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 collection.

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

That O&W hopper

Awhile back, in the spring of 2024, I reported on an operating session, and buried in the report was commentary about a hopper load of coal sitting at Shumala on my layout, in a car from the New York, Ontario & Western Railway (reporting mark O&W). My preceding comments are in this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/operating-sessions-88-and-89.html . 

The group of modelers who remember this car on Mike Brock’s layout at Merritt Island, Florida must be a small one. Maybe as early as 2015, this car had been snuck onto the layout, and placed under the coal dock at Harriman on Mike’s Sherman Hill layout, by Bill Schneider. Though doubtless intended to both amuse and annoy Mike (a good friend of us all, and the originator and long-time leader of the annual January Cocoa Beach RPM), in fact I think Mike kind of liked it, and it stayed there.

I continue to advise visiting operators that some of the cars they see on the layout will have no paperwork provided (usually cars in the process of being loaded or unloaded), and therefore to leave them where they are. This includes the O&W hopper. 

But is there any way this car could believably deliver a load on my layout? One avenue for delivering a carload of coal comes from  a member of the Pittsburgh Model Railroad Club, when I was a member almost 50 years ago. His mother had worked at one time for a coal broker, whose business was obtaining loads of coal not already sold, and finding buyers for them. The loads would then be redirected to the new destination.

He told me that although most of the business was multi-car lots to larger customers, sometimes a single car would languish because it didn’t fit an immediate customer. With that in mind I pulled out a Shipper Guide to see what I could find. 

(I’ve written a number of posts about these Guides; here is a recent one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/11/waybills-part-44-shipper-guides.html . You can readily find them all by using “Shipper Guide” in the search box at upper right. You can buy any of the 23 Guides now available from Rails Unlimited at: https://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html .)

The one I chose is for the Chicago & Northwestern, thinking that a Chicago area broker would be about as far west as an eastern load might be redirected.  Here is that Guide cover: 

I selected  a suitable dealer, and made up the following waybill for the only industrial coal user on my layout. The load would be re-billed at origin for its new destination, treating it as a load that had not sold earlier. The bill hasn’t yet received it normal amount of pencil and pen marks by conductors en route. 

Width this kind of paperwork, the slightly famous O&W hopper can actually do work on my layout. All part of the fun, in my view.

Tony Thompson 

Route cards, Part 34: additional examples

I continue to be, on the one hand, fascinated with the variety of route card appearances, and, at the same time, intrigued with all the prototype information about car movement. That’s why I’m writing this post, continuing to show interesting cards from the Michael Litant collection. You might wish to consult the previous post with some background on these cards (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/05/route-cards-part-33-further-examples.html ).  

A classic type of route card is the “return empty” card, this one from the Long Island Railroad to the Pennsylvania. This probably would mean Sunnyside Yard, though the LIRR also connected with the Pennsy via a couple of car floats. The original card is 3 x 3 inches. 

My second example is a good instance of a transfer card, moving a car on UP rails to the CB&Q for its onward journey eastward. The car, UP 541045, was a 50-foot steel box car with a 7-foot door, equipped with Transco loaders (load dividers). Bound for Worcester, MA, the load looks like “Cake” but may be cable or a shorthand notation of some kind. This card is 4 x 5 inches.  

Another interesting card is this one, likely a Wabash on-line card designating a car to move eastward. The clerk only added the car initials, MKT, and no other information. The card is 4 x 4.5 inches. 

A fourth example is a Northern Pacific card, again a transfer card, directing SAL 19862 to be switched to the C&NW. (This was a 40-foot steel box car of 1937-AAR dimensions — 3713 cubic feet and a 6-foot door.) It gives the (rubber stamped) origin of the car as “road haul,” presumably meaning in a train arriving in whatever yard was the location of affixing this card, and the reason for movement was “shipment,” a term almost embarrassingly simplistic. The card is 4 x 6 inches. 

