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 

Reworking a Broadway Limited chlorine car

Back in 2017 when the Broadway Limited HO scale high-pressure cars were released, I purchased more than I needed, including one of their “variety” four-packs to get a paint scheme I wanted. (If you’re interested in my 2017 review, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-new-broadway-limited-tank-cars.html .)

One of the cars that I didn’t need for operation was an Ethyl Corp. car, from which I stole the platform and ladder for another project. Recently I disassembled the EBAX model, and this is how it looked at that point. The valve bonnet part has become separated, and trucks are off. This is how the model languished for many months.

Much more recently,  I came across the K4 decals for Diamond Alkali chlorine cars. This inspired me to repair the EBAX car, with new side ladders and walkways, so I could repaint and re-letter it. 

I made walkways from scale 1 x 10-inch Evergreen styrene strip, attached with canopy glue, then added drop grab irons from A-Line underneath each walk. Ladders will come later.

At this point I could repaint the tank, which as you see above, was now separated from the underframe. The K4 decals I have are for Diamond Alkali, in the older scheme, which had either aluminum or gray tanks. I chose gray, and used Tamiya “Corsa Gray” (PS-32). 

The underframe and trucks were black, which the BLI model already has, so I reassembled the tank to the frame. I decided to have the handrail and ladder as body color, as was increasingly common in the 1950s. When freshly lettered with the K4 decals, set K4-DAX-87 A, it looked like this. 

I now added a ladder on each side at the car center. First, I painted a ladder from my parts stash, then created ladder sections by cutting to fit, and attached them with canopy glue. I also painted the bare metal wheel faces with a dark gray-brown mix. 

Next came weathering, following my usual procedures using washes of acrylic tube paints (see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post). Finally, I added a few touches of Pan Pastels.

This completes my modification of the original Broadway Limited paint scheme on this model, to that of a different chemical company, still with the car matching its design character as a chlorine car.

But to enter service on my layout, the car needs one or more waybills. I checked Tank Car Tariff 300-H and found that Diamond Alkali had both 3000-gallon and 6000-gallon chlorine cars. Unfortunately K4 Decals chose the decal number for the smaller size series. I decided to ignore this discrepancy, as the model is definitely a 6000-gallon car.

The Diamond Alkali company was located in Painesville, Ohio (as the car lettering notes) and was located on the Fairport, Painesville & Eastern Railroad (FP&E). The FP&E, about 8 miles long, had interchanges with both the NYC and Nickel Plate but seems to have favored NYC. The NYC Shipper Guide seems to indicate that Painesville was a reciprocal switching district, thus no interchange location with NYC need be indicated. This produces a waybill like that below.

I look forward to seeing this model in service for an operating session on my layout.

Tony Thompson  

Modeling just part of an industry

There is a long-standing problem in building layouts, to achieve realistic depictions of industries. The problem is size. Many a layout contains buildings hardly larger than a boxcar , and that building is switched regularly, though a boxcar load of cargo could hardly even fit in the building. I too am guilty of this in a place or two on my layout.

The classic solution, and often a good one, is to represent any mammoth industry, steel mill or whatever, on the backdrop, as a group of flats or even just a photograph, and the switching for that industry is just a warehouse or shipping building. In such a case, the industry spur may run close to the backdrop, with just a flat photo or semi-3D building with doors. 

A good example of this kind of treatment was seen on a layout I visited during the 2023 “Great Lakes Getaway” in that year (for a description of the event, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-2023-great-lakes-getaway.html ). The backdrop, literally of a steel mill, was on John DePauw’s immense EJ&E, set in 1973. Below is a view of his Kirk Yard in Gary, Indiana, with the very suitable mill backdrop. 

The industry, of course, need not be entirely in the distance, as is suggested by the above photo, served only by a delivery track or tracks. It can also be a flat of a specific building. I made several of these from the line of excellent KingMill backdrops of buildings, and used them several times for photo backdrops, as you see here. Even with its foamcore backing, it’s less than half an inch thick.

But if the industry in question is not quite so mammoth, we can choose to model just a three-dimensional shipping building, with the rest of the industry “elsewhere” off the layout. That was the approach I used for my Wine-Growers Cooperative facility in the layout town of Ballard. I built it so it would be just a warehouse and shipping facility, with the winery that actually produced the wine somewhere away from the railroad.

This industry is really two buildings, a large brick building imagined as the new part of the facility, and an older frame building with a shingle roof, a carryover from the original facility. The warehouse is for both aging and storage.

The brick warehouse is simply a Bristol board box covered with brick paper and three loading doors.  The frame part of the building was scratchbuilt and roofed with Campbell shingles. As shown below, I made an open loading platform so that I could include a workman handling a large wine barrel. Blending wine was still shipped in barrels to some extent in my era. (Be sure to choose barrels that would fit through the four-foot swing doors of the era’s reefers!)

