Amazing use of my waybills

 Just the other day, a local modeler, Don Marenzi, let me know about something he had noticed in a YouTube video. It involved some of my layout’s waybills, in a peculiar context, as I’ll explain in this post.

The video is an interesting one, about the massive derailment and HAZMAT incident at Mississauga, Ontario in 1979. It  is at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJfFhMkwCkM . It uses TV, newsreel and press video and still photography, and describes the regulatory events that followed. In particular, the point is discussed that in 1979, first responders had no easy way to identify the cargoes of cars involved in a derailment.

In that discussion, some freight car waybills are briefly on the screen, at minute 21:37, as you see in the screen capture below. 

These, as readers of this blog will recognize, are waybills from my layout, which do happen to describe Canadian cars, but not only is neither one a tank car, one is even a refrigerator car. I have written a number of posts about cross-border traffic, and these waybills are from one of them, posted in 2020. You can see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/10/waybills-part-76-more-on-cross-border.html .

For clarity, I show below the waybill image from that post, clearly the original of the image shown above, though truncated top and bottom, and left edge of the pink one. Understandably, there is no credit to me or this blog

I have no idea why they chose non-tank car waybills, nor why they cut off the names of the issuing railroads (at several places in the video, they refer to CP cars as CN or vice versa, so they might not have been as clear on this point as one might wish). But probably they Googled “Canadian waybill” or some such, and used what they got. And it’s shown extremely briefly; many viewers would likely not even realize that those were waybills that went flashing past.

So perhaps, in Andy Warhol’s phrase, that is my “15 minutes of fame,” though sadly, it’s in fact only a small fraction of a second. I guess you have to take what comes along.

Tony Thompson 

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  

Weathering big tank cars, Part 2

In the preceding post on this topic, I showed two 33,000-gallon LPG tank cars, in the form of HO scale cars by Tangent Models. These are to be weathered for a 1975 layout, making these cars about 10 years old. (The first post about these cars is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/09/weathering-really-big-tank-cars.html .)

Just for a comparison, the 50-foot box cars I weathered earlier for the same layout are models of cars built only a few years before the layout era. Accordingly, they were only give a light overall haze of grime, as in this example.

I weathered the tank cars following my usual procedure (see “Reference pages” linked at top right) using washes of acrylic tube paints. I will begin by showing NATX 32141 (North American Car Corp.), leased to the Murphy Corporation, with a Spur logo. Murphy was a company operating a chain of retail gasoline stations, selling Spur gasoline, and also in the LPG market. 

I decided to weather the two sides a little differently. I wanted to show some streaking, and also some dirt discharge from below the valve bonnet. The first of these is the right side (following the usual rule, to stand at the B end looking at the car, and the right side is on your right). 

On the other side is more dirty streaking below the valve bonnet. Both sides have an overall dirtiness consistent with years in service.

The other car, NCTX 33019, is lettered as leased to the Canadian company Pacific 66, and lettered with the very large “LP GAS” lettering. The reporting mark belongs to North American Car (Canada) Limited. It is white and this color is always challenging to weather well. I decided to allow some “pooling” of dirt at low points. Here is the right side. 

I tried to get a little difference in the streaking and so on for the left side, along with dirt pooling along the lower curves of the tank. I also added some Pan Pastels to get the tone I wanted. 

These large cars are a different challenge from the freight cars I’m used to, and were interesting to deal with.

Tony Thompson 

 

Article in Dispatchers Office about BayRails

The October, 2026 issue of the magazine of the Operations SIG (OpSIG), The Dispatcher's Office or DO, has just been published. I show the cover below. I mention this issue because of an article in it that I wrote. But my authorship isn’t what’s significant about it.

What I want to call attention to is that the article, publicizing our local biannual operating weekend, BayRails (often mentioned here previously; to see more, use “BayRails” as the search term in the search box at right). The article states that, unlike many operating weekends around the country, BayRails is open to those who “don’t know somebody” and thus can’t get an invitation. 

Originally, I think, the invitation-only character of these events was to ensure that only serious people, who had some grasp of prototype operation, would be included. Nothing wrong with that goal, except it cuts out people not already acquainted with the “select” and thus with no way into these experiences. Giving people who would like to try operation, a chance to do so, seems like a good idea, even if they are people you don’t already know.

