Shipping oranges on my layout

Oranges are probably the canonical California fruit, and although the area I model, the Central Coast between San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria, was not prime orange country, I do know that navel oranges were indeed grown on the Nipomo Mesa, adjoining my fictitious branch line to Santa Rosalia. So that is a crop I can include.  

Oranges in California come in two distinct varieties, the navel and Valencia varieties, and they have different seasons. Below is the crop table for fruit in the area I model, called Guadalupe–Santa Maria. It’s taken from a much larger table that covers the entire Southern Pacific, on pages 442-447 in Pacific Fruit Express (2nd Edition), Signature Press, 2000.

What is shown above for oranges is the navel variety, peak harvest December to March, with lesser harvesting in November and April. By contrast, Valencias in California are harvested from March to October, with peak season  in May to August. This nicely complements the navel season, though the area I model was not Valencia territory.

I have chosen to identify just one of the five packing houses on my layout with orange shipment. It was common for packing houses to specialize in this way. As I have previously described (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/08/produce-shipping-boxes-part-2.html ), I created orange box labels for that packing house, Phelan & Taylor, by modifying a prototype orange box label (used in the real world by a Los Angeles distributor): 

At the packing house, I show field boxes of oranges. Field boxes were large containers used in the orchard during harvest, much larger than the familiar orange crate that was shipped to market. I received these 3D-printed boxes from Robert Bowdidge, and painted the contents in different colors for different fruit and vegetables, orange of course for oranges but also for apricots.  

Then of course waybills are needed. I use a number of destinations, mostly on the East Coast, though Midwestern destinations also appear. Here is an example, including the well-known “capacity” of a standard PFE ice car interior, 462 crates: 

The car that is listed in this waybill, PFE 9071, is part of PFE’s Class R-40-26, and it’s shown below at the East Shumala packing house of Phelan & Taylor for loading. 

The seasonality of orange harvest fits perfectly into my general operating approach, that we treat whatever day we are operating as that day in 1953. So if we were operating on my layout today, May 13, the harvests and other seasonal features will be those of May 13, 1953. Orange seasons fit perfectly into that process. 

Tony Thompson 

Beer as an industrial commodity, Part 2

Long-time readers of this blog, or those who may have heard a clinic I have given several times, may find that the title of the present post stirs a memory. That’s because those prior blog posts and clinics were entitled “Wine as an industrial commodity,” a topic I developed jointly with my late friend Richard Hendrickson. Here’s a link to that earlier post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/02/wine-as-industrial-commodity.html . 

More recently, I took the railroad side of that topic and reorganized the material as an article for Model Railroad Hobbyist, the on-line magazine (see it at: www.mrhmag.com ). That article, entitled “Tank Cars and the Wine Business,” was in the May 2023 issue of MRH, and I posted some comments about it (see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/05/my-column-in-may-2023-model-railroad.html ).

I suppose it’s natural to consider the ways in which beer can be viewed similarly, on the railroad side of the business, and how we can model some aspects of it, should we wish to do so. A few years ago, I wrote a post on this subject, giving the background of beer-making processes and materials (available at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/07/beer-as-industrial-commodity.html ). 

In this present post, I want to visit some additional points, particularly relating to the the rail traffic that goes with beer. In doing so, I will overlap somewhat with that previous post.

By the late 20th century, a very few huge brewing companies dominated the beer business in the United States, and it’s perhaps difficult to realize that only as far back as 1949, there were still 440 breweries in the U.S., the great majority of them relatively small and serving rather local territories. This is an advantage if you model that sort of era, because you don’t have to think about modeling the mammoth processing plants that breweries became later, or vast fleets of rail traffic. Rail traffic certainly did vary by era.

At the same time, these smaller breweries were not like the craft brewing operations of the last two decades, which get almost everything by truck. Instead, they were old-fashioned operations of little or no sophistication, but with rail service. So let’s look at what the rail traffic to and from such breweries would be.

We begin with the raw materials from which beer is made. The primary material is grain, traditionally barley, but possibly also wheat, corn, rice and others. The starches in the seed grains we harvest are converted to sugars at the time the seed germinates, to feed the new plant. So the grain used in making beer has to be made to begin germination and the conversion of starches to sugars. 

