Still more route cards, Part 37

This post contains a number of additional route card from the Michael Litant collection, as has been the case for a number of previous posts on the topic. Michael retrieved these in mid- to late 1960s from freight cars, carefully chosen, he mentioned, to not be current in the location where they were, thereby not interfering in freight operations.

I’ll start with a good example of a card that happens not to be filled out. Probably this is because all that was needed was the code, PB-4, perhaps a outgoing train, or a yard track, or even a destination in a switching district. All these kinds of codes are known from other examples, but here even the issuing railroad is not identified. This car is 4 x 4 inches in size, and still holds a staple.

My second example, is an unusual card in this collection: it is a shipper’s card (provided by UP), presumably attached to the car so the railroad’s pickup crew will know what the shipper wants done with the car. Since the same information would be on the waybill, this card is a kind of insurance. The load is plastic bags for fertilizer, being shipped from the Federal Chemical Co. of Omaha, Nebr., destined to the Farmers Elevator Co. in Bode, Iowa via Rock Island. The car is NKP 18451, a 40-ft. steel box car with a 6-foot door. The card is 4 x 4 inches.

Next is another example a card whose issuing railroad is not identified. For use at the yard at Coquitlam, British Columbia, it allows grading of the car by interior integrity and cleanliness. Faintly one can see that Grade C has been circled. The card is 3 x 3.5 inches.

My fourth example is an L&N card which, like many L&N route cards, is printed in green. Though the station isn’t identified, the loaded car is Erie-Lackawanna 70377, a 40-foot steel box car with a 6-foot door. I don’t know the meaning of the district number HR 113. It is 3 x 4 inches. 

A further instance is a Missouri Pacific card, issued at North Little Rock, directing a car to the Terminal Railroad Association in St. Louis for interchange to the New York Central.  The car appears to be N&W 38532, though the number might be incomplete; if complete, it was a 70-ton steel hopper. The card was 3 x 5 inches.

Another interesting example is this card from Atlantic Coast Line, at Augusta, Georgia.  It carries the code PP and is 3.5 inches square. The car number appears to be D&H 17604, and if so, was a 40-ft. steel box car with a 6-ft. door.

Finally, one of my all-time favorite cards, because it shows an employee doing what he needed to do. It is a plain card (nothing on the back either), 3.5 inches square. The car number shown is AT (presumably ATSF, a common abbreviation) 151490, a 50-foot single-sheathed box car having an 8-foot door, and with a cargo of wool.  

As I have said many times, these cards, artifacts of bygone railroading, remain endlessly interesting to me. I have tried to use them and the information on them to learn more about freight car operations.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 132: warehouses

A month or so ago, I posted the second of two blog essays on switching layouts (the most recent was called “Pratt Island,” and it is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/07/pratt-island.html ). My subject today is a question I received by email, asking about an aspect of that post. 

(I might also mention a preceding article of the same kind, making some of the same points; it’s at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/03/designing-switching-layout.html .) 

What the question was about was my mention in both posts about the usefulness of warehouses as industries. Now of course any sizeable industry may include a warehouse among its buildings, for shipping, receiving or both. But the question wasn’t about that. It was about businesses solely working as warehouses. 

There was a time when such businesses were widespread.  Here’s a single example, the Harborside Warehouse in New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. The image is from the back cover of the 1953 Official Guide.  You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

The ad notes that they provide rail-water connections, including lighters to ships, to other railroad piers, and to Manhattan, as well as direct rail service from the Pennsylvania. They can offer storage, transshipment and distribution. So freight sent here might be en route to Manhattan, destined to a ship for overseas destinations, or held for later movement onward. 

Harborside does not seem to have provided drayage also, but that was a common component of warehouse businesses, thus offering pickup and delivery. Then the business name might include “van and storage,” or “transfer and storage,” or sometimes “storage and trucking.” 

