The AAR Mechanical Designations

Designations of freight cars to describe their suitability for different cargoes have a long history. The American Railway Association (ARA), predecessor of the Association of American Railroads (AAR) was printing them in the back of Official Railway Equipment Registers (ORER) at least as early as March 1923 (the oldest ORER issue I have), and they continued to be so printed at least as late as July 1970 (the newest ORER I have).

What did these listings contain? They comprise descriptions of different freight car characteristics, and two-letter or three-letter designation codes for each. Some of these are so familiar as to require no explanation, such as “XM” for ordinary box cars. Others, such as RSM, may draw a blank. That designation happens to describe a meat reefer; here is the listing for RSM, and the more general ice reefer designation, RS.

An example of such an RSM car is shown below, modeled by upgrading the ancient Varney/LifeLike plastic reefer, as I described in a series of posts (see for example this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/modeling-meat-reefers-part-5.html ).

Modelers of earlier eras tend to know these codes; but modelers more recently in the hobby, or those modeling more recent eras, often give you a blank look if you refer to them. I thought it might be useful to make them available. More than a dozen years ago, I posted an introduction to this subject (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/09/aar-car-types.html ) and now am going further by making the entire listing available.

I have scanned these definitions from the back of the January 1953 ORER, made up a five-page PDF, and posted it in Google Docs for anyone to access.  You can find it at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XbupnOIXC9RVpFvPAyf-xwDX8Saz9yot/view?usp=drive_link .

A complication to keep in mind when looking at the designations is that one needs to read even the footnotes in the designation pages. An example is the flat car listing, shown below: see Note 1 at the bottom.

It is only a small note at the base of the entry, but it is essentially the new designation for bulkhead flat cars, FMS, that is described. This designation remained as a footnote for years, even as bulkhead flat cars became commonplace on mainline railroads. 

This is of interest to me because the Southern Pacific began building such cars in its own shops as early as 1949, and the SP Historical & Technical Society issued parts to add bulkheads to the accurate Red Caboose SP Class F-70-7 flat car. Subsequently Red Caboose issued ready-to-run models of these cars, using the Society bulkheads. The photo below by the late Paul Lyons illustrates one of these models.

I make use of these designations in operating my layout. They are included on waybills, as shown below, to help operators recognize cars and spot them at industries correctly when necessary, though  the AAR’s prototype waybill form did not include the AAR designations.

 So to me, the AAR designations or codes are cool, informative, prototypical, and useful. I enjoy including them in layout operations.

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 

Waybills, Part 131: model bill production

A recent inquiry made me realize that my ongoing method of producing waybills has never really been presented in its current form, though one could infer it from earlier published articles as well as posts in this blog. In the description below, Rather than cite previous relevant writings, I’ll present as full an account as I can.

First of all, the waybill format I adopted more than 15 years ago, closely adapted from the AAR standard waybill form, cut down for model use. It is a 2.5 x 3.5-inch format, chosen to fit into a baseball-card-collector clear plastic sleeve. The sleeves are evidently produced in large volume, and are quite cheap from on-line vendors, barely a penny each. A blank waybill looks like this: 

These blank waybills are Photoshop tiffs, and are filled out with the type tool in that application. I have made them in 1200-dpi bitmap mode for sharpness. Then to print them, I have created an InDesign template (though any layout app would work) for 8.5 x 11-inch paper, with guidelines for placing waybill images on the page (the light vertical and horizontal lines), and heavier cutting guides (only at top). At top center there is also a place to note the date printed.

 

When all nine cells on the template are filled with waybill images, and the light guide lines removed, a page ready to print looks like this. Cutting guides at top remain. These happen to be waybills for perishables, so will use the AAR-recommended pink stock. I noted this along with the printing date at the top.

When these are printed, I cut them with a rolling paper cutter (mine is an old Rodahle 51200) for clean cuts and safe handling. Each will then be paired with its appropriate Empty Car Bill (yellow, as were many prototype ones) in the plastic sleeve. I got the idea of the sleeves from the late Bill Neale’s article in the February2009 Model Railroader. 

This description should update what has been presented in past years, and clarify my process. If any part of it isn’t clear, please feel free to ask further.

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 

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 

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 

Waybills, Part 128: more weight stamps

I  have written before about weight agreements, but not recently, so here is a summary. Railroad cargoes were mostly billed by weight (there was also a carload category, covering, for example, a full hopper of coal). But the considerable majority of weight-billed loads were not weighed on a scale. Instead, weight agreements were in force. 

For example, a shipper of floor wax might know that a case of wax bottles weighed 48 pounds. Then the number of cases in a load could simply be counted and multiplied by 48 to get total weight. This was all certified by a regional Weighing and Inspection Bureau or WIB.