That process is called “malting” in the beer context, in which grains are dampened and warmed to begin germination, then heated to pause germination and dry the malt. The details of this process, especially the time and temperature of drying, can be varied over a wide range, and the starting grains also vary, producing a considerable variety of malts. This results in a wide range of beer colors and flavors (Briess Co. photo). 

In my previous post about beer, I went into some detail on malting at the industrial level, including rail car transportation, so I won’t repeat that part (here’s the link again: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/07/beer-as-industrial-commodity.html).

Once malt is made and crushed or ground, it is treated with hot water to extract the sugars from the malt, and then the resulting liquid is brought to a boil and hops are added. Hops are a plant flower, and are dried before shipment. They contribute both flavor and resistance to spoilage to the beer (Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. photo). 

Next yeast is added to the liquid, nowadays a carefully chosen yeast, though for centuries brewers relied on “wild” yeasts that were in the environment. The yeast happily consumes the sugars, and their life-process waste product is alcohol. Under suitable controls, the result is beer.

A modern “factory” brewery would receive the starting ingredients, grain and hops, in bulk, and do everything needed for brewing in house. To make lighter beers, there might be little or no barley alongside the rice or corn malt. But for modern modeling, the point is that only raw materials would be shipped in.

In contrast, a smaller brewery might well receive malt instead of grain. Malt was often shipped in 50- or 100-pound paper bags, so it could arrive in box cars. Hops also were likely bagged in that era, though they were sometimes handled in bulk — again, box cars most likely for bagged hops.

Once beer is made, it is shipped out. The hundreds of small breweries of, say, 1949 mostly served a local area, so they would not have shipped much if any beer by rail. But even a medium-size brewery might do so. One’s first thought would involve box cars, but beer cans or bottles are quite subject to damage in transit. 

The introduction of load dividers for canned goods shipment was a huge step forward in reducing damage. For my 1953 era, this can include GAEX cars (see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-gaex-box-cars.html ),or the WP “feather’ box cars (here’s my recent post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/04/western-pacifics-famous-feather-box-cars.html ).  This is my GAEX model. 

So even if you don’t wish to model a brewery directly, you can model the rail traffic needed for one, either the raw materials inputs or the shipping of finished product. On my layout, both are included.

Tony Thompson 

PCR 2026

Last weekend the Pacific Coast Region (PCR) of NMRA held its annual convention. It was the turn of PCR’s Redwood Empire Division to host the convention, and they did so near Santa Rosa, CA. It was the 82nd annual PCR convention (the region was created in 1940). I understand attendance was about 150, a decent number post-pandemic.

I attended, as I almost always do, and presented my talk about “The Role of the Agent (and how we can model it),” a talk for which there is a handout (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/02/handout-for-role-of-agent.html ). There were a number of other excellent talks; one I especially enjoyed was by Robert Bowdidge, shown below with one of his slides. The talk was called “Structures and Stories — Reproducing the Industries of the Santa Clara Valley,” for Robert’s layout set in the 1930s. 

There were some excellent models in the model contest, as has long been the case in PCR contests. One I really liked wads Don Burch’s stockyard, shown below. The detailing was excellent, and the animal figures were varied (not 20 examples each of two poses), so it looked really good. The loading chutes are set up for single-deck or double-deck stock car loading. 

Another really nice model, which I heard later was a prize winner, was Larry Tidball’s  model of the West Side Lumber Co. blacksmith shop as it was in 1936, shown below with roofs removed (at top). It was all built from scale-size stripwood, even individual boards in the board-and-batten siding.

Here is an interior view of the large room in the shop (Larry’s photo). Every room contained this kind of detail.

There was a modular layout running, with a wide variety of trains. I liked one of the modules, a well-executed portrayal of an 84 Lumber facility. I apologize for failing to find out the name of the builder. 

It was another nice example of a regional NMRA convention. I enjoy these in my home region, PCR, but also travel to nearby regions for some conventions, such as Pacific Southwest Region or Pacific Northwest Region. They are always interesting, and fun, and you always learn things, and of course it’s also an opportunity to renew friendships and acquaintanceships. If you haven’t attended one of these, you might consider giving it a try.

Tony Thompson 

Another passenger upgrade, Part 2

In a recent post, I described a project to upgrade a Rivarossi streamlined postal-baggage for service on my layout as an SP car. In that preceding post, I showed the paint scheme I applied, and the addition of steel nuts for weight. (That post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/04/another-passenger-car-upgrade.html .) 

