My lemon packing house

My layout is set in coastal California, and in the southern half of the state, such areas are suitable for lemon cultivation. Accordingly, I wanted to have a packing house for lemons. 

 In addition to the geographic suitability, there is an attractive traffic consequence, because lemons are harvested all year long. It is a commonplace observation that during most of the year, one can find blossoms, tiny green baby lemons, and ripe yellow lemons on lemon trees. Thus lemons are shipped year-round, rather than seasonally, as for most crops.

I described recently how I made my Zaca Mesa winery from a Magnuson kit structure (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/my-zaca-mesa-winery.html ). I show the kit box photos below for clarity. The major part of the structure became the winery, as described in the post cited, but the smaller receiving building, at right in the upper view below, became the lemon packing building. 

This brick structure had large arch openings at each end for hopper cars of coal. Since these made no sense in my intended use, I filled both arches with doors, first filling the curved part of the arch with brick paper. Below is the east end of the building as I modified it, which faces on Corralitos Lane. Note the smear of epoxy glue from the previous owner, which I tried and failed to remove.

At the west end, facing Laguna Street in my coastal town of Santa Rosalia, I instead modeled the doorway as a roll-up door, using corrugated metal and a half-round shape for the mechanism at top. 

A view of just the building on the layout shows a side view. I again added a roll-up door in the center, perhaps as a replacement for a deteriorated wooden door. I filled one window with brick, and the doorway at the right end is open, with some field boxes visible inside, containing lemons. I also added a couple of lemons on the ground, using craft beads.  At right is a truck picking up empty field boxes.

The building is on the small side for a packing house, but lemons require little work in packing, really only washing and grading, and putting into shipping boxes. Thus I believe that the building, though small, is just about big enough for credibility. I lettered it with dry transfers.

In use, you can see the two streets on either side of the building, as well as the layout surroundings, and a reefer being loaded. Street names are shown on the fascia. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

I enjoy having a citrus packing house on the layout, both for California flavor and for its year-round traffic. It exchanges loaded and empty reefers in nearly every operating session on the layout, regardless of the month of the session, just as it should.

Tony Thompson

What about “mundane” freight car kits?

Following my lengthy saga about kitbashing an Erie 50-foot automobile car from a Branchline kit, with replaced roof and ends, and a detour considering it as a C&NW car (about which I put up five posts, concluding with this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/07/my-erie-50-ft-auto-car-conclusion.html ), I received a question. I’ll paraphrase it like this: “These big, complicated projects are fine, but do you ever do a plain old simple kit?” As a matter of fact, I do, and so I’ll show one. 

I think most modelers would agree that Accurail kits qualify as simple kits. Recently I built one of their USRA double-sheathed box car kits, a Great Northern car that models one of the 1500 box cars of this design that GN received in 1919. They were numbered in the 23494–24993 series, and were GN’s first box cars with a steel underframe instead of truss rods. Below is a GN photo of one of these cars, freshly repainted at St. Cloud shops in March 1925 (GNRHS collection).  

These cars were very durable. By my own modeling date of 1953, there were still 1222 of the original 1500 cars in service. and they continued in use through the 1950s. Below is a photo of one in 1958 (Virl Davis photo, Richard Hendrickson collection), with the original USRA Andrews trucks and 5-5-5 corrugated end visible.

(For a condensed history of the GN box car fleet, along with the rest of the GN freight cars, I recommend the chapter by Richard Hendrickson and Staffan Ehnbom in Patrick Dorin’s book, Great Northern Lines East, Second Edition, Signature Press, 2001) .

The Accurail kit is, of course, straightforward. It could be upgraded by replacing the molded grab irons with wire ones, but for me this is a layout model, and can serve in original condition. However, there are a few changes to the kit as supplied that I do make. 

To begin, I cut the steel weight in half, glued the two halves together with canopy glue, and glued the pair in the center of the floor. This leaves truck screw holes completely open, and I tapped them 2-56. Mechanically, I put InterMountain wheelsets in the kit sideframes, and Kadee #158 whisker couplers in the kit coupler boxes. Here is that weight application.

Next, I replaced the vulnerable plastic brake wheel with a Cal-Scale brass one, soldered to a brass wire staff. And third, I added roof corner grab irons with the Tichy wire parts. 

Then, after a protective coat of flat finish, I weathered with acrylic tube paint, in the form of washes (see “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post). The GN emblem here is the 1941–48 version. Finally, I added decal paint patches for fresh reweigh and repack stencils, along with route cards and chalk marks.

This kind of straightforward freight car kit is fun to build and quickly gives a layout-quality result. It will go into service on my layout right away.

Tony Thompson 

Route cards, Part 36: even more examples

This now-substantial series of posts is intended to provide examples of the great variety of formats and appearances of prototype route cards, the small tags of light cardstock affixed to freight cars to indicate switching work. They were attached to small tack boards, which were 5.5 x 9 inches in size (see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/12/route-cards-6.html ). You can find previous posts on the subject by using “Route cards” as the search term in the search box at right.

Today I want to begin with something rarely seen: blank route cards. Since these have been rarely used in railroading for some time now, it’s an unusual condition. These were provided to me by Richard Townsend, who mentioned that they are used as scratch paper at the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad.