For examples, one can consult any railroad “Shippers Guide.” A valuable source is Rails Unlimited, who offer, for example, a very nice Chicago & North Western Shippers’ Guide (cover shown below). You can see a write-up about it (and the other 25 Guides available) at: https://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html . 

In this guide, for example, we can look under warehouses. Here is part of page 587, including the Twin Cities. Any of these warehouse names could become destinations on a waybill. 

Choosing one of these warehouses, a waybill like that below might be created for my layout: 

For an even bigger city, we might consider Chicago. One very comprehensive Shippers Guide that includes Chicago is that for the B&O (also available from Rails Unlimited), as I’ve described before (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/01/another-excellent-shippers-guide.html ). Here is the beginning of the B&O warehouse listing: 

One could readily repeat the process just described for the shipment to St. Paul, using any of these names. The versatility of a storage and transfer destination is obvious, and I intend to expand my use of these as destinations. Modelers of big cities can use warehouses as origins, too.

Tony Thompson 

Layout instructions and all that

What do I mean by “layout instructions?” I mean the kind of information provided by a layout owner to prospective visitors or operators of the layout. Over the years, I have received or seen a great many of these, and wanted to offer a few comments. 

Now of course  a brief layout description, often identifying the area modeled, the era modeled, and the railroad(s) modeled, can be most informative for a visitor. The writer may indulge in considerable detail about these choices, or simply state them. Sometimes these are offered in advance of visits, and often they are available as hand-outs during layout visits. My own version of this kind of hand-out has been the subject of a blog post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-layout-description.html .)

But by the term “instructions,” I mean the kind of document intended for visiting operators.  I have written comments on this before: see https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/what-makes-good-layout-description.html . Over the years, I have received everything from half-page summaries to 18- or 20-page documents. An 18-pager is shown below, upside down to not reveal the perpetrator.

What should be in a document like this, however large or small?

I think either a track plan, or a schematic of how the layout works, is very helpful. It certainly can be valuable to study a track plan in advance, but a schematic of the track plan is in some ways better, because it shows you how the layout will work. That isn’t always obvious in a track plan.

Some kind of description of the operating scheme ought to be provided, though it doesn’t have to be terribly detailed if you are expecting experienced visitors. Pages and pages of procedures and copies of multiple forms that are used aren’t essential. I have occasionally gone back after a session on a layout which provided all that paperwork in advance, and found I could understand it far better in retrospect, where in advance it was bewildering. 

It can also be useful to summarize what the layout jobs comprise. I’m sure many experienced readers will recall being at a layout, and the host says, “Who wants the Beanfield Local?” and a bunch of hands go up — but not yours, because you never heard of it before. Or no hands go up, so you figure it’s not a great job, and you don’t volunteer either. Saying that it’s a long job, or a short job; involves lots of switching off the main line, or is right on the main and you have to keep out of the way of lots of trains; is entirely tank cars, or cement cars, or whatever; or it’s a yard job switching industries in town — you get the idea. 

Is there anything that I think ought not to be in such instructions? Many such documents include remarks about the builder’s background, or about the layout’s history (I’m guilty of this, too). But though such information is interesting, it doesn’t contribute to understanding the operating challenges that will be encountered. My suggestion is to keep this kind of content brief.

Of course what we layout owners hope will happen, and often enough does not happen, is the visitor carefully reading the instructions he’s been given. But here’s photo of John Goodrich doing just that with the instructions for a train, at Dave Loveless’s layout (Loveless photo).

I should be quick to state that I don’t have the perfect solution to these problems, as I have sometimes learned when a new operator comes to one of my sessions and tells me that they couldn’t figure out part of my description. But I think it’s useful to keep trying to do better.Your next visitors will appreciate it.

Tony Thompson

My state highway facility

Among the many industries in my layout town of Ballard is a facility of the California Division of Highways, predecessor of today’s CalTrans. I chose this regional facility in part to be able to receive cement cargoes in covered hoppers. In the year I model, 1953, covered hoppers were almost entirely used for bulk cement. Many of their cargoes, familiar in later years, such as dry chemicals, grain, animal feed, and so forth, were mostly in the future in 1953. 