North America was divided up into regions, under the authority of Freight Associations or groups of associations. The map below shows the associations, some of which supervised a single WIB, but in other areas, several associations might cooperate to supervise one WIB. I have previously discussed the WIB territories (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/05/waybillls-part-85-more-on-weight.html ).

Superimposed on the map below in green is a single WIB, the Western WIB, the territory of which matched that of the Western Trunk Line Committee (freight association). The map is a 1925 version, taken from page 28 of a book of that date (Grover G. Huebner, The Fundamentals of Traffic, Traffic Service Corp, Chicago, 1925). In addition to several complete states, included in the green area are the eastern third of Colorado, the upper third of Illinois, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

When a shipment weight was certified as part of a weight agreement, the shipper could stamp the waybill with the appropriate WIB stamp, including their agreement number, or oftentimes would simply type the WIB initials and agreement number of their waybill. This avoided a trip to the scale.

Just the other day, my friend Bill Jolitz sent me a WIB stamp he found on eBay, stating that he “knew with whom it belonged.” Thank you, Bill! The stamp is shown below, a typical design for these large stamps, about 3 inches tall.You can see it was made in Chicago.

As is common on rubber stamps, the legend of the stamp is placed on the top of the stamp; in this case, the stamp has a round opening in the center, convenient for the handle.  

Below I show the stamp image, about 1.5 inches square, flipped in Photoshop so you can read it (naturally the stamp is made in reverse, so it will stamp reading correctly). This stamp is unusual in that it does not have an agreement number in the center; I assume it could be written in, and an authorized person then initial it. 

Using a fresh ink pad, here is the image as it stamps now (showing some wear, which is great for our purposes). Note the generous center space for an agreement number.

If one used large enough waybill forms for one’s layout, this stamp could be used on them as-is. But my waybills are quite a lot smaller. I take a scan of the stamp image, remove the background so it is transparent, and set it to a size that will look all right on my small waybills, usually 3/4 inch diameter. (This takes a couple of minutes in Photoshop.) Then it’s easily added to waybills. Here’s an example, pending initialing the stamp and adding other scribbles.

This was a kind gesture of Bill’s, to send me this stamp, and I will be using it on future waybills.

Tony Thompson 

Handout for “The Role of the Agent”

This is the on-line handout for a clinic entitled “The Role of the Agent.” The purpose is to provide documentation of the various published items shown in the talk, along with links to a number of blog posts which cover some points in the talk in much more detail. They are grouped below by topic area. 

My point in the clinic was to indicate that many of us enjoy trying to operate model railroads in a prototypical manner, as in the photo below (Seth Neumann at left, and Steve Van Meter, switching at Ballard on my layout). I attempted to indicate how we can go about such imitation of the prototype, choosing the specific railroad that I model, the Southern Pacific.

Print Publications

Armstrong, John H., The Railroad – What It Is, What It Does (Chapter 8, Railroad Operations), Simmons-Boardman Publishing, Omaha, 1982. [there are several subsequent editions with updates; the original is closest in time to the era I model] 

Benezra, Steve, and Phil Monat, editors, A Compendium of Model Railroad Operations, Operations Special Interest Group, Downington, PA, 2017.

Coughlin, E.W., Freight Car Distribution and Handling in the United States, Car Service Division, Association of American Railroads, Washington, 1956.

Grant, H. Roger, The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2022. 

Koester, Tony, “In search of the perfect waybill,” Model Railroader, February 2012, p. 82.

Thompson, Anthony, “Prototypical waybills for car card operation,” Railroad Model Craftsman, December 2009, pp. 71–77.  

Thompson, Tony, “Getting Real: A More Prototypical Waybill for Model Railroads,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, pp. 31–46, May 2012. 

Thompson, Tony, ”Getting Real: Operating with Prototypical Waybills,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, January 2018.  

Thompson, Tony, “Modeling Traffic on a Layout,” Model Railroad Hobbyist, September 2021.  

SP Circular 39-1, “Instructions to Station Agents”

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 2,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/11/sps-instruction-to-station-agents-part-2.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 3,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 4,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part_10.html

Thompson, Tony, “SP’s Instructions to Station Agents, Part 5,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/12/sps-instructions-to-station-agents-part_25.html

Learning from Circular 39-1

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 88: Temporary Waybills,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/08/waybills-part-88-temporary-waybills.html

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 90: SP Form 704,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/09/waybills-part-90-sp-form-704.html

Bill Boxes

Thompson, Tony, “Bill Box,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/03/bill-box.html 

Thompson, Tony, “Modeling Bill Boxes,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/05/model-bill-boxes.html 

Salamon, Dave, N-Scale Magazine, issue for September-October 2017. 

