Waybills, Part 112: stamps and all that

From time to time in this series of posts about waybills in model form, I have alluded to rubber stamps used for convenience, especially by car distributors moving cars to agents that requested them. Having to type or even hand-write the same originating yard name many times a day, would quickly lead to use of a rubber stamp for that name. (I introduced this topic in a recent post in the series: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/02/waybills-part-104-yard-stamps.html ). 

Below is an example, a C&O Empty Car Bill with the originating yard, E. Buffalo, NY, identified with a rubber stamp. I wanted to capture this practice and appearance. The image of the card was provided to me by Ted Pamperin, and I discussed it in the earlier post cited in the paragraph above.

As I showed in Post 104 in this series (see link in first paragraph, above), I had a couple of stamps made for my waybills. I ordered them from TheStampMaker (you can see the wide range of their offerings at: https://www.thestampmaker.com/custom-rubber-stamps.aspx ), and selected two yard names, Los Angeles and West Oakland. Since then, I have added three: Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, and Watsonville Junction.

At the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society meeting this fall, held at Bakersfield in early October (you can see my write-up about it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-2023-sph-annual-meeting.html ), a vendor was selling rubber stamps used by passenger agents to stamp ticket destinations. These are actual SP stamps and were terrific looking! I bought them immediately. 

Some are for smaller places that would be unlikely to forward cars to my layout area (you can click on the image to enlarge it, if you wish), such as Paso Robles or Oxnard, but not impossible. I will use them sparingly if at all. Others like  Sacramento and Salinas are quite reasonable.

These stamps are about the right size for my model Empty Car Bills. I also like to use different stamp ink colors to add variety to the images. Most of the ones below are purple, but I also use red, green, blue and even occasionally black.

For completeness, I should mention that I have worked in Photoshop to create rubber-stamp-like images that I can include on my waybills, from Weight Agreement Stamps to Dangerous stamps, to customs stamps (see for example this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/10/waybills-part-74-more-stamps.html ). These continue in use, and I have gone back into my older waybills to make sure all the ones needing, for example, DANGEROUS stamps have received them. 

Bet beyond those considerations, I’m enjoying using all my rubber stamps for car origins. I like the look and what I know about the realism of their use.

Tony Thompson