The two shown below are interesting to me in that they don’t have identical lines to fill out. The one at left, for westbound shipments, is simpler than the one at right, for connection to the Rock Island eastward. Both are 4 x 5 inches in size. 

Next I want to turn to still more examples from the vast array of these cards collected by Michael Litant. Below is a Burlington form, directing a car to be transferred to the D&RG; it must be an old form, predating adoption of the D&RGW mark. The car is SP 176476, a Class B-50-28 box car modified with a 10-foot door and a broad yellow stripe diagonally across the door, signifying assignment to lumber and plywood loading. It’s destined to Eugene, Oregon, and is thus likely an empty returning for loading. I don’t know what the “XB” notation means. It’s 3 x 4 inches. 

An additional example of a transfer card is this one from the Cotton Belt, being a transfer to the Nickel Plate, evidently at St. Louis (the large “AS” on the card likely means Alton & Southern, an East St. Louis belt line owned by Cotton Belt). The car is presumably a Cotton Belt car, abbreviated as SW, thus SSW 46322, a 40-foot double-door box car, with a cargo of plywood. Note that it’s identified as “car 18,” presumably the 18th car in a cut. The card is 3.5 inches square and obviously was attached with a staple.

A fourth example, again showing the use of cards that simply identify an outgoing train or perhaps even a track for intermediate switching, comes from the Atlantic Coast Line. In very light handwriting, at the top is noted UP 164194, a 50-foot steel box car with double 8-foot doors, and at the bottom is the load, which seems to say “paper.” The card is 3.5 inches square and has a single nail hole.

Next is a Union Pacific card, with the legend “West End” in large letters, probably a local train. The car is NYC 177867, a 50-foot steel box car with a single 8-foot door, and the contents were “OK Starch.” The card must have been placed at Ogden, near the location of Thiokol Chemical’s plant, specifically Building 10. This card is 4 x 5 inches.

Finally,  an Illinois Central card, either at or destined to IC’s yard in Memphis. The car was IC 17935, a 40-foot wood-sheathed box car, and the cargo, lumber. Time of card appears to be 3 PM on the 19th of whatever months it was. The card is 4 inches square.

As I always mention, I continue to find these cards interesting, both as artifacts, and as insights into railroad communication back before so much became digital.

Tony Thompson 

 

My Erie 50-ft. auto car: Conclusion

In preceding posts, I described a somewhat meandering project to build a 50-foot automobile car from a Branchline kit, and add a Viking roof (because I had one in my stash). My first plan was to do this for the Chicago & North Western, as described in the initial post in this series (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-simple-freight-car-kitbash.html ).

But upon discovering that I already had a 50-ft. C&NW auto car with a Viking roof (memo to self: check fleet before dreaming up projects), I decided to pivot to doing an Erie car, even though it meant removing the Dreadnaught ends I had already applied to the Branchline body (that is presented in the third post in this series, which can be found at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-50-foot-automobile-car-part-3.html ).

I replaced the Dreadnaught ends with inverse Hutchins ends from Chad Boas, and continued onward to finish the body details, then painted the model with boxcar red sides and roof and black ends, as was common on Erie cars of the decade after World War II.  That work is shown in Part 4 of this series (you can see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/07/my-50-foot-erie-auto-car-part-4.html ).

In trying to understand the Erie 50-foot automobile cars, I turned to the April 1940 Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER). There I found several groups of such cars. First was series 68100–68199, cars with paired 6-foot side doors, and series 62200–68224, almost identically dimensioned cars except for paired 8-foot doors; and cars 68225–68299, again, cars with 6-foot doors. 

Since my Branchline car body has 8-foot doors, my choice of number series was obvious. Luckily I was able to obtain a nice photo of a car from this series, which is shown below. You can just see that it does indeed have a Viking roof, and though the black ends are not very visible, what is visible is consistent with the Hutchins ends. And this is the paint scheme I wanted to apply, with the six-foot herald. Incidentally, in this photo, only the right-hand door is open.

In the year I model, 1953, there were 24 of the original 25 cars in the series Erie 68200–68224. Of those, 16 had auto loading racks and thus had AAR mechanical  designation XMR, while 8 of them had racks either disabled or removed, and were AAR designation XM. That includes the car shown above, 68220, and the car number I chose to model, 68214.

You can click on the image above to enlarge it. If you do, you may note that the capacity of this car is somewhat surprising, only 70,000 pounds, a value confirmed by the ORER.  

The photo above shows clearly the arrangement of side lettering. It also suggests what the end lettering arrangement is, but a better view is in the Magor view shown in Part 4 (link above). Here is just the end portion: 

I dug around in the decal stash I inherited from Richard Hendrickson, and found Champ set HN-63, and also a set HB-3 with the large Erie emblems. Dimensional data were pieced together with elements from two Champ data sets HD-2. Below is a view of the model with lettering applied; I did apply the 70,000 pound capacity. Next comes trucks and couplers, the running board, and then weathering. 

