New SP Shipper's Guide, Part 2

In the preceding post, I showed the general features of the new Southern Pacific “Shipper Guide,” for 1952. For me as an SP modeler, it's a rich trove of potential operating information. You can read that previous post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/a-new-sp-shippers-guide.html . In the present post, I want to illustrate specific features.

In the previous post, I showed an overall map of the Las Angeles Terminal District, with 16 zones identified. Here is an example of one of these zone maps, Part 1 of Zone 16 (Zone 16 extends to Burbank Junction, where the Coast and Valley routes diverge), on page 70. Why choose this map? It’s the literal area where I used to railfan the SP as a youngster, walking down Sonora Ave. to the tracks.  

Each siding has a number. As the Guide states, the drawings are not to scale, and do not indicate locations of switches, gates,, doors or impaired clearance points. Each number of course corresponds to a user of that siding. The users are listed on an accompanying page. Shown below is page 69, the list that goes with the map above. Note that some sidings have multiple businesses on them. I remember watching the Burbank Local crew working these multiple spots. 

An important part of the new route guide is that there is considerable information about the route card number assignments, which would permit a person to operate a layout using route cards only. I earlier showed an SP listing of the meaning of its route card numbers in the Oakland and East Bay areas (that post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/route-cards-10-southern-pacific.html ). Below is one of four pages listing the Los Angeles tag (route card) numbers. The upper part here shows zone tags, that is, for the zones mapped as described above. Below are “road tag” listings, for outbound cars.

But even more interesting to me is a listing in the back of the guide. It contains all the industries in the guide, in alphabetical order, and tells you its track number. But in addition, it gives you the tag number (i.e. route car number) for that industry, and at the right, lists the size of the industry spot (not the siding) in cars. Here’s one of the pages.

Amazing stuff, especially for a document nearly 75 years old, containing what you’d presume was long-lost information like tag numbers. As I mentioned, you could operate a switching layout entirely with tags, if you wished. That’s what a local switch crew would have been doing. 

Tony Thompson 

A new SP Shipper’s Guide

I have often posted about the superb railroad resources represented by what are generically known as “Shipper’s Guides,” though they often have somewhat different names, such as “Directory of Industries.” The latest one is especially interesting to me, as it’s a Southern Pacific guide. I have often heard rumors about these but have never before seen one. Now Ted Schnepf (as Rails Unlimited) has produced copies of a 1952 guide for sale. See his website for purchasing info: http://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/.html ).

I show below the cover of the new Guide, which contains 118 pages, 8.5 x 11 inch size. I can only say that this is a phenomenal amount of information. It only covers the trackage assigned by SP to its Terminal District, but that was a lot of territory and a really huge number of industries, as I’ll show below. There were other industrial territories in the area, so this is far from all of the Los Angeles Division of the SP. 

Inside is on page 10 a map of the territory covered, from Burbank Junction in the north (where Coast and Valley routes diverged), to  South Gate to the south and Alhambra to the east. It’s shown here, though of course lettering at this size is too small to read. North is to the top of the map, and the orientation of the spine of the territory aligns with the Los Angeles River.

Note in the map that zones are marked out, from 1 to 16. Individual maps of each zone are then provided, which I will come back to. 

I was interested, in examining the map above, to compare it to the SP’s 1925 map of the same area provided in John Signor’s superb book, Los Angeles Division (SP Historical & Technical Society, Upland, CA, 2020), on pages 138 and 139. I haven’t tried to show what is in the gutter between the pages. It happens to be oriented so north is to the right of the map, and the Los Angeles River is thus approximately horizontal in this map. More importantly, Alameda Street runs horizontally across the upper part of the map.

Naturally, many of the industries and their locations are quite different between 1925 and 1952. But a similar intensity of of industrial location is evident. This was obviously a major part of SP’s industrial traffic base. Below is a photo from page 135 of Signor’s book, a 1925 aerial looking north (Spence Air photo collection, UCLA Dept. of Geography),with Alameda the dark street crossing from lower right to upper left. 

