Adding an 8-1-2 Pullman

As many modelers will know, Pullman sleeper floor plans were described with a shorthand notation giving the interior accommodations. The most numerous heavyweight Pullmans were the 12-1 type, 12 sections and 1 drawing room. The present post is about the heavyweight 8-1-2 configuration, 8 sections, 1 drawing room, and 2 compartments. Here is a typical floor plan (you can click to enlarge). 

I have written a little before about the prototype and a method of modeling it, starting with the Rivarossi 12-1 Pullman body (see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/02/my-pullman-projects-part-2.html ). 

I also wrote an article for Model Railroad Hobbyist about Southern Pacific’s heavyweight Pullman sleepers purchased from Pullman in 1948, in the issue for January 2023, and here is a link to a description of that article: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/01/my-new-column-in-model-railroad-hobbyist.html .

This particular floor plan returned to my attention while I was attending this year’s Prototype Rails meeting at Cocoa Beach, Florida. A few remnants of meeting founder Mike Brock’s rolling stock fleet were offered to attendees, and I selected a Branchline HO model of the 8-1-2. Surprisingly, it had no car name, presumably allowing the modeler to choose one, but Mike had not done so. Here is the bedroom side of the car.

I was pretty sure that SP had acquired a bunch of cars of this floor plan in 1948, so was confident that I could use this model. But its letterboard has the Pullman name, which by my modeling year of 1953 would surely have been replaced with the SP name, and it should receive a car name too. 

As I already knew, plenty of background on these cars, along with a table of all the names of the 16 cars of 8-1-2 plans received by SP are available in the excellent Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society Volume 2, Sleepers, in the series, Southern Pacific Passenger Cars (SPH&TS, Pasadena, 2005).

From that volume, here is an excellent prototype photo of one of SP’s 8-1-2 cars, De Young, photographed at Davis, California in 1961 (Bruce Heard photo). This is the aisle side of the car. Of the 16 cars of 8-1-2 arrangement acquired by SP, six had the “De” prefix names like De Young.

I wanted to get close to this appearance. The well-known Thin Film decals for SP heavyweight and Harriman cars, set HO-160, provide what is needed. I began by painting out the word “Pullman” on the letterboard, using Tru-Color Paint TCP-135, “SP Dark Olive Green.” It’s not an exact match to the Branchline car color but is fairly close. I made irregular blotches over each letter, rather than neat rectangles of paint, to minimize the visibility of the patches.

Next, I masked the window band on both sides, using the excellent Tamiya masking tape, the 10-mm width. This would allow me to add a coat of semi-gloss for decaling, since the Branchline model has a flat finish. I used Tamiya “Semi-Gloss Clear,” TS-79, for this. When that was dry, I added the Thin Film decals. Once they were well settled, I again masked the window band for a final coast of flat, using Tamiya “Flat Clear,” TS-80. (As I’ve often mentioned, these Tamiya paints are not at all traditional “rattle cans,” but have high-quality nozzles that deliver paint the way you want.)

Once that had been done, the car was ready for service. In my layout operating sessions, I often include a deadhead passenger move, typical of how SP moved equipment between its two main West Coast passenger terminals at Los Angeles and San Francisco/Oakland. Cars like this one are perfect for such a move. 

In the view below, you see the aisle side of the newly-added De Forest, flanked by the Division Superintendent’s car, Coast, at right (see this final post of a series: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/08/operating-sp-business-car-conclusion.html ), and a pool streamlined dining car (a repainted E&B Valley model).

This has been a simple change to one of Mike Brock’s Pullmans, and an enjoyable tasks to convert it to an SP car of the era for my layout. I’m glad to be able to run one of Mike’s cars on my layout.

Tony Thompson

Operating sessions 98 and 99

This last weekend I hosted a pair of operating sessions on my layout, intended as a kind of “dry run” for the upcoming bi-annual BayRails operating weekend here in the Bay Area. These happened to be sessions no. 98 and 99 on the present layout. As I wanted to happen, a couple of modifications to the operating scheme worked well; as I didn’t really want to happen, a couple of electrical glitches popped up, but of course better now than with out-of-town visitors.

I used my usual set-up approach with freight cars in various locations, to be switched in various ways in accord with the waybills and other paperwork. Here is a view looking toward the Shumala depot (middle distance), illustrating what the first crew at Shumala faces when they begin work.  The foreground track is the main line of Southern Pacific’s Coast Division.

