Reference pages

Saturday, December 10, 2016

SP's Instructions to Station Agents, Part 4

I began this series of posts with a general description of Circular 39-1, a document issued by Southern Pacific’s Accounting Department and entitled Instructions to Station Agents. You can read that initial post if you like, at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html . One outcome from Circular 39-1, described in that first post, was understanding SP’s use of form numbers for the various kinds of freight waybills. I followed that post with additional material from Circular 39-1 concerning weight agreements, and showed how I use that information in model waybills (it is at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instruction-to-station-agents-part-2.html ).
     A third post in the series concerned information on waybilling of tank cars, something I have a fair amount of on my layout, and that post can be found here: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html . In the present post in the series I present several additional bits of information, all of which will show in my waybills, one way or another.
     I begin with rule 1048, which concerns cargo waybilled to a port for transfer to a ship. I don’t now have any such waybills, but some of my outbound loads could certainly be extended to cover such a destination. Here is the relevant part of the rule (you can click on the image to enlarge it):


I was intrigued that the rule states “Pacific Lines only,” since the Texas and Louisiana Lines served plenty of ports on the Gulf Coast, but my copy of Circular 39-1 had no corresponding entry for the T&L Lines.
     A related rule concerns cargo entering from Mexico. I was told some time ago that it was common for SP agents at border crossings to re-bill such loads, partly because some arriving waybills were in Spanish, and also because some arriving waybills only showed routing as far as the border. Here is the relevant part of rule 1025:


     A few other rules touch on the subjects of how certain customers’ cargo would be handled. These include Railway Express, which of course mainly handled express material in baggage cars, but almost anything could be shipped by REA, so the following rule 1033 applies to freight cars. This is another opportunity to write a standard freight waybill for REA cargo.


     Another special shipper was Western Union. The SP in many areas had its own pole lines and telegraph wires, but in a few areas ran its wires on crossarms attached to Western Union poles (obviously by arrangement). For that reason, Western Union crews often worked along SP tracks maintaining their own pole lines. Again, an SP rule, no. 1177, covered the movement of WU freight materials:


     Finally, when an SP employee in certain job categories was reassigned elsewhere on the system, a voucher could be issued to transport his household goods free of charge. The voucher was called a “dead-head order.” Here is rule 1031 for this situation:


     All these particular rules, though covering what are really details  in the world of waybills, are nevertheless interesting components of that world and can be incorporated into model waybills if a person wishes to do so. I am experimenting myself right now, and will show examples in a future post.
Tony Thompson

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