Modeling operating practices

We modelers are used to the challenge of modeling particular locomotives, particular cars, or particular structures. We assemble fleets of rolling stock and built entire layouts of track and scenery. But then comes the question of how we are going to operate it all. It seems obvious to me that here again, we should be striving to model the prototype.  

Now some readers are thinking, “Of course, we do that already.” But do we? Many operating schemes are fairly generic and at best approximating to the prototype. Naturally, many layout owners aren’t interested in whether their sessions reflect the prototype. But what if you are? What’s the foundation?

I have come to firmly believe that the foundation for any prototype-related operating session is a timetable. By that, I don’t just mean the schedule, but all the ancillary things that are in employee timetables, and/or in accompanying Special Instructions. Even a switching layout will have some rules that operators need to know, and those are realistically presented in a timetable document. I illustrate this point below.

My own layout is set in the Southern Pacific’s Coast Division in 1953, more specifically in the Guadalupe Subdivision, which lies between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara. Creating a timetable to reflect how SP operated this subdivision was an early goal, so I’ll begin with the prototype.

An example is below (I chose 1955 documents for variety). Each division timetable in the 1950s was issued twice a year, on the occasion of Daylight Savings either being instituted or removed (and therefore schedules being offset by one hour each time). Note on the cover of the Special Instructions that this document constitutes part of the Timetable.  

The Special Instructions document is quite interesting. It contains division-wide special instructions, along with considerable detail for each subdivision. Because this document forms part of the Timetable, every operating employee had to have timetable, special instructions, and rule book on hand when on duty. 

Below is an example page from the document shown above (you can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish). In addition to the kind of rules shown below, there were ratings, in tons, of engines by class, both steam and diesel; restrictions of engines from some tracks in the subdivision; and also identification of yard limits, and detailed speed limits by milepost or fraction thereof.

I took advantage of the look of these documents to create my own layout timetable (shamelessly scanning not only the cover, but relevant pages inside, thereby capturing the font and layout of the prototype). I wrote a detailed description of how I made my timetable in Model Railroad Hobbyist (the issue for October 2014, still available for free, to read online or download, at www.mrhmag.com ). A description of it is in this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/10/my-column-on-timetable-construction.html .

Among other things, this allows one to insert relevant rules for the layout. Below are pages 9 and 10 of my layout timetable. 

Of course there is nothing unique in my own examples above. Many layout owners have done the same, for much the same reason: to create a foundation for realistic-looking operation. Below are two examples, Rich Remiarz’s very prototypical Great Northern layout, and Al Daumann’s freelance BR&W. Both have a timetable number, an effective date, and names of officials. 

I think this is an important starting point in creating a prototype approach to operating a layout. I will continue the topic in future posts.

Tony Thompson 

Dealing with a short tail track

Some readers will remember that when I built my layout town of Santa Rosalia, I ended up with a pretty short tail track for switching the industries at the front of the layout. I had no real choice at the time, as the wall of the room was an immovable object. You can see this is the “plan view” below. The wall of the room is at right. 

From the three-way switch at lower left, the tail track is just the length of a 40-foot car and a single locomotive, such as the Southern Pacific Consolidation usually assigned to the local on this branch. Even a 50-foot car would not be workable here, if destined to the industries along the track at lower left.

Here is a level view, showing how the area looks, with the door frame to the right. 

More than once, during operating sessions, visiting operators have said, “Hey, this is simple to fix, just bore through the wall.” There is an adjoining room to the right, which was the kitchen when the layout space was a small apartment. Usually I laughed off the suggestion. But over time, I did think about doing it, and what I could accomplish on the other side of the wall. 

On the other side is the kitchen counter, with shelves above. On that counter, right next to the wall in question, is a microwave oven. The track could indeed be brought through the wall and extended across the top of the microwave. 

For some time, I had had thoughts of not only the extended tail track in the kitchen, but also of adding a new industrial spur, such as perhaps a shipyard. I have long had a casting of an industrial building, which I envisioned as a possible shipyard building on the extension of the branch trackage. It’s shown below on top of the microwave.

