Handout for “Modeling SP Operations”

This is the on-line handout for a clinic entitled “Modeling SP Operating Practices.” The purpose is to provide documentation of the various published items shown in the talk, along with links to a number of blog posts which cover some points in the talk in much more detail.. They are grouped below by topic area.

My point in the clinic was to indicate that many of us enjoy trying to operate model railroads in a prototypical manner, as in the photo below (Pat LaTorres at left, and Ed Slintak, switching at Ballard on my layout). I attempted to indicate how we can go about such imitation of the prototype, choosing the specific railroad that I model, the Southern Pacific.

Print Publications

Armstrong, John H., The Railroad – What It Is, What It Does (Chapter 8, Railroad Operations), Simmons-Boardman Publishing, Omaha, 1982. [there are several subsequent editions with updates; the original is closest in time to the era I model] 

Coughlin, E.W., Freight Car Distribution and Handling in the United States, Car Service Division, Association of American Railroads, Washington, 1956.

Grant, H. Roger, The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2022. 

Koester, Tony, “In search of the perfect waybill,” Model Railroader, February 2012, p. 82.

Niemann, Linda, Boomer, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990.

Rehwalt, Dan, Westsider, Grizzly Press, Oakridge, OR, 2004.

Sprau, David, and Steven King, 19 East, Copy Three, Operations Special Interest Group, WoodDale, IL, 2013, 

Thompson, Anthony, “Prototypical waybills for car card operation,” Railroad Model Craftsman, December 2009, pp. 71–77.  

Thompson, Tony, “Getting Real: A More Prototypical Waybill for Model Railroads,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, pp. 31–46, May 2012. 

Thompson, Tony, ”Getting Real: Operating with Prototypical Waybills,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, January 2018.  

Thompson, Tony, “Modeling Traffic on a Layout,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, September 2021.  

SP Circular 39-1, “Instructions to Station Agents”

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 2,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instruction-to-station-agents-part-2.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 3,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 4,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part_10.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 5,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part_25.html

Learning from Circular 39-1

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 88: Temporary Waybills,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/08/waybills-part-88-temporary-waybills.html

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 90: SP Form 704,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/09/waybills-part-90-sp-form-704.html

Other Points

Thompson, Tony, “Southern Pacific’s Circular 4,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/12/southern-pacifics-circular-4.html  

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 39: SP Typography,”  https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/waybills-part-39-sp-typography.html

Thompson, Tony, “SD&AE Locomotives on the SP,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/03/sd-locomotives-on-sp.html

With the help of these and many other publications out there, we can hope to capture the spirit of moments like the one below, the operator at Vincent, California, handing up orders to eastward freight 804 (Richard Steinheimer photo).  

Tony Thompson 

Some Southern Pacific wartime posters

Back more than 30 years ago, the Bookmine bookstore in Sacramento (long gone today) acquired a huge stash of “surplus” paper materials from the Southern Pacific General Shops in Sacramento. Among them were numerous posters, that SP provided to depots and other locations where the public would see them. Of dramatic quality as well as historical interest were some about wartime security. 

The first one I’ll show is obviously from the very beginning of World War II in the United States, as is evident from the included calendar, for May 1942, presumably the month it was released for use. At that time, there was a major focus on security. I especially like the upraised, admonitory finger.  

A similar message was prepared for Pullman passengers, printed in dark blue on white. I am told these were about five inches square. Obviously the central part of the text is the same. 

The idea that casual conversations were likely to be overheard by enemy agents, prevalent at the beginning of the war, soon disappeared. Warnings about keeping information to yourself, however, did continue. 

Next  comes a poster that I know was used through much of the war (often in rotation with other wartime posters). Travel by train was heavily used by the military, not only troop movements but movement of officers and senior officials among administrative assignments too. Like the other posters, this one is 16 x 21 inches in size.

There was a prohibition of taking photos of trains generally, though some railfans did continue to photograph, often surreptitiously. I thought it was interesting that there was equal concern about photos taken from the train. And like all these posters, patriotic red, and often also blue, was the format.