As mentioned earlier, I applied a Kadee 50-ft. running board, attached with canopy cement, along with Kadee #158 couplers and the kit truck frames with InterMountain wheelsets. I then used my ordinary process of weathering, based on washes of acrylic tube paints (descriptions and illustrative example in the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post).  Last, I added a few chalk marks and route cards. 

This was an interesting if somewhat circuitous project, with the false start on a C&NW car; but in the end I created a car I wanted to have on the layout. That is tops among my criteria for freight car projects.

Tony Thompson 

Mishaps do happen

Some years ago, I described the creation of a stand-in version of a Southern Pacific postal-storage car, in two blog posts. The concluding one is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/08/modeling-sp-head-end-cars-part-7b.html . The goal was to produce something like the car shown below, photographed at Council Bluffs, in 1954 (Clark Bauer collection). This was an EP&SW 60-foot postal car, remodeled by SP into a postal-storage configuration. 

I approximated this car by cutting up an Athearn RPO model, to get the right overall appearance, although as I mentioned in showing the modeling process, the size and location of windows in my model don’t exactly match the photo above. The modeling work was described here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/modeling-sp-head-end-cars-part-7a.html . This was the finished model: 

So why is it coming up now? A derailment in a recent operating session resulted in the floor/underframe part of the model separating into two parts. That was the mishap, seen below. Obviously it wasn’t as well glued together as I thought. So what now? 

The steel weight on the right-hand section in the photo above would have been good to remove, but it evidently is well glued to the floor section of that part of the car. Instead, I cut two lengths of 1/4 x 1/8-inch styrene (Evergreen #389) and glued them to the inside rails of the sides of both parts, across the gap, using Plastruct “Plastic Weld” cement and clamping. The two sections now appear to be quite solidly joined.

I next painted the white styrene reinforcements black. At this point, the car could be re-assembled. It is now back in service, as I show below, in a passenger train behind Class P-4 Pacific SP 2402, passing the Shumala depot on my layout. 

Accidents like derailments or other kinds of things do occur, and they just have to be dealt with. I thought it might be of interest to see my method of correcting this one.

Tony Thompson 

Pratt Island

A couple of  months ago I wrote a simplified description of my ideas provided to a friend who wants to build a switching layout, and asked me for some input. Not being a layout design guy, I really just stole some ideas from the Model Railroader articles about their Beer Line project layout (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/03/designing-switching-layout.html ). 

But while writing that post, it came back to me that I’d undertaken something similar, some years ago, for an acquaintance (who’s now deceased) about a different switching layout. Sure enough, digging through old file folders, I found some of the material I generated at that time. His idea was to model a switching district on an island, to make its compactness logical, and provide a marine theme. He wanted to call it Pratt Island.  

Much of his inspiration for these ideas had come from the excellent Andy Sperandeo article  in Model Railroad Planning 2014, pages 24–29, about Santa Fe’s Alice Street Yard in Oakland, Calif. (That issue, incidentally, contained quite a few insights for switching layouts.) Alice Street was on the mainland, not an island, but the compactly arranged trackage and industries were things he liked. Below is the prototype area, adopted by MR from a map by John Signor. 

You may note that there is no continuous running in this track arrangement, and only a single interchange (with the SP), so that most traffic in and out is via the ferry slip at bottom.

My acquaintance realized that one valuable aspect of the island format is that arriving and departing freight cars would come by ferry or bridge, eliminating the need for any mainline trackage. Obviously a ferry “cassette” to bring cars to and from the island could work, though that implied a ferry slip, which he didn’t find interesting. He leaned toward a bridge, of which he might only need to model the extreme end.

A one point in our discussion, I asked him, “Why the name ‘Pratt’ for the location?”  He got a mischievous grin on his face, and said that an industry he wanted to model was a steel fabricator, and naturally wanted to name it, “Pratt Fabrication and Truss.” I tried not to say I was sorry I asked. Actually, I think his real reason is that it was a short name, making waybills easier to fill out.

 On the topic of industries, I had given him the same list I used in my other switching layout design (see the link in the first paragraph at the top of this post). That list includes a fuel dealer, a wholesale grocer, a freight house, perhaps a cannery of some kind, very versatile industries such as warehouses, and the great  “universal industry,” the team track. Each can receive a wide variety of cargoes and freight car types.

He mentioned that he had a lot of models of a car type he liked, 50-foot double-door automobile cars, and I suggested he include a dock for unloading such cars (and 40-foot double-door cars as well). I’ve discussed that option before (at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/01/auto-industry-traffic-part-4-model-cars.html ), and below I reproduce a photo from that post. It shows 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air sedans being unloaded in Portland, an Allen DeLay photo from the Portland Oregonian newspaper. Obviously all that is really needed is a timber platform, level with the car doors. 

So I know he considered the ideas I suggested, and sketched some long, narrow track plans (recognizing that the primary element necessary in a switching layout is a run-around,so pencil that in first). I urged him to include streets throughout the layout area, and reminded him that you can label them on the fascia, as on the view below looking up Bromela Road in Ballard on my layout.

So those are some of the suggestions I made (as well as I can tell from my surviving notes and sketches). I suppose most of them are really points that could apply to any layout design, not just for a switching layout.

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