For my fifth card, we have yet another transfer example, evidently from the Georgia Railroad to the Atlantic Coast Line, the car being AWP 50001 (presumably Atlanta & West Point), which was a 50-foot box car with a 9-foot door, equipped with Spartan “Easy-loader” dividers with 9 belts, one of ten cars in that group. The load, syrup, was presumably in containers, thus the importance of the car having load dividers. The card is 3.5 x 3.5 inches.. 

 Finally, I’ve chosen a card showing a whiff of oncoming computerization, a Canadian National card, 3 x 6.5 inches (a little smaller than a punch card). The car listed is Northern Pacific 98472, a 50-foot RBL car, essentially an insulated box car, equipped with cross-bar loaders. 

The cargo is meat, en route to San Juan Packing in Portland, likely Portland, Maine, because of the yard office stamp for Sarnia Tunnel (the tunnel under the St. Clair River between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario); this would be the original tunnel, opened in 1891). Likely the car would move eastward across southern Canada before re-entering the U.S.

These cars are, as always, interesting in themselves and in what they tell us about patterns of freight movement. Several of them could easily be adapted to model railroad layout use for operation, and the really large lettering on a few of them might show up even in HO scale.

Tony Thompson 

Route Cards, Part 32: more examples

I have once again been favored with access to the Michael Litant collection of route cards, most retrieved from freight cars in service in the mid- to late 1960s. As I’ve said before, the variety of formats, shapes and sizes remains interesting, and can serve as guidance for those of us trying to reproduce the look of these in model railroad operations. 

As the title of today’s post suggests, this is just the latest in long series of posts like this. To find more, you can use “route cards” as the search term in the search box at right, or perhaps begin with a typical previous post like this one, which is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/08/route-cards-part-21-more-examples.html . 

I’ll begin with what is probably just a destination card, used in freight yards everywhere. It’s from the Houton Belt & Terminal. Probably the “SL” is a zone, and 477 is the destination (or perhaps an interchange yard). The car, SP 214336, was from Class B-50-38, built in 1956 at Sacramento, a 50-foot double-door box car. The original card is 3 x 4.5 inches, a common vertical format. 

A second example is a Missouri Pacific card, applied at North Little Rock and destined to Van Buren, Arkansas, probably destination 16. It’s not noted whether the car is loaded or empty. The car, N&W 385323, is a conventional 40-foot steel box car with a six-foot side door. Original dimension of the card are 5 x 3 inches. 

Third in this group is what’s called a transfer card, from one railroad to another, in this case from the Milwaukee Road to the Union Pacific. The car is UP 166458, a 50-foot double-door box car with cushion underframe. The car’s cargo is bags, perhaps paper, burlap or other, destined to Houston, Texas on July 3, 1965. The card is 3 x 4 inches. 

My fourth example  is another transfer card, this one from the Chicago & Eastern Illinois to the Indiana Harbor Belt, the car being URTX 1896, a 40-foot ice refrigerator car of general-service class RS. Marking the contents as “X” may mean it was empty. The card is 4 x 3 inches, and like the one shown above, makes very clear the identity of the destination railroad.  

Next is another vertical-format card, this one from the N&W, for car HERX 2141, evidently being moved to Detroit. The HERX reporting mark was owned by North American Car Corp., used for “bunkerless” refrigerator cars, Class RB, essentially insulated box cars. HERX 2141 was 46 feet long.  The card is 3 x 5 inches. 

My final example is from the Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Railroad, and it’s a card for a specific destination, the Reynolds Metal Plant no. 3 at Louisville, Kentucky, The car is B&O 299128, a loader-equipped 55-foot box car with 8-foot doors. The card is 4 x 3 inches.

To me, all these cards are not only interesting in their own right, but give us ideas for what our model route cards could look like. Even in HO scale, some of the very large initials or numbers on some of these cards could be visible in a scale route card.

Tony Thompson 

Cars on the layout for op sessions

This is an apparently evergreen topic, as I have posted about it a couple of times, but continue to get inquiries about it. My most recent post on the subject is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/08/cars-on-layout-for-op-session.html , from five years ago. But let me re-visit the area one more time. 

