Acquiring knowledge of your era

Many serious modelers choose a specific era for layout or rolling stock modeling. Richard Hendrickson chose to model rolling stock, mostly for the Santa Fe, for October 1947. Jack Burgess’s superb layout depicts the Yosemite Valley Railroad in the third week of August, 1939, because that was the last period that the YV operated a through Pullman to El Portal, at the National Park’s entrance.

Of course many people want a looser time constraint. I can understand the person who wants, for example, to be able to model some prototype scrapped in 1965, and also to model some new equipment that arrived in 1968. That person might say “I model 1965–68.” But the danger lurking in looser constraint was well expressed once by Tony Koester, who said, “If you say that you model the 1950s, what you’re really doing is modeling 1959 badly.”

But however your choice falls out, especially if it is a period 75 years ago or more, how can you research its character, details, and style? We are all familiar with histories of railroads, locomotives and rolling stock, and likely also with histories of line changes, depot abandonments, etc., for our favorite railroad. What else do we need? What products can you include on billboards? What about clothing for the figures on you layout?

There have, over the years, been effort by various publishers to create “yearbooks,” books highlighting everything of “importance” in a particular year. (I put that word in quotation marks because one person’s importance is another person’s trivia). But certainly these books can provide some information, even if not exactly what we want.

I have such a book for my modeling year of 1953, and in fact that year is in its title. I show the title page below. This is a 6 x 9-inch hardbound book of 448 pages (Unicorn Books, New York, 1954).

To convey its coverage, I show the Contents pages below. 

This kind of source is quite general. One may also need quite specific information. For example, let’s imagine that you want to put a builder logo on a transformer load. Your first choices (in the 20th century) would be General Electric and Westinghouse. But as you may know, the Westinghouse logo changed over the years. This is a good example today of how “Google is your friend.” You will quickly find on-line sources like this one: https://1000logos.net/westinghouse-logo/ .

This would then result in a correct pre-1960 logo on a load like this one (Richard Hendrickson built this  Milwaukee model of a gun-type flat from a cut-down Roundhouse short flat car). 

Another example is advertising. Some companies have retained essentially identical graphics for decades, and these are convenient to use. National brands have the advantage of great recognizability.

Consumer products are the most commonly advertised, so showing advertising images of that kind is appropriate. A good example for a product familiar to everyone is Coca-Cola. I have a period image in the form of a billboard alongside Bromela Road on my layout (one of my interchangeable billboards; see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/interchangeable-billboards.html ). 

Another era-identifier is trucks and, especially, automobiles. For my 1953 layout, I have carefully avoided any later vehicle model year after that date. And of course you can reinforce the year with billboards like the one below, alongside Nipomo Street in Ballard on my layout:  

Today, the internet contains astonishing amounts of information about the history of about anything you can image. Remembering to search on historical topics to make sure you have it right is important if you are going to accurately present your modeling era.

Tony Thompson 

 

Improving my “Home Shop” form

A few years ago, I posted some comments about the Southern Pacific “Home Shop” form, a form used to direct a car for repair, which was attached to a placard board or route card board. You can read that initial post here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/02/home-shop-forms.html . 

But the form I came up with, by simply reducing the prototype form to the height of my layout waybills, had really narrow spaces between lines, making it hard to write and even harder to read. The image below is about double life size. 

The way this was used was to put it into the waybill’s sleeve, on top of the waybill, since in a sense it supersedes the car movement directions in the waybill. Here is how it would look in use.

I decided to keep most of the prototype repair form, but simply make the interline spaces bigger, and remove what wasn’t needed on the layout. The form remained 3.5 inches long, as it is above, but was widened to 2.5 inches (the width of my waybills). I moved the car identification to the top, and some lines were removed. Here is the new form: 

This form is much easier to fill out, and, I hope, to read and interpret. Here is one of them filled out. Note that the car can be moved in switching, just not put into a train.

