Waybills, Part 121: Industry research for waybills

In creating waybills for layout operation, it is natural to have outbound and inbound loads to the industrial spurs on one’s layout but where do those loads go, and where do they come from? This is a long-standing challenge for model railroad operations, and beyond simply making up industry names, is worth considering. 

As I have often described, and now only briefly mention, railroad-issued “shipper guides” are a superb resource. In fact, I have written several blog posts about them, which can be reached by using the term “shipper guide” as the search term in the search box at upper right; or my more general post on the topic is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/11/waybills-part-44-shipper-guides.html .

As an example of one of these volumes, below is shown a 1943 guide from the Milwaukee Road. You can obtain this and 22 others from Ted Schnepf’s Rails Unlimited site, described here: https://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html .  

This guide enabled me to identify a major producer of steel forgings, Ladish Drop Forge, in Cudahy, Wisconsin.  The waybill I made is for drop forgings sent to be finish machined at one of my layout industries, Santa Maria Tool & Machine. Note incidentally, that such a shipment could move under “milling in transit” rules, as I’ve explained previously (for example, this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/08/wayblls-part-51-more-on-prototype-in.html ).

Another example of an inbound load that I recently created was also destined to that same machine shop on my layout. This business I imagined as doing custom machining and fabrication for manufacturers. Of course many inbound loads are castings or forgings to finish machine, as shown in the example above, but machine tools may also be delivered from time to time. For example, a vertical milling machine.

Anyone familiar with machine shops or machinists knows that the usual synonym for such a machine is a “Bridgeport.” That name comes from a prominent maker of such milling machines, the Bridgeport Machines Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut (see for example the Wikipedia entry, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_(machine_tool_brand) ). The Wikipedia entry also gives numerous model designations for a more specific cargo name if you wish. Here’s a waybill.  

A final example is a shipment of cement from one of the several Portland cement plants in California, located on the Santa Fe in Victorville, California. One can easily search on the internet for cement plant locations anywhere in the U.S. Here the load is directed to my district facility for California Division of Highways (today known as CalTrans). 

All these examples are from readily available on-line resources. As my friend Kyle Wyatt used to say, for lots of research challenges, “Google is your friend,” and I certainly often act on that advice.

Tony Thompson