In a number of posts about SP passenger cars, I have shown various ways of dealing with the Rivarossi trucks and couplers. Either the “Talgo”-like swivel arm on the truck can be modified to accept a Kadee box and coupler,  or the coupler arm can be removed altogether, and Kadee couplers mounted on the car body. For this car, I wanted to do the latter.

The area underneath the car end on all the Rivarossi streamlined cars has a pair of ribs, with rivet detail atop them. This area is shown in the photo below. 

I have found that sanding off these rivets, and adding a mounting pad of styrene sheet pieces can create a correct-height mounting surface (see, for example, this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/06/modeling-sp-passenger-cars-part-20.html ). But different Rivarossi car types do not have identical underbodies, so each car type requires determination of the correct amount of styrene.

In the photo below, I have already drilled and tapped a hole for a 2-56 screw in the new pad. This does raise an issue with no general answer: how close to the car end should the coupler be mounted? It’s an issue because unfortunately my passenger cars from various sources have a variety of diaphragms on them, some of minimal thickness, some with more depth. This can lead to problems in coupling some cars. 

For diaphragms, the Rivarossi models have a short extension around the end doors, but no faceplate, and no stabilizer bars (here’s background: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/06/passenger-car-diaphragms-part-3.html ). 

Below is a detail from a Bruce Heard photo, taken at Sacramento in 1962, from one of the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society passenger volumes; see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/07/passenger-car-diaphragms-part-4.html .

Above you can clearly see the appearance of the face plate and the stabilizer bars. These face plates had a variety of shapes, and I chose a typical Pullman shape from an assortment of Coach Yard face plates, painted them dark gray, and attached them with canopy glue. Brass wire stabilizer bars were attached and painted the same way. Finally, Pan Pastels were used to add rust to the face plate.  

This completes the car work. In service on my layout, the car might either be deadheaded anywhere in a train, or, if being worked in postal service, might well be coupled to a postal storage car at its postal end, a common practice on SP’s Coast Division mail trains (a description of my storage car is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/08/modeling-sp-head-end-cars-part-7b.html ). Such a line-up is shown here at Shumala on my layout. 

This was an interesting project to complete, so that the car can be used in service along with my other upgraded Rivarossi cars. Passenger service on my SP layout main line may be limited, but this car can contribute to it.

Tony Thompson 

Route cards, Part 33: further examples

Once again, I have the opportunity to show some interesting prototype route cards from the Michael Litant collection. These were all intended to be attached to route card boards. I have shown previously the dimensions and appearance of the prototype boards (see my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/01/route-cards-7.html ). Route card boards were about 5.5 x 9 inches. I usually make them from a length of scale 1 x 6-inch lumber or styrene strip.  

The first card I want to show is  apparently a train assignment card, by which I mean identifying a car to go into a specific departing train. It’s a Union Pacific form, for train GTX East, and the “3” may be a blocking number. The car number, 43473, is shown but no initials (could mean it’s a UP car), and the contents appear to be “MW bags,” whatever that may be. Original card dimensions are 4 x 5 inches.

Second up is what appears to be a transfer card, from the Peoria & Pekin Union to the GM&O. Like the card above, it uses green type for attention. The car is Great Northern 36638,a 40-foot wood-sheathed box car, and it  contained dry felt from the Barrett Division of Allied Chemical & Dye Co. Dimensions are 3.5 x 5.5 inches. 

Another transfer card is this one, destined to the D&RGW at Ogden, originating road not shown but has to be UP or, more likely, SP. Car is B&O 289225, a 50-foot double-door automobile car. Card is 3 x 4 inches.  

An interesting card is this one from the MKT at Denison, Texas, showing a very large letter “Z” to  indicate a train or specific destination. Car is shown as M 91710. Ordinarily the “M” would be the long-time reporting mark for the Montour Railroad (though Montour had no cars in this number series), but in this case it may well be clerks’ shorthand for the MKT. If so, the car was a 40-foot steel box car with 6-foot doors. This upright card is 3.5 x 6 inches. 

My fifth example  is a “hold” instruction for CB&Q 63960, so that the car can be weighed. This was a 40-foot steel box car with 6-foot doors, and he cargo was lumber. Though not so identified, it is probably a Great Northern card, since it directs weighing the car at GN’s Interbay Yard (Seattle). Card is 3 x 4 inches. 