I think that using this structure as just a shipping building helps its credibility, as it is really too small to be a realistic winery by itself (I have modeled a more credible-size building as my Zaca Mesa winery; see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/my-zaca-mesa-winery.html ). As I said above, it’s one way to deal with our usual over-compression of structures.

Nearly every layout can benefit from ways to represent larger industries than we have room to model in their entirety. What I’ve show here just scratches the surface. I used to keep notes when I saw a clever or especially effective way of doing this on layout visits. It’s one of the great benefits of such visits, one of the many things a visitor can learn from the imagination and work of others.

Tony Thompson

Still more route cards, Part 37

This post contains a number of additional route card from the Michael Litant collection, as has been the case for a number of previous posts on the topic. Michael retrieved these in mid- to late 1960s from freight cars, carefully chosen, he mentioned, to not be current in the location where they were, thereby not interfering in freight operations.

I’ll start with a good example of a card that happens not to be filled out. Probably this is because all that was needed was the code, PB-4, perhaps a outgoing train, or a yard track, or even a destination in a switching district. All these kinds of codes are known from other examples, but here even the issuing railroad is not identified. This car is 4 x 4 inches in size, and still holds a staple.

My second example, is an unusual card in this collection: it is a shipper’s card (provided by UP), presumably attached to the car so the railroad’s pickup crew will know what the shipper wants done with the car. Since the same information would be on the waybill, this card is a kind of insurance. The load is plastic bags for fertilizer, being shipped from the Federal Chemical Co. of Omaha, Nebr., destined to the Farmers Elevator Co. in Bode, Iowa via Rock Island. The car is NKP 18451, a 40-ft. steel box car with a 6-foot door. The card is 4 x 4 inches.

Next is another example a card whose issuing railroad is not identified. For use at the yard at Coquitlam, British Columbia, it allows grading of the car by interior integrity and cleanliness. Faintly one can see that Grade C has been circled. The card is 3 x 3.5 inches.

My fourth example is an L&N card which, like many L&N route cards, is printed in green. Though the station isn’t identified, the loaded car is Erie-Lackawanna 70377, a 40-foot steel box car with a 6-foot door. I don’t know the meaning of the district number HR 113. It is 3 x 4 inches. 

A further instance is a Missouri Pacific card, issued at North Little Rock, directing a car to the Terminal Railroad Association in St. Louis for interchange to the New York Central.  The car appears to be N&W 38532, though the number might be incomplete; if complete, it was a 70-ton steel hopper. The card was 3 x 5 inches.

Another interesting example is this card from Atlantic Coast Line, at Augusta, Georgia.  It carries the code PP and is 3.5 inches square. The car number appears to be D&H 17604, and if so, was a 40-ft. steel box car with a 6-ft. door.

Finally, one of my all-time favorite cards, because it shows an employee doing what he needed to do. It is a plain card (nothing on the back either), 3.5 inches square. The car number shown is AT (presumably ATSF, a common abbreviation) 151490, a 50-foot single-sheathed box car having an 8-foot door, and with a cargo of wool.  

As I have said many times, these cards, artifacts of bygone railroading, remain endlessly interesting to me. I have tried to use them and the information on them to learn more about freight car operations.

Tony Thompson 

Weathering really big tank cars

As part of the weathering project I mentioned in an earlier post about Rapido models of Pacific Car & Foundry 70-ton box cars, I also agreed to take a crack at weathering some 33,000-gallon tank cars. (You can read the previous post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/another-weathering-project.html .) Tank cars of this size were quite an advance when introduced in 1962, as “stub-sill” tank car designs were approved for use. This meant no center sill. 

A pioneer in building these cars was American Car & Foundry, with what was called a “whale belly” design. The stub sills carried the narrower part of the tank, and the center section was enlarged to the maximum clearance diagram. The AC&F demonstrator of the design is shown below (AC&F photo, courtesy Ed Kaminski), riding on 100-ton trucks.

Substantial numbers of these cars were built, usually with capacities of around 33,000 gallons. But before long both AC&F and North American Car decided that the more complex fabrication of this design wasn’t necessary, and after about 1965 or so, both builders had changed back to “straight barrel” designs. But the whale-bellies continued in service for many years.

These cars were built to carry Liquified Petroleum Gas, and thus are often called LPG tank cars. For a short time in the 1960s, even larger  cars, up to 60,000 gallons, were on the rails. But in 1970, the DOT instituted a maximum gallonage limit of 34,500 gallons. 

Tangent Scale Models produced ready-to-run models of the North American Car whale-belly cars in HO scale. Here is one of the cars, emblazoned with a huge logo, as were many of the cars. You may note it has neither ACI label nor a COTS or lube stencil. When the cars were built, neither of those was yet introduced. But for the layout where these cars will run, set in 1975, both need to be added. 