The car in question. one of SP’s 53 ft. 6 in. flat cars, Class F-70-7, SP 140591, is shown here. The load is a Euclid scraper that I’ve posted about before (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/vehicle-loading-on-flat-cars.html ).

 I like to be able to include variations in the usual paperwork, standard waybills and Empty Car forms, giving crews a little additional thinking to do in an operating session.

Tony Thompson 

Route cards, Part 35: still more examples

This is another post in a series about route cards, the small tags of light cardstock, typically about 3 x 5 inches, attached to freight cars to inform switchmen how to switch a car. They were attached to small tack boards, which after 1937 were 5.5 x 9 inches in size (documented in a previous post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/12/route-cards-6.html ).

 I’ve previously also shown prototype examples of these cards, along with ways to model them, and photographs of them on prototype route card boards. I’ve also shown photos of yard clerks applying these cards (see, for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/07/route-cards-part-18-further-examples.html ). In this post, I want to to show more prototype examples of cards, once again drawn from the Michael Litant collecction.

My first example is a classic transfer card, identifying a car to be exchanged to another railroad. In this case, it’s a Missouri Pacific card for interchange to the New York Central, most likely at St. Louis, car destination Worcester, Mass. I can’t read the contents, but the car is SP 123857, a 40-foot steel box car with a 6-foot door. This card is 3 x 5 inches.

A second card that I find interesting is this Cotton Belt card, identifying an empty car to go into Train 15 leaving East St. Louis. The car itself is not identified, presumably because  switchmen only needed to know that the car was assigned to Train 15. The card is 3.5 x 3.5 inches.

The third card in this post is a really interesting one, possibly filled out by the shipper. It’s a Northern Pacific card, and identifies Illinois Central 43473, a 50-foot double-door box car, to be exchanged to the Rock Island, and further routing is then Kansas City Southern and Louisiana & Arkansas to New Orleans. The shipper is identified as the Industrial Crating Co., and what they crated were tractors from Minneapolis-Moline, Inc. (though by the 1964 date on the card, White Motor Co. had taken over M-M). The crates are destined to Anthony Gibbs & Co,, care of W.R. Zanes at 223 Tchoupitoulas St., New Orleans. This is practically a waybill. It’s 4 x 6 inches.

The next car I will show is a Union Pacific card, clearly for transfer to the Milwaukee Road. The car is UP 166458, a 50-foot steel box car with cushioned underframe and combination doors, one sliding and one a plug door. The consignee, “BB Pr 30,” is not decipherable, though a friend offered that it might be Pier 30 somewhere. The shipper is shown as “YD” or yard, obviously meaning coming from an inbound train to whatever yard it was.  It is 3.5 x 2.75 inches in size. 

My fifth example in this group is a Santa Fe switch card, containing minimal information, but of interest for its format, unlike most route cards I have seen. It does identify the car to which it was attached, KCS 25772, a 50-foot box car with a single 9-foot door. The card is 4 x 4 inches.

Lastly, I will show an interesting card from the Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Railroad, operators of a bridge across the Ohio River near Louisville. They had a yard on the Kentucky side, which is where this card was issued, for a car destined to the Louisville & Nashville. The car’s initial is only shown as “B,” likely B&O, a user of the bridge; if so, this car, number 299138, was a 50-foot steel car with a single 8-foot door and equipped with Evans 18-belt DF loaders. The cargo appears to be rope. This card is 4 x 3 inches.

As I always comment, to me these surviving cards (out of the many millions that were once used) portray railroading in another time, and more importantly, in ways we can learn from.

Tony Thompson

Fruit Growers' Western branch

Fruit Growers Express (FGE) was a very large refrigerator car owner, serving  most railroad in the Southeast and beyond, including, for example the Pennsylvania. Also included in the “family,” as they were wont to call it, were two of the Hill lines: the Great Northern and the CB&Q. The Northern Pacific, notably, did not join. 