Finally,  another transfer card, this one from the Houston Belt & Terminal to Southern Pacific. The car is Southern 9495, a 50-foot box car with a 10-foot door, and the contents are shown as XDF, possibly meaning empty, and the destination is “NOLA,” surely meaning New Orleans, Louisiana. Card is 3 x 4.5 inches in size. 

As I always remark about these cards, the variety is intriguing and the implications for model railroad operations fairly obvious. I continue to enjoy seeing and interpreting cards like these.

Tony Thompson 

ProRail 2026

This past week was the 29th ProRail operating weekend, held this year in northern New Jersey.  I enjoyed myself operating on four excellent layouts — no surprise — and we even had some nice weather, far from guaranteed in New jersey springtime.

The first day was a bonus session, outside the regular schedule, held at John Rogers’ relatively new Maine Central layout. He’s setting it in 1925, a time when railroads were strong and profitable and had extensive passenger service. I worked as the Bangor yardmaster, and in the photo below, John himself was giving us pointers on how the yard operates (that’s the yard engine in the foreground). I was quite impressed by how much John has built in a relatively brief time, and things went smoothly. 

That evening, I participated in one of ProRail’s long-standing traditions, attending a baseball game. It was a minor-league game, which are always enjoyable in smaller stadiums (someone described it as “how baseball was meant to be”). We watched the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs play the Durham (NC) Bulls, members of the Triple-A International League. Lovely stadium  in Allentown, PA as the sunset faded. 

The next day I was at  Dave Abeles’ Onondaga Cutoff, modeling Conrail mainline action in 1990. It’s a fast-paced and impressive layout. During most of the session, Seth Neumann and I did the branchline switching job with Morristown & Erie Alco power, a lot of fun away from the speedy main line. In the shot below, Seth has our train at CP 294, ready to enter Conrail’s yard with our cars.  

The following day was the highlight of the event for me, operating on Tony Koester’s Nickel Plate Road layout. I was the Eastbound Yardmaster at large and busy Frankfort Yard, ably mentored by Fred Wall, who often does that job. We just about kept ahead of the flow, an intense experience but truly fun. Here is how that yard looks from where I worked.

Finally, on the last day I got to operate on Jerry Dziedzic’s Susquehanna. It’s a large layout that kept a big crew busy. Below are Rich Remiarz at left, working with Seth Neumann at Unionville on a local freight. 

What an excellent weekend! Many old friends to renew connection with, gorgeous layouts, and a well-organized event. Not a surprise, the same can be said of most ProRail events, but this was right up there with the best of the ones I’ve been to.

Tony Thompson 

My 50-foot automobile car, Part 3

Last year, I showed the starting steps in a project to add a 50-foot Viking roof to an automobile car body to model a Chicago & North Western prototype (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-simple-freight-car-kitbash.html ). 

I had on hand a pair of Cannonball Car Shops original Dreadnaught ends which I could apply to match the C&NW prototype. Shortening those ends and applying them to a Branchline 50-foot body was shown in a second post (it is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/08/freight-car-kitbash-part-2.html ). But at about that time, I discovered I already possessed such a C&NW car, that I inherited. This led to some head-scratching. What other road would have had Viking-roofed 50-foot auto cars?

The one that came to mind was the Erie, another road that evidently liked the Viking roof, so I contacted eminent Erie modeler Schuyler Larrabee to ask about prototypes. It took him a while to dig into the question, but he came back to me with the information that, yes, Erie did have some cars like that. In fact, not only is a builder photo in the 1940 Car Builders Cyclopedia (page 147) but so are the plans, confirming the Viking roof and also showing that the ends were Hutchins — and not just Hutchins, but inverse Hutchins. 

Originally these were Erie 68200–28299. Here is the Cyc photo; doors appear black on the as-delivered car.  In later repaints, the black doors were not continued, and I want to model the car in post-1947 paint, with the 6-foot Erie diamond emblem.

Turns out that Chad Boas has now produced an inverse Hutchins end, so that should enable me to convert my kitbash into an Erie automobile car. I ordered a pair, and they are shown below as I received them. They don’t have a top section, making them usable for both round-roof and peaked-roof cars, with the modeler making a top section from strip or sheet styrene to suit the model.