What you see is a mixture of cars headed up the branch to Ballard and Santa Rosalia, along with cars to be switched within Shumala, and some ready for pickup by the Guadalupe Local, a train that will pass by toward the middle of the session.

The crews for session 98 were Mike Stewart, Bob Fisher, Dan Miller and Robert Bowdidge. The photo below shows Robert at left, and Dan holding the throttle, while they were working at Ballard.

For session 99, we had a last-minute cancellation by one attendee for health reasons, so we operated with three people only. I volunteered to be engineer, but Mark Schutzer said he actually would prefer to do the entire job by himself, so he proceeded to do so. With all the years of experience under his belt, he worked efficiently and every bit as fast as a two-person crew. Here he is at Ballard.

The other crew was Seth Neumann and Jon Schmidt, shown below during their stint at Shumala. It looks like Seth (at left) was the engineer at this point, as he's holding the throttle.

These were valuable sessions for me, as a set-up for how I will structure my BayRails sessions, though I confess it is hard to wrap my brain around having had 99 sessions on the layout in its present form. But it must be true; I have records of all the sessions. Never thought about getting this far. But the best news was that everyone had a good time and seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.

Tony Thompson

More on house-car placards

Placards for warning or information about cargoes are very familiar with tank cars, which may carry a wide variety of loads that can be dangerous in different ways. I have written a number of posts about tank car placards, beginning with the prototype, as far back as 2012 (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/03/tank-car-placards-prototype.html ), and also several posts about modeling placards and their use (for example, this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/12/tank-car-placards-more-on-modeling.html ).

The present post, however, expands on the use of placards on house cars, particularly box cars. This topic too has been touched on before, and as I prefer to do, began with some information about the prototype (such as this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/11/placards-for-house-cars-prototype.html ). That was followed up by an introductory post about modeling (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/11/placards-for-house-cars-modeling.html ).

I didn’t show them in the earlier posts, but I used several of the images of prototype placards (see previous paragraph for links) to make HO scale versions of them. Shown below are a few of them, printed out on a high-resolution color printer at a local copy shop.

However, I’ve never shown examples of applying these placards, so one is shown on a model in the photo below (original model by Richard Hendrickson). You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish,

Another nice source of placards is a cardstock set marketed long ago by Jaeger. In the modeling post mentioned above, I did show some of the Jaeger placards in use. Here is one of their “unload other side” placard applied to a box car:

Here is another Jaeger example, a “handle with care” placard for furniture. The car obviously, from its door stripe, is equipped with auto racks, but these could be latched up to the ceiling inside to accommodate other cargo, such as furniture.

But of course you don’t really have to have readable legends on something with type this small. You can just as easily use a sharp pencil to suggest that something is present on the placard (feel free to click on the image to enlarge it):

If you look at lots of in-service prototype photos of box cars, you will find placards present on a fairly small minority of the cars, and I have followed that lead with my freight car fleet. House car placards are applied sparingly. But when present, I think they add to the realism of the model.

Tony Thompson

 

An appreciation: Railway Prototype Cyclopedias

Most prototype-oriented modelers are well aware of the superb series of documents, produced almost entirely by Pat Wider and Ed Hawkins, called the Railway Prototype Cyclopedias. The series stands at 36 volumes, and is perhaps at an end, though I don’t know for sure if that’s the case. These are simply outstanding collections of mechanical history for both freight and passenger cars (strong emphasis on the former), with excellent arrays of prototype photographs. 

The historic Volume 1 of this series, issued in 1997 (cover shown below) contained articles by a number of people, including Richard Hendrickson on Santa Fe 4-6-2s; in later years, articles were almost entirely by Wider and Hawkins. These have all been 8.5 x 11-inch soft-cover books, with covers of varied colors, and of varied numbers of pages. Volume 1 had 96 pages. 

Turning toward the apparent end of the series, I show below the cover of RPC 35, dated 2020. This one contains 385 pages, larger than most volumes. The topics covered in each RPC volume are listed on the cover, as you see here.

The latest of these volumes, and as I stated, perhaps the last, is RPC 36, formatted much like all the others and again, 385 pages.

This volume, like all of them, contains a remarkable amount of photo coverage of the subjects, almost always from every railroad that owned the particular design under discussion. I can think of no other source that even comes close to this breadth. And they are reproduced at full page width, permitting examination of details, including lettering.

