Modeling SP tank cars

Back in 2002, I published a short article in the Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society magazine, Trainline (issue 71, Spring 2002), on the method I use to model SP tank cars in HO scale. The recent release of a decal set for such tank cars (see: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/05/sp-tank-car-decals.html), combined with some changes in modeling practice since 2002, suggest that an updated and improved version of that article could be useful. This post is that update.

     A noteworthy part of Southern Pacific's freight car fleet until the 1970s was the 12,500-gallon tank cars. The distinctive size of these cars, large among American tank cars prior to the 1950s, made up 98 percent of SP tank cars in the early 1950s. In this particular case, SP modelers in HO scale are lucky, because the Athearn tank car is clearly modeled from an SP prototype. With simple modifications, this model can be very accurate.
     Several earlier classes of the same gallon capacity had tank sheets with seams running around the circumference of the tank, but in 1928 General American built SP’s Class O-50-12 class cars (O for oil car, 50 for 50 tons capacity, 12 for twelfth class), numbers 58400–58574. These cars were the first with longitudinal tank seams, and this is what the Athearn model has. A very similar class, O-50-13, was built by General American in 1942, numbers 58575–58774. A builder photo of the left side of one of the -13 class at the General American plant is below.

     There are several minor discrepancies between the SP car and the Athearn model. The most evident is the height of the dome. Also evident are different hand brake equipment and safety valve arrangement. All are easily changed. Other details, such as grab irons and underbody parts, can also be improved. The subtle change, not evident in every photo, relates to dome walkways. The SP cars only had walkways on one side, the left side as viewed from the B or brake end of the car (as shown in the photo above). This change is also easily made to the Athearn model.
     The various improvements can be made on a painted and lettered car, although fresh paint and lettering may be easier (and the stock Athearn lettering is not accurate). The dome is a good place to start. The Athearn dome, about 10 scale inches from the top of the tank to the top of the cylindrical part of the dome, should be about 21 inches. Also, there should be two safety valves, not the three that are on the Athearn dome, and they should be paired behind the manway hinge, not spaced evenly around the circumference of the dome.
     It appears that the single-dome Athearn tank car was derived from the triple-dome kit. The giveaway is the pairs of rivet rows around the body on either side of the dome, which represent the location of tank dividers in a triple-compartment car, but which should not be present on a single-compartment car with one dome. The low dome height and single safety valve per dome of Athearn’s triple-dome cars would be correct for such cars (if the Athearn triple-dome car had a prototype), but a higher dome and two valves are needed for the single-dome car. The triple-compartment origins of the model also show in the outlets. There should only be one, but an Athearn underframe has three.
      Increasing the dome height is surprisingly easy. This method, shown in a sketch below, was developed from the ideas presented by Richard Hendrickson (published in Western Prototype Modeler, Vol, 3, May-June 1977, p. 17). 

Here’s how it’s done. First, pry the manway cover from the dome of the car you are modeling and set it aside.  Second, carefully shave all the safety valves off, with a chisel blade for example, and save them also. Next, turn to a sacrifice body for another dome. Triple-dome bodies may no longer be available from Athearn to be purchased new, but it is often as cheap or cheaper to purchase assembled cars at swap meets. Saw off an end dome as close to the tank top as possible. Try to retain the full dome height if at all possible in this process.

Then lightly file the cut surface of this dome top flat and level, again keeping as much dome height as possible.

This will sit right on top of the existing dome of your model, with one further piece of work. This is to shave the inside of the additional dome top to a tapered shape, which fits atop the existing dome (see sketch above). I use a hobby knife:

Here is the final product. The taper need not be exact, only enough to clear the curvature of the dome top onto which it will be placed.