Previously I had applied Dreadnaught ends to my model, as described earlier, so my first step was to remove those ends. There I discovered yet another advantage of canopy glue, the adhesive used to attach the previous ends: since it doesn’t attack or bond with the styrene car body, it can be peeled off from the interface (for more about canopy glue, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-few-words-in-praise-of-canopy-glue.html ). 

Then I used Evergreen styrene strip, 6 scale inches thick, to make top sections by cutting and filing to fit. Once those strips were made, and ends cleaned up, they could be attached, once again with canopy glue. A rubber band made sure ends remained in correct alignment as the glue sets. Here the recessed panels in the inverse Hutchins end are evident.

Next I repeated the step of adding ladders to the car body, and returned to my extensive stash of freight car parts, much of it inherited from Richard Hendrickson. For this car, I chose some old Front Range ladders with the right width, which happened to be molded in orange, and attached them with canopy glue: 

Next steps include addition of grab irons, sill steps, and B-end brake gear. I might mention that the car kit that is the foundation for this project is a Branchline, now some years old, and most of the detail parts in the kit are now so brittle that they can’t even be removed from the sprues by a sprue cutter without breaking them. Other parts are being substituted. I will return to detailing steps in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Another passenger car upgrade

As I have written a number of times, my layout is primarily a branch line, with limited amounts of mainline traffic passing by on the Southern Pacific’s Coast Division main line. Since my staging cannot accommodate full-length passenger trains, I usually run second sections, or deadhead extras, to include passenger cars.  

My equipment is in some cases accurately modeled SP prototypes (as a single example, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/03/modeling-sp-passenger-cars-part-12.html , or refer to my Model Railroad Hobbyist article in the issue for October 2023), but in other cases would be better described as credible stand-ins. This is especially appropriate in a deadhead extras, moving equipment from one terminal to another, as in such cases the equipment need not match any specific train. 

This post is about upgrading one such car, a Rivarossi baggage-postal car. This is only broadly like an SP car of the same type, but could pass muster in one of my deadhead extras. The model does resemble some 1950s cars built by Pullman -Standard, such as SP Class 80-BP-60-1 (meaning baggage-postal, 60-foot postal apartment). Shown below is the “north” side of one of these cars, painted for assignment to the City of San Francisco (Pullman photo, CSRM). Note the full-width diaphragms and full skirting.

 I point out that this is the “north” side because the other side was different, with five windows in the postal apartment. Below is a photo of the “south” side, seen in COSF service at Laramie, Wyo. in August 1966 (Don Munger collection). Here skirts are almost all removed, and full-width diaphragms are gone Both prototype photos are from the essential  SPH&TS book, Southern Pacific Passenger Cars, Vol. 3: Head-end Equipment (Pasadena, 2007).

The Rivarossi car has all these general features, so I decided I could use it, even though it’s 73 feet long, not 80 feet. I began by stripping its original paint, masking and painting two-tone gray in the typical SP “pool scheme” arrangement of the mid-1950s, that is, with no train name or emblem, and lettering it with postal-baggage SP decals. 

The car number I chose to use is SP 5156. This corresponds to SP Class 70-BP-1-3, built by Standard Steel Car in 1924, a round-roof car class fairly different from the Rivarossi model. But many cars in this class were converted to regular baggage cars after World War II, including 5156, so by my modeling year of 1953, 5156 was a non-existent SP 5000-series number. My stand-in model, shown below, could use it.

Evident in this photo is that the model needed replacement of the Rivarossi horn-hook coupler arrangement, which is a kind of “Talgo” attachment to the truck. I will install Kadee couplers on the body instead. It also should have diaphragms, and like all stock Rivarossi passenger cars, has far too little weight for dependable operation. I added a pair of 5/8-11 steel nuts with canopy glue; these can be seen below before painting them black. This is the “north” side of the car.  

Next, diaphragms need to be added, and couplers installed. That and a few other tweaks will be covered in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Western Pacific’s famous “Feather” box cars

Among the most famous box car paint schemes of the transition era was Western Pacific’s silver scheme with a full-length orange feather (for many years, WP publicized its “Feather River Route” slogan in various ways). I have no idea how many model versions of these silver “feather” cars have been produced, in all scales and on a wide variety of non-prototypical box cars, but it is surely in the tens of thousands. 