Other Points

Thompson, Tony, “Southern Pacific’s Circular 4,” https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/12/southern-pacifics-circular-4.html  

Thompson, Tony, “Waybills, Part 39: SP Typography,”  https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/waybills-part-39-sp-typography.html

With the help of these and many other publications out there, we can hope to capture the spirit of moments like the one below, with the C&NW agent (right) at Brookings, South Dakota, exchanging a roll of waybills with the conductor on the caboose in a light snow (H.R. Grant collection, 1940).  

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 

Freight cars for granddaughter operating

I have written several times about my granddaughter carrying out operating sessions on my layout, ranging from simply being the engineer and receiving directions, to looking at waybills and choosing switching sequences.(See for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/02/more-granddaughter-operating.html ; and to see others, you can use “granddaughter” as the search term in the search box at right.

I usually act as conductor, but try to give her as much responsibility as she wants. This does vary from session to session, but she always is very careful with the locomotive and throttle, and seems to entirely enjoy the activity. Here’s a photo at Ballard from a session in 2021, when she was 9. 

One feature I’ve mentioned but not really gone into is the freight cars that are hers. This all started one Christmas when the entire Thompson clan had gathered at my son Sylvan’s house in Portland, and the granddaughter and I went to the hobby shop, Whistle Stop Trains. She was allowed to pick out whatever Accurail car kit she wanted. Unfortunately, this was in isolation from my layout, and understandably her knowledge of eras and such was quite limited, so she chose the car with the color she liked best.

We did build the car together in the following days, but when it arrived on the layout at our next operating session, she realized it did not fit in. We discussed that, and looked at rolling stock, and then she didn’t want that car to be on the layout.

But on later holiday visits to that same hobby shop, she again chose car kits for herself, but now each time she remembered the era issue. If in doubt, she asked for advice. For her second car, she chose an Accurail  Santa Fe box car, and again we built it together. Here’s that car being switched at Shumala on the layout. 

She seemed to like having one of her cars in the session whenever we operated, so we chose and built a third Accurail car,  This time it was a reefer, and a choice that fit with her interest in and enjoyment of all the reefer switching on my layout. It’s about to be spotted in Ballard.

Of course these cars all have waybills. I’ll just show one for each of the cars we actually use  in sessions.

I always enjoy guiding her in operating on the layout, and she still seems to enjoy doing it. She’s a teenager now, though, so this may all go away, but it’s certainly been fun for both of us over the years.

Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 126: More routing books

Not long ago I posted a discussion about Routing Guides, as they were called, an official document (in multiple volumes) that every railroad maintained, back in the day. That discussion happened to center on one such book I had, A Nickel Plate guide of 1945. (To see that discussion, go to this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/11/waybills-part-125-routing.html .) In the present post, I want to go further.

I’ll begin with the Nickel Plate 1951 guide, issued on May 15 of that year. Its cover is shown below. As before, it is an 8.5 x 11-inch volume, this tine of 480 pages, 1-1/8-inches thick. The 1945 guide shown previously was 1008 pages and was 1-3/4 inches thick.  

What changed to make the size so much smaller? It still covers routes from the same six states as before, and to the same 11 destination states (including the District of Columbia) as before. Most of the interior pages look very much like the previous volume, so there is not an evident reduction in numbers of approved routes. Possibly some routes were moved to a different guide, as this one’s full title is Eastbound Routing Guide No. 1. We know there were several others. 

In some ways a more interesting example of such a guide is one for a smaller railroad, the Western Maryland. This happens to be West-Bound Routing Guide No. 10. Also an 8.5 x 11-inch volume, it comprises only 269 pages, only 9/16-inch thick.  

It includes routing from origins on not only the WM, but also the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad, via several roads, including the Pittsburgh & West Virginia. Basically, it is westbound routing to mid-America, specifically the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Oho, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin. 

This particular routing guide  differs in some ways from what I’ve shown for the Nickel Plate example. First, it contains multiple pages of “exceptions” to existing tariffs, nearly all on cement and related products. Below is page 19, one of several pages of such material. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

 The second exception is that stations are listed alphabetically in addition to numerically (the NKP Guide had them only by number). Below is an example of this kind of listing, from page 150 in the Guide. (My apologies for not getting the book quite flat for scanning.) 

The approved routes are listed by number, as was the case in the previous NKP guide, and I show a single example from this Western Maryland guide to illustrate. The lower portion of page 307 lists again some exceptions for Grain and Grain Products.

These kinds of routing guides were superseded from time to time, so that older ones were often discarded after a holding period. I am delighted to have the ones I’ve been able to use as illustrations, and I hope they cast some light on the prototype’s process of identifying approved routes.

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