To choose just one of the really innumerable excellent photos in these volumes, I show below a good example, well lit so that details of the car body and equipment can be readily seen. This is from page 251 in RPC 36, and shows an AC&F builder photo of Illinois Central box car 19363, built in January 1940 as part of a 500-car order.

The photo can readily be interpreted to show the wood running board, Ajax power hand brakes, Youngstown corrugated door with Camel roller lifters, and National Type B trucks. Not very evident in the photo but described in the caption are the Murphy rectangular-panel roof and the square-corner Dreadnaught ends. Note also that the car is stenciled for 40-ton capacity, not the usual 50 tons for these cars, a standard IC practice of the time.

Together, these two volume comprise a really astonishing collection of hundreds and hundreds of prototype photos of the biggest standard car of the 20th century, the 1937 AAR box car and its variations. If they represent the end point, they are a fitting conclusion to a truly superb set of reference documents.

Tony Thompson

Another MDC metal gondola project

Awhile back I posted about a Richard Hendrickson project that I inherited in a partially completed state, a Model Die Casting (MDC) cast white-metal high-side gondola, being modified as a C&O gondola with the curved-top ends (that post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-richard-hendrickson-freight-car.html ). Coincidentally, a friend offered me another MDC metal gondola, factory lettered for Illinois Central, and I held him off because I didn’t know if it was prototypical. 

Meanwhile, researching 9-rib high-side gondolas, well-known in the fleets of the N&W, C&O, Pere Marquette, and Clinchfield, I began to think that I had such a car in my stash of “someday project” cars, mostly older models I wasn’t sure what to do with. One of them was a gift I received from a friend when I lived in Pittsburgh, years ago. 

I pulled it out, and indeed it is the MDC metal gondola. But my friend had lettered it for the P&LE subsidiary Pittsburgh, McKeesport & Youghiogheny (for which I don’t think the model is correct), and moreover he had lettered it with decals for the later sans-serif New York Central system scheme, a lettering style that came well after my 1953 modeling year. I note from my freight car record sheet for this car that I received it way back in 1979.

Now what could I do with this? Well, as a “freight-car guy,” I naturally wanted to correct its lettering to some road that would actually have owned a car like this, even if I didn’t want to carve off the molded grab irons on the white-metal body. (To explain what a “freight-car guy” is, you may want to view this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/10/whats-freight-car-guy.html ).

Now my first step, perhaps obviously, was to turn down the IC model that had been offered, as I don’t particularly know that the IC lettering is correct either. Second, continuing my research about 9-rib gondolas, I learned from a note supplied by the late Bill Welch that Wabash had 1350 cars like this. Built during 1944–46, they had Dreadnaught ends with flat tops, and were numbered 13500–14849.

Thanks to the Steam Era Freight Car email list, Steve Johnson sent me an excellent prototype photo, taken on September 20, 1951 (photographer and location unknown), of WAB 13658.

This shows details I don’t mean to duplicate, such as the drop grabs, but shows the car body style as clearly as one could want. I intend the model to be what I call a “main line”model, meaning only to be operated in passing mainline trains, not in switching service and thus open to examination. 

A second photo sent by Gary Roe shows the other end of the car side, and in particular clearly shows the route card board on the end panel, which I can add to the MDC model with a scale 9-inch long piece of styrene scale 1 x 6.

So my first job was to paint out the old PMcK&Y lettering with black, then continue with decals. I have in the decal stash I inherited from Richard Hendrickson a Champ set, HN-2, with Wabash lettering. This matches fairly well with the photos above. Once applied, a coat of clear flat protected the decals.

With the lettering complete, I weathered the car. I added some rusty coloration to the interior, along with my usual exterior weathering with my acrylic wash technique. Route cards and a few chalked switchmen’s messages were added. Lastly, I have long wanted to try the weathering effect of white paint “chalking,” showing paint pigment carried below the lettering. I used  Prismacolor pencils, white along with a warm gray pencil, to do this.

With these final steps, the car is ready to participate in an upcoming operating session.  I am glad to have it closer to prototype appearance than was the case in its previous state, shown in the uppermost photo in this post. It will look just fine in a mainline train.

Tony Thompson

Refining scenery, Part 6

In the preceding post, Part 5 of this series, I showed the assembly and placement of the Tichy handcar shed near the backdrop in my layout town of Santa Rosalia. But since I wasn’t representing an actual handcar facility in that location, the kit parts that model a handcar track were surplus. I had a use for those parts in a completely different part of the layout. (Here is a link to that previous post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/01/refining-scenery-part-5.html .)