The famous silver-feather cars were actually only 20 in number at the beginning, the first 20 of 1951’s 600-car order of PS-1 40-foot box cars from Pullman-Standard, WP 20801–21400. They were an experimental application of the then-new P-S “Compartmentizer” load-divider system. WP’s customers included a number of shippers of canned goods, a product notorious for generating claims for denting and other damage in transit. The load divider was intended to mitigate that problem.

Soon after delivery, WP decided to number its 20 compartmentizer cars separately as WP 19501–19520. The load dividers were an immediate hit with shippers, and soon WP sent 22 more of its new PS-1s back to Pullman-Standard to be equipped with compartmentizers. When so equipped, those 22 cars were reneumbered to 19521–19542. Here’s WP 19527 at Council Bluffs, Iowa in January 1954 (Lou Schmitz photo). 

What may be hard to recognize in this photo is an indication that WP was already having problems with the silver paint scheme, as the paint didn’t adhere well to the car cement coating on the roof and ends. When the second group of 22 cars was repainted into the silver scheme, as you see above, the roof and ends were painted black.

There is a fascinating account available on-line, of the early days of using load-divider cars to ship canned goods. It is a 1954 MBA thesis by Burnis J. Sharp at Boston University. Here is a link to the PDF:  https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/142051966.pdf . Part of the document contains Sharp’s comparison of performance of GAEX DF loader cars, with the Pullman-Standard “Compartmentizer” equipment, as installed in the Western Pacific “Feather” box cars. (My post about the GAEX cars is at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-gaex-box-cars.html .)

Back in the 1990s, I wrote an article for Railroad Model Craftsman magazine about modeling the 1951 order of WP’s PS-1 box cars (September 1994, pp. 56–59). I did do one silver car, but also did a boxcar-red car representing the other 580 cars of the 600-car 1951 order. Third, I wanted to model the WP scheme which replaced the silver scheme, which had been found to show dirt much too well: the “small feather” scheme on a boxcar-red body but keeping the “Rides Like a Feather” slogan (I’ll show it below).

For modeling, more fully described in the RMC article, I used the McKean PS-1 model, as it was the best PS-1 car body available at the time, having correct P-S ends, sill steps, and almost the right P-S roof. I replaced the kit’s 6-foot door with a correct 7-foot door from C&BT Shops, and applied Overland Models etched-metal running boards. Microscale Decals supplied the large-feather and plain schemes, and Champ Decals the small-feather scheme. I also included a bibliography of prototype information in the article.

Here’s the original silver scheme, though without the correct Chrysler FR-5 trucks.

The “small feather’ scheme that followed is colorful too and I enjoy operating this car on my layout, often in canned-goods service.

Then there is the plain scheme with silver lettering, worn, after all, by the great majority of this car group. 

Lastly, let me show one of the many “foobie” versions, applied to practically every imaginable steel box car body: Athearn’s metal car kit with pre-war Dreadnaught ends, conventional straight-panel roof, and six-foot door (and black ladders).’Nuff said.

These schemes are part of freight car history, especially for the western U.S., so they are fun to have in the fleet, and of course to include in layout operating sessions.

Tony Thompson 

Route Cards, Part 32: more examples

I have once again been favored with access to the Michael Litant collection of route cards, most retrieved from freight cars in service in the mid- to late 1960s. As I’ve said before, the variety of formats, shapes and sizes remains interesting, and can serve as guidance for those of us trying to reproduce the look of these in model railroad operations. 

As the title of today’s post suggests, this is just the latest in long series of posts like this. To find more, you can use “route cards” as the search term in the search box at right, or perhaps begin with a typical previous post like this one, which is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/08/route-cards-part-21-more-examples.html . 

I’ll begin with what is probably just a destination card, used in freight yards everywhere. It’s from the Houton Belt & Terminal. Probably the “SL” is a zone, and 477 is the destination (or perhaps an interchange yard). The car, SP 214336, was from Class B-50-38, built in 1956 at Sacramento, a 50-foot double-door box car. The original card is 3 x 4.5 inches, a common vertical format. 

A second example is a Missouri Pacific card, applied at North Little Rock and destined to Van Buren, Arkansas, probably destination 16. It’s not noted whether the car is loaded or empty. The car, N&W 385323, is a conventional 40-foot steel box car with a six-foot side door. Original dimension of the card are 5 x 3 inches. 