Signor points out that of the 340 industries listed on the map above, 278 of them were so located that they were switched from Alameda Street. The street contained double track, in some places triple track. One can imagine multiple switch jobs working up and down the street, dodging auto and truck traffic.

But back to the guide. This guide is a remarkable collection of specific industrial and operational information, even for the modeler of places far from Los Angeles. I will explain and illustrate some of that in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Trackwork wars: Part 16

When last we visited this unwelcome topic (unwelcome to me, anyway), I had torn out both of the curved switches in the lead into Santa Rosalia, and Jim Providenza came over to help install a pair of new ones in their place. That was great, but we soon discovered that the first of the Peco switches into town also needed to be replaced. So I tore it out, and some nearby trackage. The state of play at that point is shown on the repeat photo below. The story is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/09/trackwork-wars-part-15.html . 

My first step was to install a new Peco switch, along with some replacement trackage where a foot or so of the lead to the team track had been removed. The new track is shown below (compare photo above), along with the still-unsoldered feeder wire with the yellow insulation. 

I was about to solder some of the new rail joints, when it occurred to me that continuing work on the switches that were installed earlier might need adjustment of location, so I put off doing that. Then Jim Providenza came over again, with complete toolbox, to see how we could make things move ahead. I really appreciate Jim’s help with trackwork that I’m not as good at as I used to be. He of course brought his Santa Cruz Northern coffee mug. 

Most of the new switches work fine, but there continues to be a dip in the overall track. To see if it could be made better, Jim used pieces of an old Athearn kit box to shim up the track. This surprised me in that it actually did help. Here is how it looked with the cardboard from the box underneath.

This seemed to improve enough of the problems that we called it a day. I went back and soldered the feeders and some more of the track joints, inserted ties where they were missing between sections, and started painting the rail. I still use my long-time choice for this paint, Floquil Roof Brown, as I think it gives the right dark brown commonly seen on rail in the world. Then dirt “ballast” will be added. 

More testing needed, but the track  is coming back into service, and needs to be gotten ready for the next operating session. Hopefully we will have all this trackage back in full service by then!

Tony Thompson 

Using augers for operation

I know at least a few readers are saying, “what’s an auger?” I went into the prototype a few years ago, in a post showing both fixed and portable augers; that post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/11/unloading-covered-hoppers.html . My modeling goal at the time was to build a fixed auger to unload covered hoppers at my chemical repackaging industry, so I followed up that first post with one about modeling (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/08/unloading-covered-hoppers-part-2.html ). 

Today I want to turn to movable or portable augers. These are used at team tracks or industry tracks to unload hoppers and covered hoppers, and I’ll repeat a prototype photo (uncredited internet image) from the first of the posts cited above, to illustrate. This is a way to unload many kinds of granular or even powdery materials. 

At a modeling meeting not long after those posts in 2017 and 2018, I bought a 3D-printed portable auger model for HO scale. I’m embarrassed that I don’t remember the seller (if a reader knows, please comment at the end of this post). Here is what it looks like. It came in all gray, which is okay, except for the tires, but I remember seeing one that had an aluminum main tube, so I painted it that way. 

This of course can easily be posed at any team track or other industry to indicate unloading. One example that fits on my layout is the delivery of spent brewing malt, used for animal feed, and delivered to agricultural areas. It’s shown here at the team track in East Shumala on my layout. 

So this can be the physical implementation of actions following from the waybill below, which brought the car to this team track. 

These kinds of augers can also be used for loading; a truck would dump into the receiving bin, and the auger would transport the material into a hopper. If the area I model were suitable for growing hops, for example, the crop could be loaded in just that way. The auger will need to be elevated to reach the hatches in the covered hopper.

On model railroads, industries don’t always have a clear way to load their product into freight cars, or alternatively, to unload arriving cars. Including something like an auger can take care of that for certain cargoes, possibly to the satisfaction of the fastidious operator.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 125: Routing

 I have written before about the routing part of a waybill. But most of it was about reasonable routing, not actually the prototype procedure. The latter is the topic today. For the prior posts, I recommend this one (at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/05/waybills-24-routing.html ) along with a later follow-up on the same subject, which is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/02/waybills-part-37-routing-of-loads.html .