The cement loads are appropriate because in 1953, the Division of Highways continued to build and maintain many secondary roads and bridges in the state. The advent of freeways after 1940, usually enormous projects, had made contractors essential in major works, but local roads and highways were still the responsibility of the Division of Highways. Thus inbound cargoes of both cement and asphalt are appropriate, along with all kinds of supplies like fence and sign posts, rebar, bridge girders, lumber for concrete forms, and so on. 

I built the structure from a Rix Pikestuff kit (intended as an auto repair garage), a simple styrene kit that went together easily. It represents a cinder-block building with steel-framed windows. As I built it, it has a 3.5 x 7-inch footprint. I went online and researched the geographic districts of the Division of Highways in 1953, and found that the Central Coast area I model was in District 5.

As stated above, my primary motivation for including this industry was inbound cement loads. So the classic view you would have of this industry in most of my operating sessions is as below. That’s Nipomo Street at left.

In addition to the cement loads and other highway materials mentioned above, occasionally some work equipment may arrive. In the photo below, it’s a road grader. 

In creating waybills for this destination, I knew that cement, a heavy and not particularly expensive commodity, ordinarily does not travel far from  origin. It is easy online to research what cement plants existed in California in 1953, and I show a partial list below. I’ve omitted a few, such as the Calaveras Cement plant at San Andreas, on SP’s Kentucky House branch.

One feature of the list above is that one of the plants, Southwestern Portland Cement, was located on the Santa Fe. This provides a reason for inbound Santa Fe freight cars on my layout. Given the often-fierce rivalry between SP and Santa Fe, empty Santa Fe cars would effectively never be loaded on the SP, but of course inbound loads could well travel in them.

For waybills, there is nothing exotic about the ones for this industry. I show an example below. And in addition to the occasional Santa Fe covered hopper with such loads, I can also use T&NO, SSW, and UP cars, all of which would be available in California for loading at the plants above. 

This industry, like a number that are on my layout, was chose specifically for the loads it would receive, and has worked well in that capacity.

Tony Thompson 

My article in the new Layout Design Journal

Those among the readers of this blog who belong to the Layout Design SIG (Special Interest Group) of NMRA will be familiar with the organization’s publication, the Layout Design Journal or LDJ (and its predecessor, Layout Design News). The newest issue of LDJ, no. 75, has just been issued, dated Second Quarter 2026.

The lead article in this issue is about my layout and its history. This had its beginning some years ago, when long-time LDJ editor Byron Henderson asked me if a track plan had ever been published for my layout, or any layout article. I replied that no track plan existed, and only part of the layout had been described in Railroad Model Craftsman in June 1990. Byron replied, “Write an article for LDJ and we’ll do a track plan — if you’ll commit to giving us your first layout article.” Sounded good to me,, so I said “Deal.” 

Well, as I said, that was some years ago. But finally I got to sketching out what I wanted to say, and ran a first draft past Byron to see if it it was what he wanted. His response was interesting: he thought it might be a better article for LDJ if I recounted my original goals for the layout I had built in Pittsburgh in the 1980s, and how and how why I changed it after moving to Berkeley in 1994. Lessons learned, in other words. So that’s how I wrote it.

Here is the cover of Issue 75,  The magazine is 8.5 x 11 inches and contains 40 pages. The top photo and drawing on the cover are from my article, designated (by Byron) as “A Layout Tale in Two Parts.” 

In the article itself, there are several drawings of what the Pittsburgh layout was like, including a sketch version of my exceptional amount of staging. Byron selected the photos for the most part, from past blog posts and other sources, and wrote all the captions. So in some ways, he should be recognized as almost a co-author in bringing this to completion.