Third in this group is what’s called a transfer card, from one railroad to another, in this case from the Milwaukee Road to the Union Pacific. The car is UP 166458, a 50-foot double-door box car with cushion underframe. The car’s cargo is bags, perhaps paper, burlap or other, destined to Houston, Texas on July 3, 1965. The card is 3 x 4 inches. 

My fourth example  is another transfer card, this one from the Chicago & Eastern Illinois to the Indiana Harbor Belt, the car being URTX 1896, a 40-foot ice refrigerator car of general-service class RS. Marking the contents as “X” may mean it was empty. The card is 4 x 3 inches, and like the one shown above, makes very clear the identity of the destination railroad.  

Next is another vertical-format card, this one from the N&W, for car HERX 2141, evidently being moved to Detroit. The HERX reporting mark was owned by North American Car Corp., used for “bunkerless” refrigerator cars, Class RB, essentially insulated box cars. HERX 2141 was 46 feet long.  The card is 3 x 5 inches. 

My final example is from the Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Railroad, and it’s a card for a specific destination, the Reynolds Metal Plant no. 3 at Louisville, Kentucky, The car is B&O 299128, a loader-equipped 55-foot box car with 8-foot doors. The card is 4 x 3 inches.

To me, all these cards are not only interesting in their own right, but give us ideas for what our model route cards could look like. Even in HO scale, some of the very large initials or numbers on some of these cards could be visible in a scale route card.

Tony Thompson 

Seasonality in reefer usage

On my layout, I have chosen to model all of 1953, in that each operating session is on the current month and day, but in 1953. So an April 13 session this year would be modeled as April 13, 1953, and a session this fall on September 15 would be September 15, 1953. One reason for this is so that I can mirror the varying crops being harvested; the area I model was in peak harvest for least one crop in every month of the year.

I have shown this crop seasonality before (see, for example, in this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/09/seasonality-of-crops-and-traffic.html ), but below is the vegetable crop chart for my modeled area, taken from the multi-page chart in the back of the PFE book (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Signature Press, 2000), pages 442–447.  You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish. Black bars are peak harvests, gray bars off-peak harvesting.

But today’s post is not about accuracy of crops loaded, which in any case only shows up on the waybill. Instead, it is about the cars into which the crops were loaded. At the time I model, PFE had by far the largest reefer fleet in North America, around 40,000 cars. During most of the year, this fleet could handle all of the reefer needs of PFE’s two parent companies, SP and UP, and contract partner WP.

But during peak harvesting in SP, WP and UP territory, July to late September, even PFE’s fleet was inadequate. The table on page 450 in the PFE book shows this by year for virtually all of PFE’s history. In 1953, for example, PFE cars handled 73 percent of that year’s 307,000 perishable shipments in SP territory. 

To solve that problem, PFE borrowed from various other reefer fleets, heavily from American Refrigerator Transport (ART), but also from Fruit Growers Express, the BAR, and others. I’ve discussed this in more detail previously (see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/08/foreign-reefers-in-pfe-territory.html ).

So whenever I host an operating session in the July–October period, you will see various foreign reefers being loaded at packing houses on my layout. Of course PFE cars are still the majority in that period, but the foreign cars seen then for loading are rare outside that peak harvest season. Below is a peak-season example, a loaded BAR reefer being picked up at Phelan & Taylor Produce in East Shumala on my layout.

There are other details in seasonal reefer visibility. In late February, through the end of March, strawberries are a sufficiently valuable crop to demand express reefers, and indeed such cars do show up at my Guadalupe Fruit Company for loading in that period. Shown below is an example, with 40-foot PFE Class BR-40-10 no. 909 (an upgraded InterMountain model) at left, and 50-foot Railway Express reefer REX 1227 (a Walthers wood-sheathed model) at right, both spotted for loading. The Ballard depot is behind them.

These cars are normally picked by mainline (non-streamlined) passenger trains at Shumala, and are iced before departure. In the photo below, PFE 928 (with correct Symington-Gould “XL” trucks for PFE 926–950 cars of Class BR-40-10) is being spotted by SP Alco switcher no. 1474 at the ice deck in Shumala, prior to pickup. 

These variations in the reefers that are seen on the layout during operating sessions during particular parts of the year reflect prototype information, and are aspects of layout operation that I enjoy.

Tony Thompson