On the prototype, the ICC approved routes, and rates for those routes. Immense numbers of official listings resulted. Here is one example of a routing book, which was issued for the Nickel Plate. This is an 8.5 x.11-inch book, and more impressively, it’s 1-3/4 inches thick, 1008 pages.  

The cover repays some attention, prominently identifying itself as Eastbound Routing Guide No. 1 (there would also have been Westbound Routing Guide books). It became effective on September 15, 1945. As you can note below, this only applies originating movements from the six states of the NKP (omitting Michigan), to destinations in 10 eastern states plus the District of Columbia. Other eastbound guides would be needed for New England and the Southeast.

The book begins with a list of participating destination railroads, and gives their abbreviations, in the destination states. This only occupies three pages. 

Second, a list of destination stations is given, occupying pages 7 to 71, completing Section 1 of the book (entitled “Stations from and to which routes apply”). Shown below is a randomly chosen page, page 19, showing destination stations in Maryland and giving each one a number. 

Next, these station numbers were grouped with routes by number, which is Section 2 of the book, pages 75 to 1000. For each railroad on which the final consignee is located, routes beyond various interchanges from NKP to final railroad are given. These are listed in groups by final-interchange railroad. In the example below, page 111, part of a larger list of approved routes via Baltimore & Ohio is shown. As an example (you can click to enlarge), route 32 is to hand the car off at Fort Wayne, Indiana, and move via PRR to DuBois, PA, where it is handed off to the B&O, which will deliver to final destination.

 Finally with all these route numbers defined for each final railroad, we can show approved routes by number, from specific groups of NKP stations. The originating NKP stations are listed by station number. There is no need to tabulate those for NKP employees, as those numbers are in every employee timetable. Each group of NKP station numbers has a corresponding list of ICC-approved route numbers to groups of destination stations on the final railroad of delivery. This of course appears impenetrable by itself (see example page 99 below). But as shown in the previous example page, each interchanged railroad listing contains the explanation of route numbers, followed by further interchange railroad(s) and junction(s).  

So how would a clerk use this book? Say you're at Frankfort, Indiana on the NKP (station 2206) and you have a shipper wanting to move a load to Frederick, Maryland, on the B&O (station 1385). The shipper in the great majority of cases chooses routing, as is their right, and they may have specified interchanging from the NKP to the B&O at Fostoria, Ohio (south of Toledo). The clerk can find on the page 111, shown above, that this is route 33. Then on page 99, above, route 33 is shown as approved between these station numbers. 

My friend Jerry Stewart, at one time a Chief Clerk in Chicago, told me that even an experienced route clerk would need plenty of patience and time, and still might not find an unapproved route anywhere east of the Mississippi. Still, routing was checked in the way just described. What about roundabout routes, deliberately chosen to lengthen the delivery time for price purposes? Routes could be strung together, but each segment still had to be an approved route. 

I am omitting a second large issue, rates. Each route had an associated rate. But I’m not going there today (for a little more on it, see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/02/waybills-part-118-more-information.html ). Arbitrarily chosen routes could well result in higher rates. 

Does this affect how we create model waybills? By no means. Aside from the inconvenience and lack of importance of doing so, you would need a really big set of routing guides. You saw above the size of this single NKP book, and I mentioned that there were probably five or six more, just for the NKP. Imagine now a set of books for all the Class One railroads. Jerry said a complete set would fill a couple of 20-foot shelves. But I find it interesting to see how this work was done in the pre-computer age.

Tony Thompson 

 

Making a silk purse . . . Part 2

Recently I posted about making a “scenery” version of an old Athearn reefer, lettered for Fruit Growers Express, by modeling it with its doors open (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/10/making-silk-purse.html ). I had only intended to describe broadly what I was going to do, and then show the final result. But I received an email asking if I would show more of the process. Luckily, I did take a few photos during the process.