Below is page 1 of my article. Note that now the full article title is “Compact Calif. Central Coast — Again,” with a sub-title that is sort of the name on the cover. No problem, it’s all clear. And note also the article’s division into sections, with Byron’s section titles. For the most part, I think they are excellent additions to the piece, so I’m not complaining. 

Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of the magazine issue can purchase it on their website, which is located at: www.ldsig.org/publications . 

I like what resulted from this set of interactions, and it provides a picture of my layout history more clear than my usual recollections, because I re-examined my thoughts and decisions comparing the old with the new layout, and sure enough, there definitely were lessons learned.

Now it remains to provide a broad description of the layout as it now is, including its range and types of industries, and how it is operated. I am starting work on that project now.

Tony Thompson  

Operating sessions no. 111, 112

This past weekend I hosted two operating sessions, with the sequence numbers you see in the title today. As I always do, I rotated most of freight cars from the previous session off the layout, and rotated the same approximate number of different cars onto the layout. This always leads to differences in industries switched and thus in the character of the jobs on the layout.

I also renovated the scenery in the area of my mainline tunnel, Tunnel 12, trying to make the rockfall rubble at the foot of the rock face more realistic, along with some ground cover repair, as is visible below. This section house near the tunnel entrance was a common arrangement on Southern Pacific, probably to facilitate maintenance of the tunnel itself. 

We began on Saturday, with a crew of four consisting of Jim Radkey, Clif Linton, Tom Comyns, and Ed Slintak, all of whom had operated here before and thus had a pretty good idea of how the layout works. Below you see Ed (at left) and Clif working at Ballard; Clif was the conductor here. 

Later in the session, after crews had switched sides, Tom (at left below) and Jim were switching at Ballard. If I remember correctly, Tim was conducting at this point.

The following day, the crew comprised Seth Neumann, Richard Brennan, Lisa Gorrell, and her friend, Laura McKeenan.  Below is a photo of the whole group at Ballard, with, from left, Laura, Richard, Lisa and Seth.

Seth and Lisa began at Ballard, with Seth conducting; Lisa was the engineer.

Laura is somewhat new to operation, so the complexity in this switching layout was a challenge. Notably, after a shift at Shumala, she moved to Ballard, and she did very well in her stint as conductor, which you see her doing here with Richard (left) as engineer.

It was an interesting session, with its own challenges and problems. As so often happens, several of the challenges kept their heads down during my testing and dry run, choosing instead to appear only at the operating session. Fighting down an attack of “Host Flaw Hysteria” (for background: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/07/pressure-what-pressure.html ), I enjoyed seeing the layout being operated as I intended it to be.

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 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

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 

Waybills, Part 130: My waybill process

At the recent ProRail operating event, there were as usual many fascinating discussions among attendees, not only during sessions, but also in the hotel at breakfast, or even in the bar in the evening. One of these involved several of us comparing our own and others’ waybill processes in connection with operating sessions. (For comments on the ProRail event, see my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/04/prorail-2026.html .)

I was reminded in one of these conversations to repeat something that happened a few years ago at the annual Bay Area LDSIG / OpSIG meeting (Layout Design and Operations SIGs); I’ve described these meetings more fully elsewhere: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-bay-area-layout-design-and.html .

One of the people in the audience for my talk at that meeting, which was about prototypical waybills, including a description of the system I use on my layout, asked an interesting question. He asked, “How many waybills do you have to make for each operating session?” I’ve mentioned this question (and my answer) previously, in a blog post (you can find it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/waybills-part-114-managing-fleet.html ).

But for convenience, I’ll repeat what I answered. I replied, “I think you’re actually asking two questions. First, probably what you meant, would be ‘How many new waybills do I have to make?’ but implied is a second question, ‘How many do I actually make?’ and I’ll reply to both.”