I showed two of these posters in the book I did with John Signor, Southern Pacific’s Coast Line Pictorial  (Signature Press, 2000), on page 56, but in black and white. 

I have always been intrigued by the ways corporations, including railroads, choose to present themselves to the public. Posters in depots are certainly an interesting example. And the specific wartime content of these particular ones is especially interesting.

Tony Thompson 

Freight cars for granddaughter operating

I have written several times about my granddaughter carrying out operating sessions on my layout, ranging from simply being the engineer and receiving directions, to looking at waybills and choosing switching sequences.(See for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/02/more-granddaughter-operating.html ; and to see others, you can use “granddaughter” as the search term in the search box at right.

I usually act as conductor, but try to give her as much responsibility as she wants. This does vary from session to session, but she always is very careful with the locomotive and throttle, and seems to entirely enjoy the activity. Here’s a photo at Ballard from a session in 2021, when she was 9. 

One feature I’ve mentioned but not really gone into is the freight cars that are hers. This all started one Christmas when the entire Thompson clan had gathered at my son Sylvan’s house in Portland, and the granddaughter and I went to the hobby shop, Whistle Stop Trains. She was allowed to pick out whatever Accurail car kit she wanted. Unfortunately, this was in isolation from my layout, and understandably her knowledge of eras and such was quite limited, so she chose the car with the color she liked best.

We did build the car together in the following days, but when it arrived on the layout at our next operating session, she realized it did not fit in. We discussed that, and looked at rolling stock, and then she didn’t want that car to be on the layout.

But on later holiday visits to that same hobby shop, she again chose car kits for herself, but now each time she remembered the era issue. If in doubt, she asked for advice. For her second car, she chose an Accurail  Santa Fe box car, and again we built it together. Here’s that car being switched at Shumala on the layout. 

She seemed to like having one of her cars in the session whenever we operated, so we chose and built a third Accurail car,  This time it was a reefer, and a choice that fit with her interest in and enjoyment of all the reefer switching on my layout. It’s about to be spotted in Ballard.

Of course these cars all have waybills. I’ll just show one for each of the cars we actually use  in sessions.

I always enjoy guiding her in operating on the layout, and she still seems to enjoy doing it. She’s a teenager now, though, so this may all go away, but it’s certainly been fun for both of us over the years.

Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific’s “Circular 4”

A core document of the Southern Pacific for many years was the Accounting Department’s Circular 4. I realize that isn't an informative name, but its actual title was List of Officers, Agencies Stations, Etc. It was re-issued every few years as things changed. Shown below is the cover of the one that was issued in 1952, the one relevant for my modeling year of 1953. Its size is 4-3/4 by 6-3/4 inches and it contains 214 pages.  

It’s a minor point, but its issuance by the Accounting Department fits with many other Circulars about rules, regulations and procedures of the railroad.  (I’ve written previously about Circular 39-1, Instructions to Station Agents; see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html .)

What can we learn from a Circular 4? I might begin with an important division in the railroad organization, between what most of us think of as the “real railroad,” the Operating Department, and the other big segment, the Traffic Department. I show below pages 20 and 21, containing the last page of the Operating Dept. at top left, followed by three small departments, Purchasing, Real Estate, and Tax, and on the facing page, Traffic. Note also that these are revised pages, issued January 1, 1953, doubtless to reflect changes in officer positions.

I don’t have an SP organization chart. But I do know that a lot of what we model in fact stems from the work of the Traffic Dept. Most notable were the station agents. SP rarely combined the jobs of agent and operator, but instead almost always required one of each. An operator had to pass a Rule Book exam and be familiar with operating procedures; an agent, not at all, though of course agents came to know a lot of operating detail from being around it every day in smaller stations.