First, having removed the old ice hatches that were shown previously, I also sliced off the “hinge” bulges and the bulge for the latch bar, along with removing the clunky running board. Then I cut off the Athearn locating posts under the running board, and glued them into their roof holes. This is shown in the photo below, at left. 

Then I used Tamiya putty to fill the hinge holes and scale 1 x 6-inch styrene strip to cover the latch bar hole. Some of the running board post holes also needed putty. This step is shown at right, below, with the roof also cleaned up. 

With those steps completed, I touched up the new areas with brown. I added a Walthers white metal Ajax brake wheel (no longer produced), and turned to the underframe. I used the Athearn coupler boxes, secured with 2-56 screws, to host new Kadee no. 158 couplers, and replaced the steel-axle wheelsets in the Athearn metal sprung trucks with InterMountain wheelsets. 

Next I reattached the Athearn ice hatches, replacing two that were damaged with new Athearn parts, and installed the Plano running board with canopy glue. Lastly, I represented latch bars with scale 1 x 3-inch styrene strip. This doesn’t really look much like a real latch bar, but will suffice for this “scenery” model, following Richard Hendrickson’s dictum that this is a place where “there should be something there.” 

Now I could mask the sides and ends with Tamiya tape, and spray paint the entire roof brown, to blend everything together.  And with a coat of protective flat overall, I proceeded to weathering, following my usual method using washes of acrylic tube paint (for more on that, see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right corner of this post). 

I now added the doors, using strips of ordinary Scotch tape as hinges. This allows a choice of how widely open the modeler wants the doors to be, dependent on how strongly creased are the pieces of tape. Here is my choice. And though I don’t plan to do it, the doors can be closed, too.

The purpose of this model, as mentioned at the outset of these two posts, was to model as “scenery” a reefer with open doors at a loading dock. It’s shown below alongside the dock at Guadalupe Fruit Co. in my layout town of Ballard.

This was an interesting project, because not many of my freight cars are intended as scenery; and I learned a few things in the process. Can’t beat that.

Tony Thompson 

The AAR publicity photos

 Back in the 1950s, the AAR (Association of American Railroads) issued a set of large-format photo prints (8.5 x 11 inches) on heavy paper to schools and to the general public. I’ve never seen a complete set, though many people seem to have a few or a handful. I am told there were 60 photos total, all numbered (highest number I’ve seen personally was 55). The great majority are in fact publicity photos contributed by individual railroads. They are interesting in a number of ways, and I thought I would show a few.

The lowest numbers are very early images of different kinds (no. 4 is the famous photo of the two engines nose to nose at Promontory in 1869, with people everywhere). What I have always found amusing is that to avoid  publicizing individual railroads, whenever lettering is visible, it was replaced (sometimes a little crudely) with the legend “East & West Railroad.” It is a particularly entertaining detail when the original railroad is blindingly obvious, like this one (you can click to enlarge): 

 Similarly, a steam photo, showing filling a tender, is quite obviously a Norfolk & Western Class A 2-6-6-4, with its engine number, 1203, visible on the cab, but of course with the “East & West” name on the tender. The locale certainly looks like Roanoke Shops. 

But in many ways the more interesting views to me include the ones showing aspects of freight service. A good example is this photo showing loading of a meat refrigerator car with hanging meat. The Swift Company label is on a couple of the visible carcasses.   

Another interesting example is this view (supplied by United Fruit Company) showing a banana ship alongside barges of refrigerator cars. Two of the reefers are visibly lettered “MDT,” so in this instance the AAR did not feel compelled to replace the initials with “E&W.” The same goes for the inset photo, showing banana handling, with a Northern Refrigerator car in the background. 

Lastly, I liked this photo of a railroad stores building, with material stored outdoors, under cover but open to the air, and on interior shelving (the inset photo). This is something rarely modeled but an interesting challenge, and an “industry” that can ship and receive a wide variety of cargo.  

These are just a few of the AAR photos in the set, but should serve to show the range of interesting views that were included. And school children and others who viewed them hopefully obtained some idea of what railroading was all about. 

Tony Thompson