The two Hill lines members of FGE kept their own reporting marks (Western Fruit Express in the case of the GN, Burlington Refrigerator Express in the case of the CB&Q), and their cars retained the normal railroad emblems. Those cars were part of the FGE fleet for operating purposes, but they continued to be owned by the two railroads, not by FGE, as was the case for the rest of the fleet.

An example of these cars is this builder photo from American Car & Foundry in 1948, of a string of new WFEX cars (Richard Hendrickson collection). The lettering style is indeed that of FGE, but the cars are not labeled as FGEX, but instead are Western Fruit Express, WFEX.

The FGE fleet was essentially operated as a single unit when cars were in demand, in other words, any kind of car could be loaded anywhere, but when empty cars were in surplus, the late Bill Welch told me that GN and CB&Q cars were sent home.

I’ve always found these “Western branch” cars interesting, and yard photos on the SP and UP do show them in many cases, validating their frequent presence in the West. Accordingly, I have acquired models of several of them. Probably my favorite is a model of a WFEX car built by Bill Welch himself and passed on to me, complete with correct FGE hatch rest bars. 

Burlington’s cars were essentially the same pattern as the WFEX cars, using the FGE lettering characters but with a CB&Q emblem. Here is a Accurail model of one. 

One interesting variation in the pattern is that the CB&Q had subsidiaries (for example, the Fort Worth & Denver City — “City” was dropped in 1951), and the Colorado  & Southern, acquired in 1908. Both continued to be operated under those names. Refrigerator cars were operated by both; the C&S had 143 reefers under the CX mark in 1953, while the FW&D had 59 cars lettered FWDX.

I have an ancient Silver Streak reefer lettered CX, an assembled car I obtained at a swap meet years ago. Like many early Silver Streak models, it is about ten percent oversize, though that is not evident in most freight trains. It’s shown here at the Peerless Foods wholesale grocer on my layout.

I also have a Red Caboose model of an FWDX reefer, again an interesting variant in reefer reporting marks for an operating session. Here it’s shown on my layout at Guadalupe Fruit in Ballard. 

Each of these cars sees operating use on my layout during those peak harvest months of June through September. But the rest of the year, cars being loaded are pretty much all PFE, and you wouldn’t see these Fruit Growers “Western branch” cars in use for produce shipping.

Tony Thompson 

Writing by a railroader

From time to time in this blog, I’ve mentioned writing by railroaders, especially ones that convey what the jobs were really like. A favorite railroader author, Linda Niemann, stated that you don’t really understand the work until you’re passing signals down a long yard to the switch engine with a hand lantern at 2 AM under a steady rain. (For more about her and her work, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-appreciation-linda-niemann.html .)

The book I want to present today is by Canadian Pacific railroader Jim McLean. This was the first book of his poems, printed in 1982 by Coteau Books of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Jim’s home town and his place of work for the CP.  The cover of the 6 x 9-inch book is below. Several on-line booksellers list the book as available. Another book by him was published in  2016.

I won’t include a whole lot of his poems here, just a few I especially like. For those of us who know and enjoy Timetable & Train Order (T&TO) railroading, this one is quite enjoyable:

Another one I liked, since it has to do with switching, has an introductory explanation so you understand the lingo:

Lastly, one of his I’ve always liked, one that that tells you something about Canadian immigration, not so different from immigration anywhere, working on the railroad:

As I mentioned, this book is for sale on the internet from several used-book dealers. I know most of my readers would enjoy it if they choose to find it.

Tony Thompson 

Crop seasons on my layout

As I have mentioned numerous times in this blog, operating sessions on my layout are always treated as being on the same day on which we operate, but in 1953. Among other things, this means that the packing houses on the layout are always shipping the crops of that particular month. I introduced this background some time back (see for example my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/09/seasonality-of-crops-and-traffic.html ). 

Recently I was asked (again) about the source of the information, and would I please put it all in one place. It’s drawn from the multi-page table on pages 442–447 in the back of the PFE book (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Thompson, Church, and Jones, Signature Press, 2000). That table covers all of the SP, with individual growing areas for each crop. Since the area I model is what was known as the Guadalupe–Santa Maria area, I have just chosen data for that area in the tables below.

