Waybills, Part 129: Reading a waybill

I know, waybills aren’t most people’s idea of reading material. What I mean is the way one deciphers information, that is, “reads,” a waybill. I know this comes up on a number of layouts which use prototypical waybills  in layout operation.

First, it’s useful to understand what is on a prototype waybill, even though most model railroad versions are simplified from the prototype, often considerably so. But of course the goal in such simplification is to retain essentials. So I’ll begin with a prototype example, which happens to be from the Long Island Railroad. You can click on the image to enlarge if you wish.

I tell people to start at the upper left corner.  Shown there is the identity of the car that is carrying the load: Southern Railway no. 262825, a 40-foot steel boxcar of 40-ton capacity. 

Next, in the area just below the car identity, are shown, at left, the destination place, and on the right, the place of origin. In fact, this division down the center of the document separates information about the shipper and consignee all the way down to the load information. Here the load is going from Bushwick, New York to Ellenburgh, New York. Bushwick is a neighborhood in the northern part of Brooklyn (New York City), and an industrial area at the time of this 1954 waybill. Ellenburg (as now spelled) is in extreme northern New York state, west of Lake Champlain and near the Canadian border.

On a model railroad, you might be modeling either of these places, making the load either inbound or  outbound; or it may be a car in a mainline train, en route between the two.

The next lines below the origin and destination line contains both the routing between the two places, and the names of the shipper and consignee. The Long Island will transfer the car to the New York Central, which in turn will hand off to the Rutland for delivery. Also shown is the shipper, Farmers Grain Co., and the consignee, Carpenter & Adams. At right note the faint image of a weight agreement stamp.

Finally, the load is shown (400 bags of spent brewer's grain, probably from making beer), along with the weight of the load (40,400 pounds) and the charges, which were probably checked by two different clerks, since the pencil check marks are different colors. Also noted is “SL&C,” which stands for “shipper load and count,” meaning that the weight agreement shown by the stamp identifies the expected weight of a bag of spent grain. That means it’s only necessary to count the bags, and multiply by the standard weight, to know the weight of the load.

Each of these elements can be included in a model railroad waybill. Here’s an example from my layout, a load moving in a quite different part of the country, but with the same elements described above being present, including the SL&C notation and a weight agreement stamp.

Waybills need not be complicated to use in model operation, and once familiar, are easy to understand.  I hope this example of “reading” a waybill is helpful.

Tony Thompson