My column in the September Model Railroad Hobbyist

My latest column in the “Getting Real” series in Model Railroad Hobbyist or MRH, a long-running series for which this is my 32nd column, has just appeared. My subject is one that, when considering possible topics for the next column, I was surprised to find I hadn’t ever written about before. The topic is how my Southern Pacific 1953 layout is operated.

I have, to be sure, described many details of layout operation, particularly my design and use of model waybills. But this is more of a 500-foot view of the events that make up an operating session.

An example is this photo of SP Consolidation 2829, making a switching move across Nipomo Street in Ballard. Just above it in the photo is one of SP’s converted 12-1 Pullman cars, now serving as a MOW bunk car, spotted on the Ballard outfit track (this project was described in an earlier post, at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/small-project-sp-boarding-bunk-car.html ).

Most of the article is taken up with describing the many Southern Pacific operating documents I collected or consulted. These range from the obvious, like Rulebooks, Timetables and Special Instructions for the Division I model, to less immediately recognized paper like a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers labor agreement, a schedule of manifest, merchandise, and perishable trains, or the “Locomotives Assigned” booklets issued quarterly by SP with divisional locomotive assignments. 

For example, here are two pages from that schedule of trains, showing at left the Coast Merchandise East or CME, familiarly known as the “Overnight,” and on the right, one of the “hot” through trains on Coast Division, the Los Angeles Manifest, symbol LA.  

A number of examples of various operating moments were included, partly to illustrate the layout, but more importantly to show the ways operating moves are carried out. One of those views showed SD&AE 103 switching at Santa Rosalia, picking up an empty tank car from the Richfield bulk oil dealer. The background of this locomotive, stationed at San Luis Obispo for years was the subject of an earlier blog post (you may view it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/03/sd-locomotives-on-sp.html ). 

The photo above also shows several of the industries at Santa Rosalia, from the Coastal Citrus packing house at photo center, to the Channel Islands Kelp Products building just visible at right (see a summary of my construction article at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/07/my-article-in-july-2022-mrh.html ), and at rear, the Pismo Marine ship chandlers.

Another example that represents quite a bit of the switching work at Shumala is this view of SP switcher 1423 making up the second Santa Rosalia Local of the day. In the background, a Warren LPG tank car is at the LPG spot of the Associated Oil Company bulk oil dealer. Just above the locomotive is the caboose track, and at right center is the yard office.

I have tried in this article to both outline the operations of the layout, and to offer illustrations. In a similar way, layout history was encompassed in my article in the Layout Design Journal magazine (you can see a summary at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/06/my-article-in-new-layout-design-journal.html ). But a real article about the physical layout and its track plan remains to be done.

Tony Thompson