I showed five photos of Bay Area layouts in the article, chosen to be different from the ones used in a similar article I wrote in advance of the 2025 BayRails (DO, January 2025). Here is one the magazine didn’t use, a view on Robert Bowdidge’s HO scale SP Vasona Branch layout. In the photo, from left, Lawrence Crowl, Brooks Moses, Rich Murphy, and Bryan Borough prepare for a meet at Los Gatos on the upper level of the layout. It’s set in the 1930s.  

If you’re interested in BayRails next March, either as a possible attendee or just out of curiosity, I suggest you take a look at the website, which is at: http://bayrails.com/index.php . There you can find multiple photos of the other 15 layouts not shown in the DO article, along with textual information and layout histories. Dates are March 22–25.

If you’d like to know more about the OpSIG, there is considerable information at their website ( https://www.opsig.org/ ). Joining only costs $10 a year and includes four copies of the DO (electronic form), so a terrific bargain. Give it a look.

Tony Thompson 

Reworking a Broadway Limited chlorine car

Back in 2017 when the Broadway Limited HO scale high-pressure cars were released, I purchased more than I needed, including one of their “variety” four-packs to get a paint scheme I wanted. (If you’re interested in my 2017 review, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-new-broadway-limited-tank-cars.html .)

One of the cars that I didn’t need for operation was an Ethyl Corp. car, from which I stole the platform and ladder for another project. Recently I disassembled the EBAX model, and this is how it looked at that point. The valve bonnet part has become separated, and trucks are off. This is how the model languished for many months.

Much more recently,  I came across the K4 decals for Diamond Alkali chlorine cars. This inspired me to repair the EBAX car, with new side ladders and walkways, so I could repaint and re-letter it. 

I made walkways from scale 1 x 10-inch Evergreen styrene strip, attached with canopy glue, then added drop grab irons from A-Line underneath each walk. Ladders will come later.

At this point I could repaint the tank, which as you see above, was now separated from the underframe. The K4 decals I have are for Diamond Alkali, in the older scheme, which had either aluminum or gray tanks. I chose gray, and used Tamiya “Corsa Gray” (PS-32). 

The underframe and trucks were black, which the BLI model already has, so I reassembled the tank to the frame. I decided to have the handrail and ladder as body color, as was increasingly common in the 1950s. When freshly lettered with the K4 decals, set K4-DAX-87 A, it looked like this. 

I now added a ladder on each side at the car center. First, I painted a ladder from my parts stash, then created ladder sections by cutting to fit, and attached them with canopy glue. I also painted the bare metal wheel faces with a dark gray-brown mix. 

Next came weathering, following my usual procedures using washes of acrylic tube paints (see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post). Finally, I added a few touches of Pan Pastels.

This completes my modification of the original Broadway Limited paint scheme on this model, to that of a different chemical company, still with the car matching its design character as a chlorine car.

But to enter service on my layout, the car needs one or more waybills. I checked Tank Car Tariff 300-H and found that Diamond Alkali had both 3000-gallon and 6000-gallon chlorine cars. Unfortunately K4 Decals chose the decal number for the smaller size series. I decided to ignore this discrepancy, as the model is definitely a 6000-gallon car.

The Diamond Alkali company was located in Painesville, Ohio (as the car lettering notes) and was located on the Fairport, Painesville & Eastern Railroad (FP&E). The FP&E, about 8 miles long, had interchanges with both the NYC and Nickel Plate but seems to have favored NYC. The NYC Shipper Guide seems to indicate that Painesville was a reciprocal switching district, thus no interchange location with NYC need be indicated. This produces a waybill like that below.

I look forward to seeing this model in service for an operating session on my layout.

Tony Thompson  

Modeling just part of an industry

There is a long-standing problem in building layouts, to achieve realistic depictions of industries. The problem is size. Many a layout contains buildings hardly larger than a boxcar , and that building is switched regularly, though a boxcar load of cargo could hardly even fit in the building. I too am guilty of this in a place or two on my layout.

The classic solution, and often a good one, is to represent any mammoth industry, steel mill or whatever, on the backdrop, as a group of flats or even just a photograph, and the switching for that industry is just a warehouse or shipping building. In such a case, the industry spur may run close to the backdrop, with just a flat photo or semi-3D building with doors. 

A good example of this kind of treatment was seen on a layout I visited during the 2023 “Great Lakes Getaway” in that year (for a description of the event, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-2023-great-lakes-getaway.html ). The backdrop, literally of a steel mill, was on John DePauw’s immense EJ&E, set in 1973. Below is a view of his Kirk Yard in Gary, Indiana, with the very suitable mill backdrop. 