Most expressions of interest have been about choices of cars, and the related topic, how the layout car population changes or continues from session to session. There is a general pattern, that a car coming onto the layout via delivery by the Guadalupe Local is then switched to its destination industry, in that session or the following one. It then may be picked up and taken outbound in the next or next following session. 

But there are also cars that get added to the layout before a particular session, maybe by being placed directly at an industry, and then picked up in that or a subsequent session. And on occasion a car that has resided at an industry for a couple of sessions may be removed by “0-5-0” before the next session. Thus there is not a rigid or unchanging rhythm to car movements.

So what’s going on? Don’t I have a plan or a system? Well, if you have read this blog very often, you know that I would be bound to have a system. It’s just not inflexible. I always cringe a little bit at the term “play value,” but this is a good example of what we mean by it. I want each session to be interesting and varied, and to include a wide variety of freight cars. 

So if we look at the photo below, just taken today at Shumala on my layout, showing an assortment of cars being readied for an upcoming operating session, what do we see? I will come back to the details, but these seven cars include a pair of SP gondolas at right, an Associated Oil Co. tank car and a New York Central box car to their left, and behind them, box cars owned by the Rock Island, Buffalo Creek Flour, and the Cotton Belt. This does reflect an aspect of the variety I want.

Now what do I mean by “variety?” I mean prototypical variations in the car population by railroad. To me, there are two parts to this aspect. First is home-road cars; second is what railroaders call “foreign” cars, those owned by all railroads other than the home road.

There are extensive data for any railroad about home-road cars, in the form of yard and train photographs. Ideally, one hopes to also find less “snapshot” kinds of evidence, in the form of conductors’ time books, yard lists or wheel reports, though disappointingly few such documents survive. For the railroad I model, the Southern Pacific, data show home-road cars to be around 25 to 35 percent of all cars (for example, see the analysis here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/03/modeling-freight-traffic-coast-line_11.html ).

For foreign cars, we have the benefit of a very interesting idea, the Gilbert-Nelson hypothesis (which I’ve described in detail previously: see https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2010/12/choosing-model-car-fleet-2.html ). This hypothesis, well supported with data for trunk line or long-haul railroads, is that freight cars appear in proportion to their percentage in the national freight car fleet. Thus our main tool for choosing foreign cars is data for that national fleet.

My most-used version of this tool is the graph below. What it shows is fleet size for the “top 15” railroads.  This graph is for 1950, one that I have shown previously in several places, showing the size of car fleets, minus coal and ore hoppers. (For a defense of that adjustment, see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/05/proportions-of-freight-car-fleet.html , or my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist for  December 2011).   

A few things to point about this graph. First, the five biggest fleets (other than SP) are the PRR, NYC, ATSF, Milwaukee and B&O. I try to make sure that cars from three to five of these roads participate in every operating session. Second, notice that PFE shows up here because of its fleet size; I do indeed operate a considerable number of PFE reefers, as they provided SP with its reefer needs. Rock island, with a car contained in the photo at the top of this post, is well down in this graph but obviously one of the largest freight car fleets in the U.S., and also an interchange partner with SP.

What about that Buffalo Creek car? In my era, the Buffalo Creek Railroad owned exactly 500 box cars, all leased to Buffalo Creek Flour. Isn’t that far too small a railroad for me to have one of their cars, after looking at the graph above? Here I like to quote a comment from my friend Tim O’Connor, that each “tiny” car owner individually is invisible, but collectively they rostered over 5 percent of the national fleet. So a car of a some tiny railroad really should show up occasionally. 

Beyond the intent to include about 30 percent of an operating session in SP cars, and to include cars of the “Big Five” shown above, everything else depends on the needs of shippers. I have documented previously my overall framework for determining these needs. (See that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/operations-demand-based-car-flow-2.html .) This forms the background for choosing car movements in any one session. If all this isn’t clear, please contact me with questions.