Completely coincidentally, the top of the microwave oven is almost exactly at the level of the track board on the other side of the wall. I attempted to photograph that, with the door partly open (and evident edge-on in the photograph below). You can see the two levels on each side. So there is a definite possibility that an extension through the wall could work. 

Just recently, I happened to look at it with a fresh eye, and thought that maybe I should consider the idea further. But my son, who does a lot of construction, checked the wall and determined that the door framing is double at this location, and that the track might not quite clear that framing. That could require some serious modifications to this doorway framing as part of a simple track extension. 

Not wanting to undertake all that, I decided to stand down. It’s too bad in a way, losing my vision of a shipyard industry to switch, along with the extended tail track, but no dice. Wish there was a happier outcome to report, but not on this one. The wall will remain whole.

 Tony Thompson 

SP steam passenger power

I have not posted many comments about Southern Pacific passenger power, steam or otherwise. I did offer an introduction to the topic a few years ago (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/06/choosing-passenger-locomotive.html ). In that post, I showed my Westside brass model of a Class P-4 Pacific, a class rebuilt in the late 1920s from elderly Class P-1 Pacifics. I also pointed out that though it is a fairly light Pacific, it would be suitable for shorter or less important trains.

I subsequently placed in service a model of much larger Pacific (the heavy Pacific was an engine type developed in part by SP, and purchased in numerous examples). The final SP class of Pacifics was Class P-10, an engine with  almost 44,000 pounds of tractive effort, compare to the 31,000 pounds of the P-4 locomotives. 

The P-10s were built by Baldwin in 1923–24; there were 14 of them, numbered 2478–2491. By the fall of 1941, all of the last 8 of the class had skyline casings. Here is an example at Oakland in March, 1953 (Grady Robarts photo, Steve Peery collection). The front ladders show that it is one of three P-10s that had been streamlined in prior years.

 

The locomotive number above, SP 2485, is what I chose for my model locomotive. This particular model is a Precision Scale product and happens to have Glide Drive, a feature loathed by some modelers, but loved by others, including me. It’s shown passing the depot at Shumala on my layout, trailed by baggage car SP 6337, built from a Southern Car & Foundry kit.

But as many know, Pacifics were superseded as mainline power in the mid-1920s on the SP by Mountains. In my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist in February 2019, I described a little about my model locomotive selection (for more, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/02/my-column-in-february-model-railroad.html ). The goal was to duplicate the look of these handsome engines, long-lived after their introduction, because they survived in the San Francisco Peninsula commute pool to the end of steam. 

Below is a view of one of these locomotives in action on the Coast Division, just south of Paso Robles, with eastward Train 72 depicted. The power is SP 4340, a Mountain with a skyline casing, as all SP Mountains had by 1950. This particular engine has a 16,000-gallon tender, though many Mountains served out their lives with 12,000-gallon tenders. The date was not recorded, but the photographer believed it was 1951. (Wilbur C. Whittaker photo)

 Modeling the distinctive SP Mountain classes used to require brass, but in recent years Athearn Genesis has offered a superb rendition of these locomotives with a plastic body. I have simply added flat finish and some light weathering to the model as it comes from the box. For more, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-sp-4-8-2-from-athearn.html . That post has a photo of my model.

The amazing scheme used on some of these engines was the “half-Daylight,” as it’s sometimes called, just the cab and tender receiving Daylight paint, applied to the Class Mt-4 engines in the helper pool for the San Joaquin Daylight over Tehachapi. First painted in May, 1946, soon after wartime restrictions on special paint schemes were lifted, it continued until 1951 or 1952. A dramatic view below shows double-headed Mt-4s on the San Joaquin Daylight in 1946 (R.G. Denechaud photo, Bob Church collection).

As need for the engines as helpers declined, they were occasionally used on other passenger trains, largely on the Coast Division.  That’s my basis for using one of the Athearn models in this paint scheme, as you see below. Eastward SP 4352 is just crossing Chamisal Road in Shumala, with 70-foot baggage SP 6448, Class 70-B-9, trailing (kitbashed from an Athearn baggage; the latter project was described in some detail for Prototype Modeler magazine, Vol. 7, No. 6, March-April 1984, pages 39–44).