At the east-most end of my town of Ballard, right by the tunnel portal where the branch line emerges into Ballard, I have long had a small handcar-like shed, along with a phone booth and a tie pile.

I always have been a little disappointed that I didn’t take advantage of this location to include a pull-out for a handcar. Near a tunnel is a logical and quite common location, but I didn’t do that here because the shed is too close to the track. (I did include a handcar pull-out at the SP mainline tunnel entrance near Shumala; see a view of that area in the last photo of this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/10/my-walking-around-list.html ).

But it occurred to me that there is enough space behind the shed that it could be moved back a ways, allowing space for the Tichy handcar track. I measured that distance, and drew it on the ground. I then cut along my pencil line with a utility knife, to define the area to be removed. The ground rises somewhat to the right rear corner, as may be evident.

Next I removed the necessary material using my Gedore chisel, an excellent German tool I have shown before (see my post about it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/06/more-sags-in-track-to-fix.html ). This tool made quick work of this small removal.

Now I needed to prepare the Tichy speeder track to fit this space. It seemed to me that it had too few ties, compared to what I have seen in photos. Accordingly, I added two styrene scale 4 x 6-inch strips. These can be seen below, unpainted, in a photo of test-fitting everything to the revised site. 

Because the shed door is located so that the handcar rails line up with the track right at a switch, this may not seem to be a likely or convenient arrangement. It would make lifting a handcar off the track less easy. But speaking as a person who has helped manhandle speeders off the track onto set-outs on speeder trips, even the heavy motorized speeders can certainly be handled in such a situation.

I painted the ties dark brown and the rail a rusty reddish-brown, and when installed, added some ballast under and around them. The finished scene isn’t visibly all that different from the previous area, but it now has the handcar rails added.

This was another quite minor modification of a scenicked area, but a refinement I wanted to make. I am pleased to continue with these little upgrades here and there.

Tony Thompson

More granddaughter operating

My granddaughter was in town in town this weekend, as was expected, and I organized a short operating session for her at my layout town of Shumala. I have been trying to guide her into being the conductor, in these sessions, and she gets some of it, but prefers being the engineer. I do notice, though, that occasionally when I ask, “What do we do next?” she usually knows. She is not really a “kid” any longer, having recently celebrated her 13th birthday.

I should mention that she has operated a fair number of times previously on the layout, and on both sides of it (for an earlier example, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/12/more-family-ops.html ). Sometimes my wife has acted as conductor (with my guidance), but more recently I usually fill that role. The goal is for the granddaughter to enjoy herself.

At the beginning of this session, she leaned all the waybills against the cars, in order to identify which ones were which, which I think is a good step, but then the bills were all moved off the layout to the J-strips on the fascia. Below you see her doing a run-around with the switcher to pick up the cars for the first spots to be done, and looking over the waybills.

From there she moved to East Shumala to take care of the switching there. Here is her train on the main line, approaching East Shumala to switch. A few waybills are still standing up until she gets there, and she has the waybills for her train in her hand.

In East Shumala, she sorted through the pickups and set-outs, and pretty efficiently was able to complete all the moves. Here she is just finishing up that work, with the cars that were already picked up sorted onto the main track, and the last set-outs about ready to place. Here the waybills have been moved to the J-strips.

Then she returned to town to complete a few more pickups and set-outs, along with spotting the loaded reefer she picked up, to the ice deck for icing. In this photo, she has run around the consist again,and is bringing the switcher back so she can retrieve an empty gondola at the sand house. That will complete the work. Waybills are also on the J-strips here.

She did this smoothly and well, and really efficiently in terms of time spent, though of course this was far from her first session on the layout. The work I had assigned for the session was really the same amount as the work I would assign to a typical adult operating crew, except that she didn’t have to assemble the next train to go up the branch.

I don’t detect that she is very interested in the models on the layout as models that could be built or collected, but she does enjoy the work done by a switch crew, whether at Shumala (as shown above), or on the other side of the layout with Ballard and Santa Rosalia. She isn’t ready to act as a conductor (though not far out), but I would not hesitate to assign her as an engineer in a session with skilled operators.That’s fun to observe.