Tony Thompson 

My latest column in Model Railroad Hobbyist

My most recent column in the on-line magazine, Model Railroad Hobbyist, has just appeared in the March issue. It is entitled “Military Loads,” and as readers of this blog will know, I have posted numerous descriptions of a variety of such loads over the years. A full set of live links to those posts is in the article.

This happens to be my 31st column in the magazine, a series dating back to my first column in the December 2011 issue. I sometimes think I am going to run out of ideas for this series, but they do seem to crop up every tine.

The current column is primarily about military vehicles, most of them fighting vehicles. I decide not to get into the very large variety of loads for military uses, which could be an entire additional column.s I always do, I attempted to provide a solid list of prototype information sources for the topic of the column. 

I was also able to contribute a few photos from my own collection. The example below was taken at San Luis Obispo by a Southern Pacific photographer, depicting M3 half-tracks being prepared for unloading at Camp San Luis Obispo, a training camp just north of the city. Blocking of the vehicles for shipment is clearly shown. The tank cars at right are loads of locomotive fuel for the engine terminal.

I used the blocking arrangements visible above for my Roco model half-tracks. Two of them are shown below (one has a tarpaulin cover, like some of the ones above). They are riding on an upgraded Roco “Army” flat car; see my posts ending in:  https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/12/upgrading-roco-flat-car-part-3.html . 

I also enjoyed a number of other fighting vehicles, and since my modeling era is the Korean War period, I can model older vehicles that we know were used in training units for Korea. An example is the two shown below, an M4 Sherman tank, and an M7 105-mm howitzer mounted on a Sherman hull, again shown on the Roco flat car.

Of course numerous other military vehicles were also being shipped in this period, and I included a model inherited from Richard Hendrickson, a pair of army trucks on an Illinois Terminal flat car. Richard modeled the blocking ant tie-downs very nicely. As with all my military loads, this is shown in. a train on the SP Main line passing my town of Shumala, since there would be no credible reasons for these vehicles to operate on my Santa Rosalia Branch.

Lastly, I showed some examples of the waybills used to move these loads on my layout. Like prototype examples I have seen, they are U.S. Government waybills, not railroad ones, and are filled out with a Teletype font. I researched which West Coast training facilities housed which armored divisions, information readily found on line. 

I have enjoyed learning about military vehicles of my modeling period, and have also enjoyed seeking out HO scale models of them and making them into removable loads for flat cars in my operating sessions. All that is covered in much more detail in the MRH article, if you wish to read it.

Tony Thompson 

Route cards, Part 31: Grading box cars

I have posted previously about this topic, grading the condition of box car interiors so they are suitable for particular commodities. I was recently given a copy by Michael Litant of a Union Pacific employee document for this work, which forms the subject of today’s post. My previous posts contained quite a few examples of the cards attached to cars to indicate their grade, usually to route card boards, thus the series topic above. I list five of these below. 

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/07/route-cards-part-19-grading-freight-cars.html

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/08/route-cards-part-20-more-grading-cards.html 

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/09/route-cards-part-23-varieties-of.html 

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/09/route-cards-part-25-still-more-grading.html

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/route-cards-part-27-back-to-grading.html 

Below at left is the cover of this screw-post UP book, 4.5 x 7 inches in size. At right is the first page, describing the contents. I will be posting the entire contents on Google Docs, but will show a few pages here to indicate the scope. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

Then pages 4 and 5 give a verbal description of the inspection process, referring to the UP grading card, Form 4151-1, which I will show blow. 

Both sides of the card itself, probably reproduced full size at 3.25 x 5 inches in dimensions, are shown  below, pages 6 and 7.   

Lastly for now, I show here a bit more of the instructions including grading specifics (page 9), referring to car interior photos on following pages. The photos are washed out and pretty uninformative, so not presented here.  

The instructions essentially state that the card should be attached to the car with the uppermost side being the type of grade.  Below is an example used card (Litant collection), slightly different in format and listing different commodities than the ones shown above, dated July 12, 1968 and stamped by the inspector, A. Lish, at Pocatello. 