Of course the queens of SP steam passenger power were the GS class 4-8-4s, and their presence is nearly obligatory on an SP layout set in the steam era. I do have one of them in all black paint, as was the fate of most surviving engines by 1953, the year I model. But that’s a topic for a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Mundane models

 In a recent conversation with an acqaintance, the topic of my blog came up, and during the discussion he asked, essentially, “Are all your model projects complicated ones, like the Hendrickson one?’ (He was remembering the Santa Fe automobile car of Richard’s that I had completed; the concluding post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/11/hendrickson-auto-car-part-6.html ). 

Like most modelers, my answer was “no.” I do lots of projects that can only be called “mundane,” thus the title of this blog. But reflecting on this point, I thought I would show some examples of such projects, always remembering, of course, that I am definitely a “freight car guy.” (For background on that term, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/10/whats-freight-car-guy.html .) 

The topic of mundane models returns me to something I’ve often mentioned, usually just in passing. It’s my idea to separate mentally, what I call “mainline models,” by which I mean cars that will look all right in a passing train, but might not look so good up close during switching, from better models. I talked about the philosophy of all that in a previous post, too (it can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/08/layout-models-and-all-that.html ).

But today’s post is to illustrate a few models, and perhaps clarify what a mundane model is. It need not be a “mainline model,” but may be quite a nice freight car, just not anywhere approaching contest quality or even worthy of a detailed description of its construction in this blog. I have felt from the beginning that following kit directions needn’t be posted here, but some models so built can turn out quite well.

I’ll begin with a automobile car finished recently. This was kind of a silk purse affair, in that I started with a C&BT Shops kit, kits known for their poor detail sprues. But replacing most of them, and in particular adding wire corner grab irons on the roof, and an etched metal running board, can make a pretty decent final result. There was a distant view of this car in a post last year (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/forty-foot-automobile-cars.html ).

 A second box car in work is more mundane than the car above; it is simply a Branchline kit for a postwar 40-foot box car. I happen to have won it as a door prize at a Prairie Rail operating weekend, and so far it has its internal steel nuts for weight added, underframe complete, and starting to add body details. Roof not yet attached; it will receive an etched metal running board. Shouldn’t be long till it’s done.

Awhile back, as part of purchasing several of the very nice Broadway Limited 6000-gallon high-pressure tank cars, I received one lettered for the Ethyl Corporation. The car came with a dome platform and railings, but a prototype photo I have shows an EBAX  car with only short dome walkways, no platform. I removed the platform and ladders (used them on another project), and am preparing to add the walkways and new ladders. A small project, to be sure.

This car will likely only operate in mainline trains, because I have no industries on my layout that would either ship or receive Ethyl Corp. cargoes, but such a restriction won’t be on account of model shortcomings.  

Finally, I’ve just completed an Accurail box car, chosen in honor of Paul Weiss’s Central Vermont layout (and could be used to receive cargoes from industries on his layout). This is of course an extremely simple kit, with minimal number of parts, though I added A-Line sill steps and a Cal-Scale brass brake wheel soldered to the brake staff. It hasn’t yet been weathered.

All these cars are mundane in construction, but all have roles to play, and in fact none of them would be relegated to the “mainline” category because of quality shortcomings. Cars like this can be the majority of any freight car fleet, as they are in mine. 

Tony Thompson 

State of the hobby

Lots of us have been and still are prone to sitting around, say over lunch, or in a bar, slinging gloom about how model railroading is fading away as the old guys pass on — everyone at meetings has white hair — there are practically no more hobby shops — you never see young guys —modern railroads are boring — and so forth. I would bet that most if not all readers of this blog can cite memories of events exactly like this.  

Well, is any of that (aside from the judgement on modern railroads) true? It’s true you don’t see that many young guys at meets; it’s the retired who have the time and money to do that part of the hobby. But are young guys even in the hobby? Sure they are, and I’ll come back to that point in a moment. 

