Route cards, Part 34: additional examples

I continue to be, on the one hand, fascinated with the variety of route card appearances, and, at the same time, intrigued with all the prototype information about car movement. That’s why I’m writing this post, continuing to show interesting cards from the Michael Litant collection. You might wish to consult the previous post with some background on these cards (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/05/route-cards-part-33-further-examples.html ).  

A classic type of route card is the “return empty” card, this one from the Long Island Railroad to the Pennsylvania. This probably would mean Sunnyside Yard, though the LIRR also connected with the Pennsy via a couple of car floats. The original card is 3 x 3 inches. 

My second example is a good instance of a transfer card, moving a car on UP rails to the CB&Q for its onward journey eastward. The car, UP 541045, was a 50-foot steel box car with a 7-foot door, equipped with Transco loaders (load dividers). Bound for Worcester, MA, the load looks like “Cake” but may be cable or a shorthand notation of some kind. This card is 4 x 5 inches.  

Another interesting card is this one, likely a Wabash on-line card designating a car to move eastward. The clerk only added the car initials, MKT, and no other information. The card is 4 x 4.5 inches. 

A fourth example is a Northern Pacific card, again a transfer card, directing SAL 19862 to be switched to the C&NW. (This was a 40-foot steel box car of 1937-AAR dimensions — 3713 cubic feet and a 6-foot door.) It gives the (rubber stamped) origin of the car as “road haul,” presumably meaning in a train arriving in whatever yard was the location of affixing this card, and the reason for movement was “shipment,” a term almost embarrassingly simplistic. The card is 4 x 6 inches. 

For my fifth card, we have yet another transfer example, evidently from the Georgia Railroad to the Atlantic Coast Line, the car being AWP 50001 (presumably Atlanta & West Point), which was a 50-foot box car with a 9-foot door, equipped with Spartan “Easy-loader” dividers with 9 belts, one of ten cars in that group. The load, syrup, was presumably in containers, thus the importance of the car having load dividers. The card is 3.5 x 3.5 inches.. 

 Finally, I’ve chosen a card showing a whiff of oncoming computerization, a Canadian National card, 3 x 6.5 inches (a little smaller than a punch card). The car listed is Northern Pacific 98472, a 50-foot RBL car, essentially an insulated box car, equipped with cross-bar loaders. 

The cargo is meat, en route to San Juan Packing in Portland, likely Portland, Maine, because of the yard office stamp for Sarnia Tunnel (the tunnel under the St. Clair River between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario); this would be the original tunnel, opened in 1891). Likely the car would move eastward across southern Canada before re-entering the U.S.

These cars are, as always, interesting in themselves and in what they tell us about patterns of freight movement. Several of them could easily be adapted to model railroad layout use for operation, and the really large lettering on a few of them might show up even in HO scale.

Tony Thompson 

Reworking a PFE car kit

In response to a recent question I was asked (“Why don’t you write more about PFE cars?”), I will describe recent work on a Red Caboose HO scale kit for a PFE reconditioned reefer, kit RC-4121-3, for a car of PFE Class R-30-12-9. There are a number of things I will choose to do for this kit.

I’ll begin with the kit as it comes from the box. It’s nicely decorated (as they always say in magazine reviews), but it is the 1936–1942 paint scheme, with single railroad emblems on each side. It’s shown below.

The car body above is molded in orange plastic. This is both good news and bad news. It means, on the good side, that lettering can be removed without affecting the background color; but on the bad side, the plastic is translucent, and needs to have the car interior painted a neutral color like dark gray to kill the translucence.  

This paint scheme was rare on wood-sheathed cars by 1950 and essentially absent by 1953, because newer paint schemes after World War II, and very large volumes of shop work in the postwar years, meant that a wood-sheathed car like this would undoubtedly have been repainted by my modeling year of 1953. 

Here is the scheme that is far more suitable for my modeling year, in a George Sisk photo from the Charles Winters collection. As is documented in the Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide (SP Historical & Technical Society, Upland, CA, 2016), authored by Dick Harley and me, page 141, this is the 1950 PFE scheme, with all side hardware orange, along with sill steps, and both railroad medallions black and white. Dimensional data and other lettering details differ from the kit lettering, so all kit lettering needs to go.