 These tables, vegetables and fruit separately,  are very useful in that they show peak harvest months in black, with off-peak or “shoulder” harvest months in gray. I usually only choose waybills for peak-month produce in setting up a session for a particular month. The one exception is all-year broccoli, which does get shipped in most sessions. But notice that at least one fruit and one vegetable is being harvested in every month of the year in the area modeled. 

The other point to be made is one about PFE in general. During the peak harvest months over the entire SP and UP systems, June through September, even PFE’s fleet of roughly 40,000 cars was not sufficient for all needs, and reefers of other owners were borrowed. Most of this activity was on SP, which often advertised how much of American produce was loaded on its lines (I’ve show these ads in a number of previous posts, including this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/05/sps-public-advertising.html ). Here’s an example:

Roughly two-thirds of PFE’s carloadings were on SP lines, with the remainder mostly on UP, with barely five percent on Western Pacific.

In that peak season, scenes like the one below, at a packing house in my layout town of Shumala, were commonplace. American Refrigerator Transit (famously jointly owned by Missouri Pacific and Wabash) was one of the companies from which PFE borrowed extensively.

A scene like this is more relevant at the moment than during much of the year, because I have an operating session coming up later this month.. Scenes like this are, once again, going to fit the 1953 season we will be reproducing.

Tony Thompson 

Reworking a PFE car kit, Conclusion

This is the concluding post in my description of modifying the appearance of an otherwise stock Red Caboose kit for a reconditioned PFE reefer, Class R-30-9. I began with the prototype background of these cars, created during 1938–1940 from (mostly) Class R-30-12 cars built some 15 years earlier, along with some cars of Class R-30-13. 

“Reconditioning” meant a completely new superstructure, with new and upgraded insulation, but without performing work on the underframe and brake gear (other than needed repairs). In the parlance of the AAR and the IRS, in addition to PFE, this did not constitute rebuilding. But because of improved insulation and ice bunkers, they were given a new car class, R-30-9. 

In the first post of this series, I showed a prototype photo of one of these cars (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/05/reworking-pfe-car-kit.html ). Here is another image, this time showing a car as-reconditioned, at the Stockton, CA ice deck on July 13, 1941 (Wilbur C. Whittaker photo). It has retained the original T-section trucks, but like all the cars of 95737–98718, has new steel ice hatches. Side lettering says it was reconditioned in April 1940, so the paint is barely a year old; it was originally PFE 20028, built in July 1922.

I wanted to model a car like this. After stripping the kit lettering, airbrushing fresh Star brand paint on sides and ends, and adding steel nuts for weight (shown in that first post), I built the kit sub-assemblies of roof and underbody, as I showed in the second post, along with beginning decal lettering with Microscale set 87-501 (the second post may be found at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/05/reworking-pfe-car-kit-part-2.html ). 

Once the new decals had been protected with a coat of clear flat, I assembled the car body (so far without an underbody). This looks good so far.

 Next I completed work on the underbody, adding sill steps and Kadee #158 couplers, along with the kit truck frames. Wheelsets were replaced with superior ones from InterMountain. Here is the completed car, nicely retaining the black side sill of the 1950 scheme (side sills became orange in 1951). 

Next came weathering. As always with PFE, this is difficult to choose in the abstract, because of PFE’s extensive car washing (for data see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/appearance-of-pfe-reefers-part-3.html ), along with their practice, until the mid-1950s, of repainting any car with even the most minor repairs. I have chosen to apply a light degree of weathering.

The way I did the weathering was following my usual technique with washes of acrylic tube paint (for description and examples, see the Reference pages linked at the top right corner of this post). After adding a coat of clear flat, a few chalk marks, and route cards, the car looked as shown below, being switched to the ice deck in my layout town of Shumala by SP 1284, a Class S-12 0-6-0. 

This is going to be a nice addition to my PFE fleet, and it will certainly be among the cars switched at my next operating session.

Tony Thompson