Route cards, Part 23: varieties of grading cards

 In the present post, I return to the subject of small cards tacked or stapled to freight car notice boards, whether placard boards or route card boards, but in this case clearly intended to reflect a car’s interior inspection and grading. You can see my previous post about grading cards at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/08/route-cards-part-20-more-grading-cards.html . 

I’ll begin with a straightforward two-sided card, from the Seaboard. It’s 4 x 5.5 inches, and interestingly only provides for grades A or B. The car mentioned is SAL 16094, a 50-foot, single-door box car.

But many grading cards, as visible in previous posts of mine on this topic, can be quite a bit more complex. Here is an interesting card from the Maine Central, one-sided but with a full range of possible grading levels expressed. It is octagonal, just under 5 inches square over parallel sides. I show it upright, but note that the chosen grade, for roll paper, in car MEC 9248 (a 50-foot, single-door box car), is at an angle (that side could be attached as the upright side). Date is June 3, 1965.

A much more complex example of the same sort of card is this one from the Santa Fe. It appears to have been intended to be octagonal, like the card above, but was trimmed a little wrong. One side, at left below, shows color coding for what were presumable common cargoes. On the reverse are actual grading letters, but these seem not to exactly correspond with the colored side. This one too is about 5 inches over parallel sides, just fitting on a route card board.

But the octagon is not the limit of card designs with other than four sides. Here is a really distinctive one, not only triangular but pink in color. This design of course accommodates six grades, evidently sub-grades of A on one side, and of G on the other side. Neither railroad nor location is printed on the form, but the rubber stamp, below left, reads “A.G.S.,” possibly Alabama Great Southern, a long-time component of the Southern Railway. Date is Dec. 20, 1972. It is 5 inches high.

 

And an interesting variation on the multiple grades in use is this card from the  Missouri Pacific, with one side showing seven grades (and a blank space if none of those grades would apply, as was done here). More striking is the other side, with a huge letter “U” to designate “unfit for loading.” It is 5.5 inches square. It is filled out for car T&P 257991, “OK for lead loading at Glover.”

Finally,  another of the cards showing definitions in some detail of what each grade comprised, an Atlantic Coast Line card, 5 inches square. The car noted, given grade D, was NYC 75789, a 50-foot, double-door box car, on September 27, 1965, at South Rocky Mount, N.C. Note that it had been folded so that the side with grade D was outermost.

The variety of card designs and amounts of information on each are certainly interesting, and a fascinating window into 1960s management of freight car grading and movement.

Tony Thompson