New SP Shipper's Guide, Part 2

In the preceding post, I showed the general features of the new Southern Pacific “Shipper Guide,” for 1952. For me as an SP modeler, it's a rich trove of potential operating information. You can read that previous post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/a-new-sp-shippers-guide.html . In the present post, I want to illustrate specific features.

In the previous post, I showed an overall map of the Las Angeles Terminal District, with 16 zones identified. Here is an example of one of these zone maps, Part 1 of Zone 16 (Zone 16 extends to Burbank Junction, where the Coast and Valley routes diverge), on page 70. Why choose this map? It’s the literal area where I used to railfan the SP as a youngster, walking down Sonora Ave. to the tracks.  

Each siding has a number. As the Guide states, the drawings are not to scale, and do not indicate locations of switches, gates,, doors or impaired clearance points. Each number of course corresponds to a user of that siding. The users are listed on an accompanying page. Shown below is page 69, the list that goes with the map above. Note that some sidings have multiple businesses on them. I remember watching the Burbank Local crew working these multiple spots. 

An important part of the new route guide is that there is considerable information about the route card number assignments, which would permit a person to operate a layout using route cards only. I earlier showed an SP listing of the meaning of its route card numbers in the Oakland and East Bay areas (that post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/route-cards-10-southern-pacific.html ). Below is one of four pages listing the Los Angeles tag (route card) numbers. The upper part here shows zone tags, that is, for the zones mapped as described above. Below are “road tag” listings, for outbound cars.

But even more interesting to me is a listing in the back of the guide. It contains all the industries in the guide, in alphabetical order, and tells you its track number. But in addition, it gives you the tag number (i.e. route car number) for that industry, and at the right, lists the size of the industry spot (not the siding) in cars. Here’s one of the pages.

Amazing stuff, especially for a document nearly 75 years old, containing what you’d presume was long-lost information like tag numbers. As I mentioned, you could operate a switching layout entirely with tags, if you wished. That’s what a local switch crew would have been doing. 

Tony Thompson