Before attaching the new dome top, shave off and save its safety valve also. Styrene cement attaches the new dome permanently. Fill any gaps with a model putty such as Squadron Green. Glue on the best two of the safety valves you shaved off the two domes, positioning them behind the manway hinge and symmetrically on either side of the centerline. When the tank top section is assembled to the tank bottom (later), the safety valves will be toward the B end. Also, shave off the molded grabs on the new dome, and replace. They must be curved to match the dome curvature, so I make them from suitable wire. Most SP tank cars only had a dome grab iron on the side of the dome above the walkway, so usually you only need to make one.

     The extraneous rivets running around the body should be shaved off, and then sanded smooth. Also shave off the right side dome walkway and its supports, then sand that area smooth. Here is a body with rivet rows and one walkway removed, and the new dome top attached (a little putty was needed):

At this point, I also shave off the molded grab irons on the tank ends. Since these have to be curved to match the tank curvature on most SP tank car classes, wire replacements work best.

     The underframe can be much improved by adding brake piping and rigging with brass wire. These parts are very visible on a tank car, and the model benefits greatly from their addition. The Athearn underframe already has brake levers and acceptable brake gear (some modelers may wish to replace the brake gear with better detail parts; the Tichy tank car detail set contains excellent examples). The outboard tank outlets should also be removed, leaving only one at the underframe center.

     The Athearn side walkways are smooth, but these wood parts tended to weather heavily, and this is one time in modeling when a heavy wood grain can be correctly simulated. Drag course sandpaper or a razor saw blade along the walk, then sand lightly to tone down the effect. The Athearn placard boards are acceptable, but can be replaced with the much more refined (but more fragile) Tichy parts in the detail set. Fill the slot intended for Athearn’s handbrake stand with styrene or model putty. Finally, drill the B end walkway for a wire brake staff and add a brake wheel. I use Grandt or Tichy brake wheels.

     My normal practice is to use Kadee No. 58 (“scale head”) couplers whenever I install new couplers or replace them. The Athearn underframe cover plate is all one piece with coupler box covers, designed for a press-on fit of the covers, but for maintenance access, I prefer separate coupler box covers. I simply drill through the assembled underframe coupler box from the top (where there’s a helpful dimple) and tap for 2-56 screws, then cut the Athearn cover away from the underframe cover plate. The visibility of the wheels on a tank car mean (for me) that it’s worthwhile to install narrower wheels, and I mostly use Reboxx wheel sets for this, in Athearn or other sideframes.

     At this point, I would assemble the two tank halves and mount the underframe. Assembly of the tank to the underframe has just one point of importance: the outlet should end up toward the A, not the B, end of the car. This should also place the dome-top safety valves toward the B end. The Athearn handrail supports look all right on a black car, but on a silver or yellow car, I recommend the exquisite Precision Scale parts. A ladder is only needed on one side, and either the Atheam or another ladder can be used. 

     Here is a list of the parts mentioned in the article:

Tichy tank car detail set, part no. 3007

Grandt brake wheels, part no. 5067

Precision Scale handrail stanchions, part no. 32110

     The painting and lettering which you apply to your model obviously depends on the car being modeled. Cars in revenue service or company fuel service were black with white lettering. Some cars were painted yellow (Colonial Yellow, the same color as SP depots) with black lettering for gasoline service; tank bottom sheets were also yellow on these cars. After 1948, as diesel locomotives arrived in quantity, some of the cars were assigned to diesel fuel service. These were at first all silver with black lettering, but in the late 1940s a new scheme was introduced for diesel fuel cars, black with a wide silver stripe on each end. Both these diesel fuel schemes continued in use throughout the 1950s.

     Lettering on SP tank cars differed from most other SP freight cars. Although most SP freight car lettering had 9-inch high reporting marks, 7-inch car numbers, and 3-inch characters for the capacity data at the left edge of the car side, and for end lettering, it is important to recognize that tank cars had 7-inch lettering for both the road name and the car number. There were 1-inch stripes above and below the reporting marks and numbers until 1952.