First, an overview of attendees at the Cocoa Beach meeting in January, 2020. Plenty of older men, but middle-aged ones too — and a few young men.

Some of the grumbling you sometimes hear is about the attitudes of younger modelers. How amazing, they don’t think exactly like those who are two generations older. 

I could remind you that at least as far back as ancient Greece, elders have been bemoaning the younger generation, who have no respect for anything, don’t understand how things ought to be done, and are clearly going to destroy civilization in one generation. Really, it’s practically one of the duties of every older generation to complain about the young ones coming behind them — or believed not to be coming forward at all.

But aside from that, what about our hobby? The complaint I mentioned above, about the loss of hobby shops, is quite real, and we all know why: commerce in all standard products (things that you know exactly what they are, and can be bought anywhere) is continuing to move onto the internet. Really, that just means you buy stuff from a different source. And it’s been noted for a couple of decades that model railroad manufacturers are producing and selling as much or more than ever.

For some years now, Joe Fugate, editor of the online magazine Model Railroad Hobbyist (full disclosure: for which I write) has been offering editorials from time to time on this exact topic. This month, he placed another one, in the August issue. You can read it for free in on-line version at http://mrhmg.com .

Joe made several points. He began with the surprising (to many) fact that membership in the NMRA now comprises 30 percent people under 40. It’s long been the case that men tended to enter model railroading when their kids began to be grown up, and they were looking for a hobby — in the past, often in their 40s. This younger NMRA membership suggests that that may be changing. 

Another point is that younger modelers, with home ownership getting ever harder, are turning more and more to modules or switching layouts in the space they do have. The visibility of younger builders of Free-Mo modules illustrates this (for more on Free-Mo, you can visit https://free-mo.org/ ).

The most striking thing in Joe’s editorial for me is that many younger modelers are choosing to model the transition era, though it’s a lot of decades in the past. Why? It’s regarded as the most interesting time in railroad history, much as World War II continues to be the dominant period in military modeling.

So is our hobby fading away? In my opinion, not at all. I often quote an editorial in Model Railroader from the early 1950s, when MR conducted annual surveys of its readers. The editorial observed that the average age of surveyed modelers increased about one year in each successive survey, and therefore that the hobby was on its last legs. Seventy-five years later, it’s still the wrong conclusion.

Tony Thompson 

Handling MOW equipment

I’m sure it’s no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I find maintenance of way (MOW) equipment interesting and worth modeling. In fact, I’ve written a Model Railroad Hobbyist column about modeling MOW equipment of the railroad I model, Southern Pacific. You can read about it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/04/my-latest-column-in-mrh.html .

I do like to use such equipment in my layout operations, and have described how  I accomplish this for various equipment used in MOW work. That goes beyond what SP lettered as SPMW cars per se, such as ballast cars; that post can be found at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/02/operating-mow-equipment.html .

On my layout, most activity of MW cars (SP lettered them as SPMW) centers around the outfit track, which was the SP term, in my layout town of Ballard. For background, I’ve written previously about the role of an outfit track; the post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-role-of-outfit-track.html .

Though sometimes it’s empty, I usually arrange that my outfit track contains a boarding bunk car and a kitchen-commissary or dining car, to both house and feed MW forces. Sometimes there is also a domestic water car there, for crew use. Here’s an example, with the boarding bunk car in the center and the kitchen-diner, converted from an open-platform head-end car, at left. Water car at right.

The specific cars vary from time to time, for example with a different kitchen-commissary car and a more modern water car. 

But other times, some additional car type may be spotted on the outfit track, for the use of track maintenance forces, such as a  car of ballast, as you see below.

In the two photos above, the bunk cars are both converted from box cars. But as I described in a couple of earlier posts (concluding with this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/small-project-sp-boarding-bunk-car-pt-2.html ), after 1950 SP began converting old 12-1 Pullman sleepers to boarding bunk cars, and such bunk cars are sometimes found on my outfit track. 