If you click on the image above to enlarge it, you’ll see that there was a Vice-President for System Freight Traffic (W.W. Hale), along with freight traffic managers, managers of such categories as perishable freight and merchandise traffic, General Freight Agents, and so on. This was a large and complex organization entirely separate from the Operating Department.

There was also a separate part of the Traffic Dept., System Passenger Traffic, again with a hierarchy of officials throughout the system, listed on later pages of Circular 4.

The majority of the book, 164 of the 214 pages, is taken up with a list of all stations. First they are listed in order by division. Shown below is the page of the Coast Division listing, page 119, that covers the Guadalupe Subdivision which is where my layout is located.  This is one of eight pages for this Division.

All stations are also all separately listed alphabetically by station name, so you don’t have to know on which division a station of interest may be located. And helpfully, if you had only the number of a station, you can look to see which division it is on, using a page like this, again choosing Coast Division: 

There are only some of the many tidbits of information in a Circular 4. I have often referred to the one shown above. I also consult a few others I own, with earlier or later dates, to see how things changed over time. Most railroads had publications like this, so they are worth hunting for, whatever your favorite prototype might be.

Tony Thompson 

More on open-car loads

In this blog, I have written numerous times about building loads and adapting commercial loads for use on my layout. I like to have both mainline movements, and also cars destined on my branch line, that are era- and locale-appropriate. 

A constantly used and continuing load type is lumber, destined to team tracks in any of my towns, because in the 1950s lumber was being shipped in prodigious quantities for the nationwide building boom of the period. Of course rough lumber, used widely in construction, usually traveled on flat cars, but when flat cars were not available, the Southern Pacific used gondolas. Accordingly, I enjoy operating loads of that kind. (To view past blog posts about this topic, you can use “lumber loads” as the search term in the search box at upper right.)

As I’ve reviewed, the Owl Mountain Models kit no. 3004, intended for narrower loads that will fit into gondolas, makes a very nice load. (See the review at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/lumber-owl-mountains-recent-kit.html ; for availability and price of this kit, you can visit Owl Mountain Models at: http://owlmtmodels.com/ ). 

Below you see SP Ten-wheeler 2344, having just run around the gondola, preparing to switch SP 95068 with its lumber load to the team track in Santa Rosalia. The gondola was built from a Detail Associates kit.

A load I have enjoyed operating for over 40 years is a Euclid scraper. I built it from a Stewart white metal kit, and the hard part was mixing paint for Euclid’s distinctive green. I showed the AAR loading diagram for this vehicle previously (available at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/vehicle-loading-on-flat-cars.html ). Here it’s ready to be switched at Shumala on my layout, riding today on 53-foot SP 140558 (a Red Caboose kit).

Another kind of load that is good for lots of destinations an op session is electrical equipment. I have a several small models of such equipment, and usually move them in a gondola, with different kinds of blocking. 

In the view below, switcher 1423 has run around its train, and is about to spot the gondola, C&O 44917, on the team track at Ballard. (I described this car in an earlier post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-richard-hendrickson-gondola-part-2.html .) 

Another load that gets used fairly regularly is a shipment of four heavy I-beams, painted with red lead and steel-banded, with intermediate wood spacers. I didn’t build this, it’s a commercial load. You see it below spotted on the team track in my town of East Shumala, loaded in 53-foot Erie gondola 14506, a kitbashed model by Richard Hendrickson, on which he experimented with suggesting denting of side panels with blobs of CA cement, which I’d call an only somewhat successful idea.

Lastly, like most modelers, I enjoy the loads carried on depressed-center flat cars. Below in a train passing Shumala is a General Electric transformer (from Multi-Scale Digital) loaded on Erie 7265, a ClassOne Model Works product (see my review at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-new-class-one-flat-car.html ), sandwiched between SFRD 35719, a Class RR-32 reefer built by Richard Hendrickson, and caboose SP 1253, a 1947-built Class C-30-4 caboose with its as-delivered vermilion ends (a Precision Scale brass model)

All these are just examples of open-car loads, but they do illustrate the kinds of loads I have enjoyed creating, and the ways they can be operated

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 126: More routing books

Not long ago I posted a discussion about Routing Guides, as they were called, an official document (in multiple volumes) that every railroad maintained, back in the day. That discussion happened to center on one such book I had, A Nickel Plate guide of 1945. (To see that discussion, go to this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/waybills-part-125-routing.html .) In the present post, I want to go further.