I continue to find car grading an interesting topic, even though it is rarely applied in model railroading. Good to see all kinds of prototype practices, even if we don’t use this particular one. 

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 127: more prototype bills

This post is to discuss several prototype waybills and their contents. I think that all have interesting features that are worth presenting. If you would like to examine any details of these bills, any of them can be enlarged by clicking on the image. 

l’ll begin with a Pennsylvania Railroad bill from the late days before Penn Central. The bill is to move a product of the Euclid Division of GMC from the plant at Hudson, Ohio, to Cobusco Inc. at Denver, Colorado. The routing shows PRR to Effner, Indiana, just at the Illinois border due west of Logansport, then via TP&W across Illinois to Lomax on the Santa Fe, just a few miles east of Fort Madison, then Santa Fe to Denver. 

The car is MP 9961, a plain (type FM) steel 60-foot flat car. The load is one tractor NBN (or NOIBN, that is, Not Otherwise Identified By Name), weighing over 47,000 pounds, plus seven other parts and two boxes of parts, adding about 8000 pounds. A special note is added about the fact that a nitrogen compressed gas cylinder is on the load too. Note that the original rate typed on the waybill has been corrected, as was the freight charge.

Another interesting example is of a waybill filled out incorrectly. It’s a Norfolk & Western waybill, moving an empty covered hopper from Ironton, Ohio to Oregon, Illinois, a well-known location for sand shipping and thus presumably for loading of the car, CB&Q 180854. But the waybill’s original routing showing it to exchanged from N&W at Chicago to the C&NW. A hand-written note observes that Oregon, IL is not on the C&NW; then another note points out that Oregon is on the CB&Q, and modifies the routing exchange partner as CB&Q.  

One may also find it amusing to follow the various dates, from the waybill’s original date of February 25, through the last of the eight date stamps, Burlington’s March 15 stamp, just to move an empty car.

Another  example is a very heavy load,  a single piece of rolling mill machinery, weighing 299,000 pounds, along with 4800 pounds of blocking. It was shipped by United Engineering & Foundry in Youngstown, Ohio, to Inland Steel’s plant at East Chicago, via interchange at Hobart, Indiana, onto the the EJ&E. The car was PRR 470243, a 72-foot depressed center flat car of 300,000 pounds nominal capacity. (The load limit would be significantly higher.)  

This bill was subject to later correction in the rate, with an additional payment of $60.36 added to the original bill of $3832.86. A further billing was performed for demurrage, as the car was spotted at United Engineering & Foundry on December 20, and not picked up with its load u;til December 29. That demurrage amounted to $132.48.

Lastly, I wanted to show a B&O analog to the Pennsylvania waybill that I used at the foundation of my own model waybills. (You can see that PRR bill at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/06/waybills-part-69-another-approach.html .) Below is exactly the same load (steel scrap), now coming from Brunswick, MD to  its destination (Deitch & Co. in Sharpsburg, PA), but here loaded in a B&O gondolas 261589, a 70-ton, 52-ft, 6-in. gondola with drop ends and steel floor.

Although it isn’t noted here, loads of scrap often carry the additional notation, RMPO, which means Remelting Purposes Only. That PRR bill mentioned above does have such a notation.

I continue to find prototype waybills interesting and informative, and of the many, many millions issued over the years, I wish we had more to look at!

Tony Thompson 

Prototype Rails 2026

This year’s Prototype Rails meeting in Cocoa Beach, Florida took place last week, and as usual, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and informative meeting. Long organized and managed by the late Mike Brock, Marty Megregian now runs the meeting, and does so very well. Jeff Aley continues to recruit and supervise the clinic presentations, and the variety and quality are high, year after year. This year’s attendance was about 210, as high as it’s been since the pandemic.  

I gave a talk to fit with one of Aley’s themes this year, operation. I tried to illustrate how one can learn about and reproduce prototype operating procedures, using the railroad I model, Southern Pacific, as an example. (For the handout, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/01/handout-for-modeling-sp-operations.html ). As always, there were lots of other really interesting talks. I just chose one to highlight, Rich Remiarz’s talk in his ongoing series about Great Northern freight cars. 