It may sound like the SPMW cars I am showing are just passive scenery. But in fact cars do move to and from the outfit track in many sessions. When these are cars like ballast cars, it’s fairly obvious how they may move. In fact I wrote an entire post about the waybills associated with these kinds of movements: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/03/waybills-part-119-operating-mow.html . 

When a boarding car is moved, however, SP had rules associated with how that might be done. So something like a bunk car being delivered at the junction of the Santa Rosalia Branch, to move to the Ballard outfit track, might look like this, on the Coast Division main line approaching Shumala:

The SP company rule for this was Rule 831 in 1953. Here is how it reads (this rule is included in the Special Instructions section of the timetable that my layout operators use): 

Operations including MW cars can be interesting, and are usually a contrast to conventional commercial shipments to or from industries on the layout. I find them a valuable enlargement of operating possibilities.

Tony Thompson 

Layout operations in peak harvest season

In my most recent post, I described renovation of an old Athearn metal reefer, which happens to be an MDT car. In that post, I mentioned not only SP’s use of such “foreign” or off-road reefers for canned goods, effectively using them as insulated box cars in the days before such box cars were significant parts of the national car fleet, but also their use in peak harvest season (that post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/08/improving-that-athearn-steel-reefer.html ). 

Mere hours after that post went up, I received a question by email, asking if I would say more about the peak harvest issue. I am happy to do so, since it’s a topic I find interesting.

Some years ago, I posted a report of part of my analysis of an SP Coast Division conductor’s time book, which happened to include entire trains of empty reefers being moved to Salinas for loading, during 1948–52. This book showed that only 76 percent of the reefers were PFE cars, with the remaining cars to be loaded made up of foreign cars. (Here’s a link to that post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/modeling-freight-traffic-coast-line.html ). 

That value of 76 percent is in line with other records of PFE operations in peak harvest season. I commented on that in a later post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/08/foreign-reefers-in-pfe-territory.html ). 

Also, as mentioned in the post just cited, we know that the major sources of these foreign reefers were American Refrigerator Transit (ART), Fruit Growers Express (FGEX and associated fleets, such as BREX and WFEX), and Merchants Despatch (MDT), along with BAR cars borrowed in the non-potato-harvest months of the year.

Here’s one example: a photo (by Dallas Gilbertson) of the Guadalupe Local returning toward San Luis Obispo, with ten loaded reefers in vent service. Eight are PFE cars, but two are ART cars. Note also, by the way, the considerable range in dirtiness of these cars.

To choose just one additional example on the Guadalupe Subdivision, below is a detail from a Richard Steinheimer photo, showing either the Guadalupe local or the Surf Turn in February 1956, when Baldwin road-switchers had supplanted steam. The train today happens to be 10 cars, the rear 9 all reefers. Interestingly, the first two are a FGEX and a BREX, while there is an ART car third ahead of the caboose (barely visible at right).

For the reasons apparent in these prototype photos, I love to carry out an operating session on my layout set in the peak harvest season, because a bunch of foreign reefers need to be present. As some readers doubtless remember, on my layout, each operating session is conducted as though it was the current date, but in 1953. So if I were operating today, the idea would be that it’s August 25, 1953. 

I do plan an operating session in the next month or so, and among the models in that session will be the BREX car that I inherited in a partly completed state from Richard Hendrickson (completion of which was shown in an earlier post; see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/07/upgrading-accurail-reefer-part-3.html ). It’s shown below at the Coastal Citrus shipping warehouse in my layout town of Santa Rosalia.   

Another example would be an ART car, probably the most common foreign reefer used by PFE. This model is shown as a load being picked up by the Santa Rosalia Local at the Guadalupe Fruit shipping dock in Ballard on my layout.

And finally, a relatively new BAR reefer is about to be spotted by the local switch job as an empty for loading at the Phelan & Taylor packing house at Shumala on my layout.

This kind of inclusion of a real seasonal pattern for an operating session is fun for me, and I try to convey it to my operators so they can appreciate what they are seeing and doing.

Tony Thompson