The industry, of course, need not be entirely in the distance, as is suggested by the above photo, served only by a delivery track or tracks. It can also be a flat of a specific building. I made several of these from the line of excellent KingMill backdrops of buildings, and used them several times for photo backdrops, as you see here. Even with its foamcore backing, it’s less than half an inch thick.

But if the industry in question is not quite so mammoth, we can choose to model just a three-dimensional shipping building, with the rest of the industry “elsewhere” off the layout. That was the approach I used for my Wine-Growers Cooperative facility in the layout town of Ballard. I built it so it would be just a warehouse and shipping facility, with the winery that actually produced the wine somewhere away from the railroad.

This industry is really two buildings, a large brick building imagined as the new part of the facility, and an older frame building with a shingle roof, a carryover from the original facility. The warehouse is for both aging and storage.

The brick warehouse is simply a Bristol board box covered with brick paper and three loading doors.  The frame part of the building was scratchbuilt and roofed with Campbell shingles. As shown below, I made an open loading platform so that I could include a workman handling a large wine barrel. Blending wine was still shipped in barrels to some extent in my era. (Be sure to choose barrels that would fit through the four-foot swing doors of the era’s reefers!)

I think that using this structure as just a shipping building helps its credibility, as it is really too small to be a realistic winery by itself (I have modeled a more credible-size building as my Zaca Mesa winery; see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/my-zaca-mesa-winery.html ). As I said above, it’s one way to deal with our usual over-compression of structures.

Nearly every layout can benefit from ways to represent larger industries than we have room to model in their entirety. What I’ve show here just scratches the surface. I used to keep notes when I saw a clever or especially effective way of doing this on layout visits. It’s one of the great benefits of such visits, one of the many things a visitor can learn from the imagination and work of others.

Tony Thompson

Still more route cards, Part 37

This post contains a number of additional route card from the Michael Litant collection, as has been the case for a number of previous posts on the topic. Michael retrieved these in mid- to late 1960s from freight cars, carefully chosen, he mentioned, to not be current in the location where they were, thereby not interfering in freight operations.

I’ll start with a good example of a card that happens not to be filled out. Probably this is because all that was needed was the code, PB-4, perhaps a outgoing train, or a yard track, or even a destination in a switching district. All these kinds of codes are known from other examples, but here even the issuing railroad is not identified. This car is 4 x 4 inches in size, and still holds a staple.

My second example, is an unusual card in this collection: it is a shipper’s card (provided by UP), presumably attached to the car so the railroad’s pickup crew will know what the shipper wants done with the car. Since the same information would be on the waybill, this card is a kind of insurance. The load is plastic bags for fertilizer, being shipped from the Federal Chemical Co. of Omaha, Nebr., destined to the Farmers Elevator Co. in Bode, Iowa via Rock Island. The car is NKP 18451, a 40-ft. steel box car with a 6-foot door. The card is 4 x 4 inches.

Next is another example a card whose issuing railroad is not identified. For use at the yard at Coquitlam, British Columbia, it allows grading of the car by interior integrity and cleanliness. Faintly one can see that Grade C has been circled. The card is 3 x 3.5 inches.

My fourth example is an L&N card which, like many L&N route cards, is printed in green. Though the station isn’t identified, the loaded car is Erie-Lackawanna 70377, a 40-foot steel box car with a 6-foot door. I don’t know the meaning of the district number HR 113. It is 3 x 4 inches. 

A further instance is a Missouri Pacific card, issued at North Little Rock, directing a car to the Terminal Railroad Association in St. Louis for interchange to the New York Central.  The car appears to be N&W 38532, though the number might be incomplete; if complete, it was a 70-ton steel hopper. The card was 3 x 5 inches.

Another interesting example is this card from Atlantic Coast Line, at Augusta, Georgia.  It carries the code PP and is 3.5 inches square. The car number appears to be D&H 17604, and if so, was a 40-ft. steel box car with a 6-ft. door.

Finally, one of my all-time favorite cards, because it shows an employee doing what he needed to do. It is a plain card (nothing on the back either), 3.5 inches square. The car number shown is AT (presumably ATSF, a common abbreviation) 151490, a 50-foot single-sheathed box car having an 8-foot door, and with a cargo of wool.  

As I have said many times, these cards, artifacts of bygone railroading, remain endlessly interesting to me. I have tried to use them and the information on them to learn more about freight car operations.

Tony Thompson