Tony Thompson

SP piggyback, Part 5: the 3D-printed flat cars

This series of posts relates to the earliest days of Southern Pacific piggyback operations. They began in June 1953, and because 1953 is my modeling year, my interest is in these earliest details. I’ve provided historical background and description of models in the first three posts (for links, see this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/sp-piggyback-part-3-piggyback-service.html ), and in the immediate preceding post, began description of the excellent 3D-printed models made by Andrew J. Chier (that post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/sp-piggyback-part-4-progress-on-3d.html ).

My next task in making AJ Chier’s models ready for the layout involved the excellent flat cars that he 3D printed. Though they are extraordinarily complete, they do need to have grab irons, sill steps, and hand brake added. These parts would require dimensions difficult for home 3D printers, and would in any case be very delicate if printed. Instead, metal parts can be added. Holes are pre-located for the grab irons,  as you can see here on both sides and end sill.

For photos of the prototype grab irons, see the Part 3 link in the top paragraph of this post. I set out to use Westerfield brass wire grab irons, but those are 18 scale inches wide and AJ has modeled the grab iron dimension as about 20 inches. Not a problem; the Westerfield parts are not hard wire, and are easily re-bent to the 20-inch width. I also used A-Line Style A sill steps. All were attached with canopy glue.

Incidentally, this 20-inch grab iron dimension modeled by AJ appears to be correct, as I interpret the SP drawings for the Class F-70-7 flat cars.

Next came the hand brake. I model these vertical-staff brakes with Cal-Scale brass brake wheels, soldered to 0.020-inch brass wire. This is a quick and simple task, and I usually make half a dozen or so at a time, and keep them on hand for future needs (I showed these kinds of completed parts in a previous post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/05/small-project-replacing-brake-wheels.html ).

This too is inserted into a drilled hole with canopy glue. The installation should look like the photo below (detail of an SP photo in the Part 3 post, linked in the top paragraph above).

The brake wheel staff here, as on flat cars generally, is a bit short, compared to tank cars, because when dropped down to permit trailer movement from car to car, the wheel must be close to flush on the deck. When the car is operated, however, the brake staff is required to be at full height. Here is my version prior to painting:

This wraps up the detailing of the flat car. The car was now given another quick coat of paint over the new detail parts, and was ready to decal. Luckily there is an excellent decal sheet for cars of this class, from Protocraft. I will discuss that aspect in a future post.

Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific steam switchers

Like most railroads, Southern Pacific in steam days owned a considerable fleet of switchers, very predominantly of the 0-6-0 wheel arrangement. And as with most of the SP steam locomotive roster, many were built by Baldwin, others by Alco and Lima, but a notable class of relatively modern switchers was built in SP’s own shops, 38 locomotives in switcher class S-12. Many of these survived to the end of steam. I’ve been meaning for some time to summarize the SP fleet as it was in later days.

Like other steam locomotives in the early days, SP switchers originally all had slide-valve cylinders, limiting the boiler pressure and thus the tractive effort which they could use. These older switchers also were frequently equipped with what are often called “slope-back” tenders and inside valve gear. Below is an example from Class S-8, built by Alco-Brooks in 1908 (Wilbur C. Whittaker collection, location unknown). 

But in the summer of 1913, SP began to acquire switchers in new Class S-10 with piston valves, a modern feature in use with SP road locomotives since at least as early as 1900. Engines in the S-10 class were built by Baldwin; following Class S-11 came from Lima. They were succeeded by the SP-built Class S-12 mentioned above, from the summer of 1918 to the summer of 1923, 33 of them built at Sacramento and the other five at Los Angeles General Shops.

Many of the Class S-12 locomotives were equipped with newly-built cylindrical tenders, like the one shown below (Paul Jansen photo at Bayshore, Clark Bauer collection). Long called “sausage tenders” by SP enthusiasts, they were modified after construction with the very tall oil hatch visible here. Note also that the road name lettering is entirely located on the water tank, avoiding the inevitable oil spills on the forward fuel tank.

The earliest versions of this tender design had a 4700-gallon water capacity and were classed accordingly as Class 47-C (C = cylindrical). Soon the design was enlarged to 5200 gallons, Class 52-C (taller and 3 feet longer), for most of the Class S-12 engines. The car shown above is a Class 52-C tender.

Other locomotives of Class S-12, along with those of other classes, were also equipped at times with tenders from older locomotives, suitably modified. By that, I mean changes such as cutting away the projecting sides of the oil bunkers on conventional Vanderbilt tenders for better rearward visibility. The need to do so can be visualized, looking at the Class 70-C tender shown below (behind 4-8-0 no. 2919; Joe Strapac collection).

