Waybills, Part 127: more prototype bills

This post is to discuss several prototype waybills and their contents. I think that all have interesting features that are worth presenting. If you would like to examine any details of these bills, any of them can be enlarged by clicking on the image. 

l’ll begin with a Pennsylvania Railroad bill from the late days before Penn Central. The bill is to move a product of the Euclid Division of GMC from the plant at Hudson, Ohio, to Cobusco Inc. at Denver, Colorado. The routing shows PRR to Effner, Indiana, just at the Illinois border due west of Logansport, then via TP&W across Illinois to Lomax on the Santa Fe, just a few miles east of Fort Madison, then Santa Fe to Denver. 

The car is MP 9961, a plain (type FM) steel 60-foot flat car. The load is one tractor NBN (or NOIBN, that is, Not Otherwise Identified By Name), weighing over 47,000 pounds, plus seven other parts and two boxes of parts, adding about 8000 pounds. A special note is added about the fact that a nitrogen compressed gas cylinder is on the load too. Note that the original rate typed on the waybill has been corrected, as was the freight charge.

Another interesting example is of a waybill filled out incorrectly. It’s a Norfolk & Western waybill, moving an empty covered hopper from Ironton, Ohio to Oregon, Illinois, a well-known location for sand shipping and thus presumably for loading of the car, CB&Q 180854. But the waybill’s original routing showing it to exchanged from N&W at Chicago to the C&NW. A hand-written note observes that Oregon, IL is not on the C&NW; then another note points out that Oregon is on the CB&Q, and modifies the routing exchange partner as CB&Q.  

One may also find it amusing to follow the various dates, from the waybill’s original date of February 25, through the last of the eight date stamps, Burlington’s March 15 stamp, just to move an empty car.

Another  example is a very heavy load,  a single piece of rolling mill machinery, weighing 299,000 pounds, along with 4800 pounds of blocking. It was shipped by United Engineering & Foundry in Youngstown, Ohio, to Inland Steel’s plant at East Chicago, via interchange at Hobart, Indiana, onto the the EJ&E. The car was PRR 470243, a 72-foot depressed center flat car of 300,000 pounds nominal capacity. (The load limit would be significantly higher.)  

This bill was subject to later correction in the rate, with an additional payment of $60.36 added to the original bill of $3832.86. A further billing was performed for demurrage, as the car was spotted at United Engineering & Foundry on December 20, and not picked up with its load u;til December 29. That demurrage amounted to $132.48.

Lastly, I wanted to show a B&O analog to the Pennsylvania waybill that I used at the foundation of my own model waybills. (You can see that PRR bill at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/06/waybills-part-69-another-approach.html .) Below is exactly the same load (steel scrap), now coming from Brunswick, MD to  its destination (Deitch & Co. in Sharpsburg, PA), but here loaded in a B&O gondolas 261589, a 70-ton, 52-ft, 6-in. gondola with drop ends and steel floor.

Although it isn’t noted here, loads of scrap often carry the additional notation, RMPO, which means Remelting Purposes Only. That PRR bill mentioned above does have such a notation.

I continue to find prototype waybills interesting and informative, and of the many, many millions issued over the years, I wish we had more to look at!

Tony Thompson