The usual arrangement of the hotel ballroom hosted not only an extensive vendor area, but also the usual model displays brought by attendees. It’s always enjoyable to browse new and continuing products, and I for one certainly examine the displayed models closely. 

In the model table area, there were several really excellent displays. Al Brown brought a complete set of Shake 'n' Take models (though missing, I think, the Kahn’s reefer). I always enjoy seeing good applications of the freight car graffiti of more recent times., such as the one below. This didn’t have a name card right next to it, but Butch Eyler’s models were nearby, so maybe it was his. But whoever brought the model, I liked it.

As he often does, Marty Megregian brought some O scale steam locomotives to exhibit. The one I found most remarkable was a distinctive and (I think) unique Southern engine, an 0-8-0 decorated for wartime. 

A model that I really enjoyed seeing was one that had been built by the late Stan Rydarowicz, kitbashed from a Funaro & Camerlengo end-door Wabash automobile car.  The 17 prototype cars were used to ship long aluminum pipe and extrusions from Alcoa’s large production plant at Lafayette, Indiana, to customers, including aircraft manufacturers, using only the end door (side doors were removed). The paint scheme was unique to these cars.

And I can’t resist closing with a fine sunset we witnessed one evening as we left our dinner restaurant, complete with iconic palm trees.

 We had lovely warm weather this year (certainly not a given in January). Florida can be really delightful in some Januaries, and this was one.

Tony Thompson 

My brass foundry in Ballard

From time to time, I post short descriptions of the industries on my layout, what they do, and how they form part of operating sequences. Today my subject is the Union Brass foundry in my layout town of Ballard. As a physical metallurgist before retirement, and who did thesis research on copper and brass, this is an industry I understand.

The building itself is built without much change from a Classic Miniatures kit, including the signage on the building front. But because the building front is oriented perpendicular to the layout edge and thus a little hard to read, I added the larger sign over the loading dock. This dock, by the way, was enlarged from the rather narrow one in the original kit. The model of the building represents a wood false front made to look like stone, something common in the century preceding the one I model. 

From the other side, you can see the furnace room addition. Also evident below is the near proximity on the right of the Jupiter Pump & Compressor facility. The idea here is that the brass foundry came into existence to supply brass plumbing parts for Jupiter.  

Part of what’s interesting about this building is the loads that are shipped in and out of it. Inbound may be bulk copper (and the foundry makes up the brass composition by adding zinc) or brass bar stock. Plumbing fixtures are shipped out, not only to Jupiter but to customers elsewhere. Sample waybills are shown below.

At left you see an inbound load of copper bar, shipped from Cananea in Mexico. As often happened at the Southern Pacific’s port of entry at Nogales, Arizona, Spanish language waybills were replaced by SP ones and the previous SP de Mexico waybill number shown (you can click to enlarge). The bill also shows that the car cleared customs at Nogales. At right is an outbound shipment bill, with a Transcontinental Freight Bureau weight agreement stamp on it.

Many loads arrive and depart in ordinary box cars, but an option is an occasional foreign box car, and I mean lierally foreign, from Mexico. The waybill shown above for an ASX car is the result of a custom decorated model years ago by Bev-Bel for a car owned by American Smelting & Refining (Asarco) in Mexico, and accordingly with dimensional and other data in metric as well as English units. 

I shouldn’t leave the impression that raw materials for this foundry come only from Mexico; the heart of the copper and brass businss in the 1950s, which I model, was in Connecticut, and this foundry more commonly receives loads from Bridgeport Brass (in Bridgeport) or Chase Brass & Copper (in Waterbury). 

This industry is different from others on the layout, in part because though it is a small structure, it also produces small parts in a simple casting process, and thus can realistically output carloads of product. So often on layouts (including my own) our models of industries are far too small to do the work we imagine them doing. This one is at least a little better in that regard.

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