When one of these 7000-gallon tenders was modified in this way, it looked like the photo below (Gene Deimling collection), and is sometimes called a “clear-vision” tender. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.) The switcher is from Class S-12. Incidentally, steam locomotive range was entirely a function of tender water capacity, not fuel, so reducing the fuel bunker somewhat did not limit the locomotive.

So if a person were to model a Southern Pacific steam switcher, and do so for the period after World War II, the largest class with piston valves would be the best choice. That class is Class S-12, which has the additional attraction of having been built in the railroad’s own shops.

For much more about SP steam switchers, particularly photographs, the indispensable book is this one by Gene Deimling. It was published by Benchmark Publications, Los Altos, CA, 1987.

In addition, there are other helpful references:

Diebert, Timothy S. and Joseph A. Strapac, Southern Pacific Company Steam Locomotive Compendium, Shade Tree Books, Huntington Beach, CA, 1987.

 Wright, Richard K., Editor, Southern Pacific Company Diagrams of Locomotives and Tenders, Wright Enterprises, Oakhurst, CA 1973.

I am still contemplating a modeling exercise aimed at one of these locomotives, but have been exploring options.

Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 118: more information

For a number of years now, I have been writing occasional posts in this blog about both information and issues relating to waybills, in both prototype and model form. (To find previous ones, use “waybills” as a search term in the search box at right.) A recent example was this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/waybills-part-114-managing-fleet.html . This may be a daunting backlog; a guide to the first 100 of these posts is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/11/waybills-part-100-guide.html .

Today I want to share yet another source of prototype information on this topic. A single example is shown below. This was part of an approximately annual issue of “question and answer” format from the journal, Traffic World, and was issued by the publisher of Traffic World, the Traffic Services Corp., in Washington, D.C. The magazine was published from 1907 until 2011 or thereabouts.

This is a 6 x 9-inch book, hardbound, and contains 155 pages. The points made in it stem from question-answer pairs in the magazine between July 1964 and June 1965, and it was issued in 1965. How long these volumes continued to be published, I don’t know, but at least until 1976.

Many of the questions, it must be said, relate to minutiae of the rules, and often turn on extremely microscopic examination of Interstate Commerce Commission rules and other authorities of a legalistic bent. Those, naturally, make extremely dry reading, and might be ideal for perusal when you are having trouble getting to sleep.

But there are nevertheless gems in here. Here’s one that isn’t too long or too detailed (adjacent material was removed from the page to focus attention on the point I want to discuss). I will comment below. You can click on the image to enlarge it, to help read the text. The topic is routing.

This example makes very clear that priority in routing lies with the shipper, even if that route results in higher rates than some other route. But it also makes the interesting point that if the shipper has not designated the route, the railroad is obliged to route via the route of lowest rate. 

It is long-established dogma among modelers that the railroad would route a car so as to traverse company rails as far as possible, and no doubt that was the desire; but such routing must not be at a higher rate than another approved routing, even if resulting in lower mileage on the originating railroad.

Here is another example, this one unfortunately longer, and again, I will comment below. This entry extends over two pages, but a lot of it is citations of authorities, which can be skipped for our purposes. It has to do with leased cars.

The key point in this question runs from the bottom paragraph in the first column, to the completion of that paragraph in the second column. In essence, it asks whether an empty specialized or leased car, moving under a car order to return it to a shipping point, generates demurrage before actually being placed for loading at the shipper. Evidently the railroad involved said yes, and the shipper said no.

The answer is interesting, as it reminds us of the railroad distinction between “actual placement,” that is, the car placed at the shipper’s dock or loading door, and “constructive placement,” meaning the car is nearby in the same town on a track that can be considered an “off-spot” (for example, if there is no space at the shipper’s dock). If the latter, the railroad must furnish the shipper with notice of the constructive placement. Otherwise, there is no demurrage.

I don't see simple ways these points could be utilized during a model railroad operating session, but they do suggest things to keep in mind for such aspects as waybill contents, for example with routing. There are so many prototype examples of indirect routing that it might be considered commonplace. And the railroad would try hard to avoid off-spots, certainly not accepting them for “crew convenience.” Those are things we can keep in mind when striving for realistic operation.

Tony Thompson