The answer to the first question was, “Zero,” because I have quite extensive files of existing waybills, certainly at least one for every car in my fleet (almost 500 cars). [I have shown my waybill file system several times, including this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/waybills-15-managing-bills.html .] Here’s the current file box (a commercial product for baseball card collectors), with bills filed by industtry:

The second question is, in some ways, more interesting. The answer is, “Usually a couple dozen waybills,” for several reasons. First, I do find typos occasionally in older waybills, or cases where I made a factual mistake of one kind or another. These are readily corrected from the original Photoshop tiff. 

Second, nearly all freight cars in my fleet have at most four, maybe five waybills in existence; but there are up to 20 possible destinations inbound on the layout, and an enormous number of possible destinations outbound. Additional destinations can readily be added to suit conditions.

Let me mention in passing that I feel strongly about replacing the widely-used “four-cycle” waybills that are commonly encountered; all too often one may be doing switching work and find something like this (drawn from an actual layout, which I won’t name): 

I have commented elsewhere about how my system works (among many examples is this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/waybills-28-waybill-cycles.html ), so won’t go into it here, except to observe that from the original steps in development in 2010, up till now, I have found the new system perfectly flexible and workable in use, to me attractively prototypical in appearance and function, and easy to create, modify, or correct. There do now exist hundreds of waybills in this system, but rarely have I made more than a dozen at a time, so it has never been onerous to maintain or add to the files.

So in a scene like the one below on my layout, with Consolidation SP 2829 switching a nearly empty ballast hopper across Nipomo Street in the town of Ballard, I know that every movement like this is directed by and follows prototype-looking paperwork, and that was exactly what I wanted to accomplish with my waybill system.

I’ve mentioned many times in this blog, and in numerous clinic presentations, that it isn’t my specific waybill design that is important. What’s actually important is the idea of replicating the prototype process and appearance. It can be done in many ways. My waybills are just one of them.

Tony Thompson 

Shipping oranges on my layout

Oranges are probably the canonical California fruit, and although the area I model, the Central Coast between San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria, was not prime orange country, I do know that navel oranges were indeed grown on the Nipomo Mesa, adjoining my fictitious branch line to Santa Rosalia. So that is a crop I can include.  

Oranges in California come in two distinct varieties, the navel and Valencia varieties, and they have different seasons. Below is the crop table for fruit in the area I model, called Guadalupe–Santa Maria. It’s taken from a much larger table that covers the entire Southern Pacific, on pages 442-447 in Pacific Fruit Express (2nd Edition), Signature Press, 2000.

What is shown above for oranges is the navel variety, peak harvest December to March, with lesser harvesting in November and April. By contrast, Valencias in California are harvested from March to October, with peak season  in May to August. This nicely complements the navel season, though the area I model was not Valencia territory.

I have chosen to identify just one of the five packing houses on my layout with orange shipment. It was common for packing houses to specialize in this way. As I have previously described (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/08/produce-shipping-boxes-part-2.html ), I created orange box labels for that packing house, Phelan & Taylor, by modifying a prototype orange box label (used in the real world by a Los Angeles distributor): 

At the packing house, I show field boxes of oranges. Field boxes were large containers used in the orchard during harvest, much larger than the familiar orange crate that was shipped to market. I received these 3D-printed boxes from Robert Bowdidge, and painted the contents in different colors for different fruit and vegetables, orange of course for oranges but also for apricots.  

Then of course waybills are needed. I use a number of destinations, mostly on the East Coast, though Midwestern destinations also appear. Here is an example, including the well-known “capacity” of a standard PFE ice car interior, 462 crates: 

The car that is listed in this waybill, PFE 9071, is part of PFE’s Class R-40-26, and it’s shown below at the East Shumala packing house of Phelan & Taylor for loading. 

The seasonality of orange harvest fits perfectly into my general operating approach, that we treat whatever day we are operating as that day in 1953. So if we were operating on my layout today, May 13, the harvests and other seasonal features will be those of May 13, 1953. Orange seasons fit perfectly into that process. 

Tony Thompson