The other model is below. These two cars have 1964 and 1965 built dates. That makes them 10 years old in 1975, so they can receive significant weathering, once I have added ACI and COTS. 

I give Tangent high marks for including in the delivery boxes of the models, small photos showing where to put the ACI label for each car. Also visible is the location and type of lube stencil. I should note that the LP Gas photo is from 1980, thus more heavily weathered than appropriate for 1975. 

I resorted to an ancient Microscale decal set to obtain ACI labels and lube stencils. I proceeded with normal decal application. Shown below is the Pacific 66 tank with these applied. The lube stencil looks non-vertical because it is on a slanting part of the tank (compare the photo above). My first weathering pass is also visible here, though more needs to be done.

I now proceeded with weathering of these two models. They are so large that I found I needed more than one session on each tank, a minimum of once per side. But I will show those results in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 132: warehouses

A month or so ago, I posted the second of two blog essays on switching layouts (the most recent was called “Pratt Island,” and it is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/07/pratt-island.html ). My subject today is a question I received by email, asking about an aspect of that post. 

(I might also mention a preceding article of the same kind, making some of the same points; it’s at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/03/designing-switching-layout.html .) 

What the question was about was my mention in both posts about the usefulness of warehouses as industries. Now of course any sizeable industry may include a warehouse among its buildings, for shipping, receiving or both. But the question wasn’t about that. It was about businesses solely working as warehouses. 

There was a time when such businesses were widespread.  Here’s a single example, the Harborside Warehouse in New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. The image is from the back cover of the 1953 Official Guide.  You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

The ad notes that they provide rail-water connections, including lighters to ships, to other railroad piers, and to Manhattan, as well as direct rail service from the Pennsylvania. They can offer storage, transshipment and distribution. So freight sent here might be en route to Manhattan, destined to a ship for overseas destinations, or held for later movement onward. 

Harborside does not seem to have provided drayage also, but that was a common component of warehouse businesses, thus offering pickup and delivery. Then the business name might include “van and storage,” or “transfer and storage,” or sometimes “storage and trucking.” 

For examples, one can consult any railroad “Shippers Guide.” A valuable source is Rails Unlimited, who offer, for example, a very nice Chicago & North Western Shippers’ Guide (cover shown below). You can see a write-up about it (and the other 25 Guides available) at: https://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html . 

In this guide, for example, we can look under warehouses. Here is part of page 587, including the Twin Cities. Any of these warehouse names could become destinations on a waybill. 

Choosing one of these warehouses, a waybill like that below might be created for my layout: 

For an even bigger city, we might consider Chicago. One very comprehensive Shippers Guide that includes Chicago is that for the B&O (also available from Rails Unlimited), as I’ve described before (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/01/another-excellent-shippers-guide.html ). Here is the beginning of the B&O warehouse listing: 

One could readily repeat the process just described for the shipment to St. Paul, using any of these names. The versatility of a storage and transfer destination is obvious, and I intend to expand my use of these as destinations. Modelers of big cities can use warehouses as origins, too.

Tony Thompson 

HO construction equipment, Part 2

In the preceding post to this one, I showed some very nice HO scale models of International-Harvester construction equipment that I undertook to weather for a friend. In that post I showed some prototype views to indicate how such equipment can look after time in service. You can view the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/ho-scale-construction-equipment.html . The models were made by First Gear (see their website at: https://firstgearinc.com/diecast-replicas/ ).

I’ll begin with the smallest of the three vehicles, the I-H model 175. As mentioned previously, it has a ROPS cage (Roll Over Protection Structure), and a ripper at the rear. When the loader bucket and ripper are used, the teeth quickly become bare steel, and that’s been added. Tracks become a grayish “dirty steel” appearance. Overall brownish grime was added also, but the unit does not appear too old.

For comparison, here is a similar-sized vehicle from Caterpillar, somewhat different ROPS and a rear winch. Color and degree of dirt, and appearance of tracks, are useful to see (Cam Thompson photo).

The next model, the TD-25 bulldozer, also has a ROPS and ripper. A new, out of the box view was shown in the first post (linked in the first paragraph, above). Here again, the ripper teeth and the bottom edge of the blade would be bare steel after even a little use. Weathered separately from the model 175 shown above, the TD-25 has a little greater degree of grime. 

The third model is a different use of the basic TD-25 model, being equipped with a side boom and a rear winch. On the opposite side from the boom are counterweights (like many parts of the prototype that would be moveable, they are moveable on the model). This is apparently a rare model from First Gear, as it commands impressive prices on the internet. Here is a view of the model when new.

Weathering this model was approached slightly differently. Tracks were still changed to a “dirty bare steel” look, but a more grayish grime and dust was applied to the overall vehicle. Most other details were handled in a similar way to the other two models . 

This was an interesting project, both to learn about the prototype machines and to view some weathered prototypes. It’s been interesting.

Tony Thompson