, January 2018.  

Thompson, Tony, “Modeling Traffic on a Layout,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, September 2021.  

SP Circular 39-1, “Instructions to Station Agents”

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 2,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instruction-to-station-agents-part-2.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 3,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 4,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part_10.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 5,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part_25.html

Learning from Circular 39-1

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 88: Temporary Waybills,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/08/waybills-part-88-temporary-waybills.html

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 90: SP Form 704,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/09/waybills-part-90-sp-form-704.html

Other Points

Thompson, Tony, “Southern Pacific’s Circular 4,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/12/southern-pacifics-circular-4.html  

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 39: SP Typography,”  https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/waybills-part-39-sp-typography.html

Thompson, Tony, “SD&AE Locomotives on the SP,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/03/sd-locomotives-on-sp.html

With the help of these and many other publications out there, we can hope to capture the spirit of moments like the one below, the operator at Vincent, California, handing up orders to eastward freight 804 (Richard Steinheimer photo).  

Tony Thompson