Since there is no significant part of the lettering worth saving, nor is it particularly well rendered, I removed all of it with Scalecoat stripper, on both sides and ends. I then fired up the airbrush and added a coat on the car sides of Star brand STR-27, “Daylight Orange,” (a color adopted by PFE eight years before the more-famous SP “Daylight” trains). The same paint was airbrushed onto the sprues of side hardware parts (sprues D and G), provided in the kit in black, so they would be ready to be applied to the body. 

Next I assembled the kit. For the most part, this is simply following instructions. But there are a few things that require explication. Some have been presented before, in a report on a similar car kit (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/01/reconditioned-pfe-car-part-2-model.html ).

For features of the prototype PFE cars that were reconditioned — being formerly cars of Class R-30-12, they were re-classed when reconditioned as Class R-30-12-9, then after World War II this was simplified by omitting the original -12, making them simply Class R-30-9 — one can consult Chapter 7 in the PFE book (Thompson, Church and Jones, Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Signature Press, 2000). A number of details are provided about the 7694 cars of this class, PFE’s largest.

As I do when car weights are not supplied in a kit, I glued two 5/8-11 steel nuts inside the car body, using canopy cement. This gives plenty of weight, and canopy glue is perfect for joining dissimilar materials, as is the case here. 

One last point relates to the roof. In the last group of R-30-9 cars, steel ice hatches were applied and ice hatch platforms removed, cars PFE 95737–98718. And note in the prototype photo above of PFE 98444 that wood running boards were retained; all these cars were reconditioned during 1937–1940, when this was usual practice. I will do the same, as I’ll describe in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 130: My waybill process

At the recent ProRail operating event, there were as usual many fascinating discussions among attendees, not only during sessions, but also in the hotel at breakfast, or even in the bar in the evening. One of these involved several of us comparing our own and others’ waybill processes in connection with operating sessions. (For comments on the ProRail event, see my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/04/prorail-2026.html .)

I was reminded in one of these conversations to repeat something that happened a few years ago at the annual Bay Area LDSIG / OpSIG meeting (Layout Design and Operations SIGs); I’ve described these meetings more fully elsewhere: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-bay-area-layout-design-and.html .

One of the people in the audience for my talk at that meeting, which was about prototypical waybills, including a description of the system I use on my layout, asked an interesting question. He asked, “How many waybills do you have to make for each operating session?” I’ve mentioned this question (and my answer) previously, in a blog post (you can find it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/waybills-part-114-managing-fleet.html ).

But for convenience, I’ll repeat what I answered. I replied, “I think you’re actually asking two questions. First, probably what you meant, would be ‘How many new waybills do I have to make?’ but implied is a second question, ‘How many do I actually make?’ and I’ll reply to both.”

The answer to the first question was, “Zero,” because I have quite extensive files of existing waybills, certainly at least one for every car in my fleet (almost 500 cars). [I have shown my waybill file system several times, including this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/waybills-15-managing-bills.html .] Here’s the current file box (a commercial product for baseball card collectors), with bills filed by industtry:

The second question is, in some ways, more interesting. The answer is, “Usually a couple dozen waybills,” for several reasons. First, I do find typos occasionally in older waybills, or cases where I made a factual mistake of one kind or another. These are readily corrected from the original Photoshop tiff. 

Second, nearly all freight cars in my fleet have at most four, maybe five waybills in existence; but there are up to 20 possible destinations inbound on the layout, and an enormous number of possible destinations outbound. Additional destinations can readily be added to suit conditions.

Let me mention in passing that I feel strongly about replacing the widely-used “four-cycle” waybills that are commonly encountered; all too often one may be doing switching work and find something like this (drawn from an actual layout, which I won’t name): 

I have commented elsewhere about how my system works (among many examples is this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/waybills-28-waybill-cycles.html ), so won’t go into it here, except to observe that from the original steps in development in 2010, up till now, I have found the new system perfectly flexible and workable in use, to me attractively prototypical in appearance and function, and easy to create, modify, or correct. There do now exist hundreds of waybills in this system, but rarely have I made more than a dozen at a time, so it has never been onerous to maintain or add to the files.

So in a scene like the one below on my layout, with Consolidation SP 2829 switching a nearly empty ballast hopper across Nipomo Street in the town of Ballard, I know that every movement like this is directed by and follows prototype-looking paperwork, and that was exactly what I wanted to accomplish with my waybill system.

I’ve mentioned many times in this blog, and in numerous clinic presentations, that it isn’t my specific waybill design that is important. What’s actually important is the idea of replicating the prototype process and appearance. It can be done in many ways. My waybills are just one of them.

Tony Thompson 

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