I’ll begin with the Nickel Plate 1951 guide, issued on May 15 of that year. Its cover is shown below. As before, it is an 8.5 x 11-inch volume, this tine of 480 pages, 1-1/8-inches thick. The 1945 guide shown previously was 1008 pages and was 1-3/4 inches thick.  

What changed to make the size so much smaller? It still covers routes from the same six states as before, and to the same 11 destination states (including the District of Columbia) as before. Most of the interior pages look very much like the previous volume, so there is not an evident reduction in numbers of approved routes. Possibly some routes were moved to a different guide, as this one’s full title is Eastbound Routing Guide No. 1. We know there were several others. 

In some ways a more interesting example of such a guide is one for a smaller railroad, the Western Maryland. This happens to be West-Bound Routing Guide No. 10. Also an 8.5 x 11-inch volume, it comprises only 269 pages, only 9/16-inch thick.  

It includes routing from origins on not only the WM, but also the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad, via several roads, including the Pittsburgh & West Virginia. Basically, it is westbound routing to mid-America, specifically the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Oho, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin. 

This particular routing guide  differs in some ways from what I’ve shown for the Nickel Plate example. First, it contains multiple pages of “exceptions” to existing tariffs, nearly all on cement and related products. Below is page 19, one of several pages of such material. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

 The second exception is that stations are listed alphabetically in addition to numerically (the NKP Guide had them only by number). Below is an example of this kind of listing, from page 150 in the Guide. (My apologies for not getting the book quite flat for scanning.) 

The approved routes are listed by number, as was the case in the previous NKP guide, and I show a single example from this Western Maryland guide to illustrate. The lower portion of page 307 lists again some exceptions for Grain and Grain Products.

These kinds of routing guides were superseded from time to time, so that older ones were often discarded after a holding period. I am delighted to have the ones I’ve been able to use as illustrations, and I hope they cast some light on the prototype’s process of identifying approved routes.

Tony Thompson 

The shortest day comes ’round again

In many of the years of this blog, I have posted today about its being the shortest day of the year. Those of us who love daylight, as my dad did and I do, are delighted that now the days will start getting longer. This is doubtless an ancient human emotion, and long before people knew enough astronomy to know why the days change length as they do in an annual cycle, there were celebrations of this day for what it meant.

In many of my past posts, I have quoted (with permission from the author) a poem about this day that I like very much.  That it resonates with me may not mean it does the same for you, but give it a read and see if you too enjoy it. 

The author is Susan Cooper, author of a wonderful young-adult book called Over Sea, Under Stone, and later a fine five-book quest fantasy series, The Dark is Rising. In the 1970s, she became associated with the holiday celebrations called Revels, and wrote this poem as their closing piece for the each year’s event. (That’s whee I first heard it.) You can find it all over the web, often with changed punctuation and even substituted words! Imagine the gall!

As it happens, during the time I was a grad student in metallurgy at M.I.T., she was married to a faculty member in the department whom I knew, Prof. Nick Grant. Sometimes it does feel like a small world. I can remember attending some departmental social events where faculty and wives were present, but I don’t know whether any of them included Ms. Cooper.

She sent me a copy of the poem as she wrote it, so that it could be presented correctly. (If you’d like to know more about her, please visit her web site: http://www.thelostland.com/ .) She also mentioned that she was happy to give permission for use in this blog, as she is descended from three generations of English railwaymen!

THE SHORTEST DAY

By Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing, behind us -- listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight
This shortest day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year, and every year.
Welcome Yule!

 A far more eloquent presentation of our traditions than I could ever have written. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Tony Thompson