     There have been no commercial decals specifically intended for any of these schemes, and in the past, modelers used various decal sets for most of the lettering, particularly the Champ lettering in set SHS-144 (intended for gondolas). The new tank car lettering set from Jerry Glow (visit http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/decals/full.html and scroll down to “Southern Pacific”) solves all these problems and permits lettering several cars from any of four paint schemes, though to do so requires both the set with white lettering, and the set with black lettering. Here are several of the paint schemes (the yellow car is a Pecos River brass version of Class O-50-12; the others are modified Athearn). Visible here are car sides both with and without the dome walkway.

     Since these cars often handled commodities which were spilled on the exterior during loading, and were rarely washed or repainted, you can feel free to go heavy with your favorite weathering technique. I like acrylic washes because of the excellent streaking and subtle color variations, which are possible. Your model is now ready for service as a veteran SP tank car.

Tony Thompson

Choosing a model car fleet, Part 11: reefers

I’ve postponed touching on car plans for refrigerator cars and box cars for my layout, in part because I have (and need to have) so many of both types. This post addresses reefers.
     The core of my reefer fleet is necessarily the cars of Pacific Fruit Express (PFE). I have already discussed my approach to the PFE part of my reefer needs, in an earlier blog post (see: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2010/12/choosing-model-car-fleet.html). This approach takes proportions of the model fleet directly from the prototype car fleet. I expanded on the era characteristics and layout needs I personally have in a follow-up post (http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2010/12/modeling-pfe-reefers-in-1953.html). Accordingly, my PFE car fleet is simply proportioned by (approximately) one model for each 1000 cars in the prototype PFE roster, thus a total of around 40 model cars. Within these 40 model cars, I am trying to achieve a close approximation of the number of cars per prototype class, again at one model per 1000. This looks like it will come close to working out.
     I should also mention my post on reefer weathering, which although directed to PFE cars (http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/03/modeling-pfe-reefers-in-1953-2.html), certainly has application to other ice-cooled reefers, and realistic weathering of this kind of freight car forms an important part of my model car fleet planning.
     That leaves the other railroad-owned cars, and privately owned cars. I will discuss the railroad-owned cars first. We know that SP had friendly connections with both NP and IC, both of which owned their own reefers, and these can be expected to show up to some extent in California; but the organizer of reefers to deliver to shippers was PFE, not SP. The PFE had arrangements with some other reefer owners to share cars back and forth, in each company’s off season, and these included ART, BAR, FGE, and to some extent MDT. That is why it was very interesting for me to analyze the conductor’s time book for the Salinas Subdivision of the Coast Division (reported in a previous post, at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/modeling-freight-traffic-coast-line.html), since shown there is actual reefer traffic.
     In that post, I described the large presence of ART cars in the particular seasons reported in the time book analyzed (it’s known that use of foreign reefers on the lines of SP and UP was very seasonal). Photos of California yards and trains do show both ART and MDT cars; and in early fall, pretty much the peak harvest season in the Far West, BAR cars were commonly seen. Conversely, there was a concerted effort on the parts of both SFRD and PFE not to load each other’s cars, but to return empties promptly to their owner. That doesn’t mean that no SFRD cars will be seen on my layout, only that any such cars will be loads headed to their destination, not empties for loading.
     Now I turn to privately owned reefers, which includes leased cars as well as meat reefers. My plans for meat reefers were described earlier (http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/modeling-meat-reefers.html) and I wouldn’t yet add anything to that. Here’s an illustrative photo of an URTX car, at my wholesale grocer, Peerless Foods, in Ballard:

Operating detail: it’s behind the car, but the car is spotted at Door 2. A large warehouse like this often has specific door spots for particular cargo such as the meat in this case. My Peerless waybills direct switch crews which door spots to make for each particular cargo.
     Other leased cars include URTX, NRC, GARX, NADX and so on, owned by produce shippers and others. Altogether, I have several cars in these leased categories, and probably won’t need more.
     With my layout’s California location, a Chateau Martin wine car is almost obligatory, and I’ve restored a Laconia kit for one of these cars. The distinctive virtue of the Laconia version is an accurate “claret red” color, not the horrid deep purple of a more recent commercial model. These cars are actually AAR Class BMT (tank) cars, not reefers, but externally look like other reefers. Ordinarily they are used as insulated box cars in service, in other words not iced.
     Finally, there should also be a certain number of passenger reefers, AAR Class BR. The BR cars of course include PFE cars but also express cars from others in the REA pool, including REX, GN and NRC cars, along with MILW cars which were seen in SP trains in California.
     The relatively large proportion of reefers in my model car fleet of course reflects the territory I’m modeling. I will report more as details of my fleet develop further.
Tony Thompson

SP tank car decals

The artwork I created and had printed to do my models of SP tank cars is now being produced as HO scale decals by Jerry Glow Custom Decals (Jerry’s site is at at: http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/decals/full.html ). Examples of these SP tank car models were shown in an earlier post (at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/01/tank-car-projects-for-cocoa-beach-3.html ), and here’s the same photo shown earlier:

     This decal set is available in both black and white. Both sets are necessary to do SP’s distinctive aluminum-end-stripe tank cars, assigned to diesel fuel service, because both black and white lettering was on those cars. The sets can also be used for plain black cars in general service, and for both all-silver fuel cars (not pictured), and yellow gasoline cars. Each set has enough material to do multiple cars.
     Here is the summary comment I provided to Jerry to circulate with the decals. There is also a lettering drawing provided; it is shown below the text.

     “This drawing shows one version of SP tank car lettering. It contains details for the scheme with a 41-inch high aluminum stripe on the car ends, and the legends DIESEL FUEL OIL SERVICE on both sides and ends. All lettering is white except for black lettering on the aluminum stripe.
     “The text block headed INSTRUCTIONS TO SHIPPERS was placed at the location on the tank indicated by Note 7 on the drawing.
     “Cars in general service were the same as this, omitting the end stripe and the legends about DIESEL FUEL OIL SERVICE.
     “All-silver SP tanks were assigned to diesel fuel service also and were lettered the same as this diagram, except the entire tank was painted the same color, no end stripe, so all tank lettering was black.
     “From 1928 until the 1950s, SP also rostered a hundred or so yellow tank cars for gasoline service (the color was Colonial Yellow, the same color as SP depots). This diagram shows placement of all lettering (black) on such tanks, except that instead of DIESEL FUEL OIL SERVICE, the cars were lettered on the sides FOR GASOLINE SERVICE.
     “The diagram shows the road name, SOUTHERN PACIFIC, spelled out. This kind of spelled-out name was introduced in 1946. Prior to that time, initials only (without periods) were used as the reporting mark. In 1952, stripes above and below the road name were removed, as this diagram shows. All these variations are possible with this decal set, using both black and white letters.
     “Detail point: every car had a slightly different volume, which is why each car had to be tested and the exact number lettered on the car end, and why the decal set has a whole bunch of numbers near 12,500 gallons (all taken from actual SP tank car photos). The car test data blocks, for the right end of the car, are taken from SP photos also and from different eras. As with so many things, prototype photos are the best guide to specifics.
     “For photos and more information, see Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Volume 5: Hopper, Covered Hopper and Tank Cars, by Anthony W. Thompson, Signature Press, 2008.”

     The drawing referred to is part of the SP drawing shown on page 326 of my book, and it shows sizes and locations of all lettering.

This should be a useful tool for those wanting to do SP tank cars of various paint schemes, in the transition era.
     The one scheme not possible with my original decal set was the liquid sugar scheme with the large white diamond on the dome, surrounding a black letter “S.” I have used the Microscale decal set MC-4044 for this diamond-S, but Jerry Glow will try to include the equivalent in the new decal set he will sell. The Microscale set also does include the lettering for these cars, common in the 1950s though uncommon in later years, which stated “FOR LIQUID SUGAR LOADING ONLY.”
      For all these specifics, my book on SP tank cars, cited above, is a good source of the photos which must be the ultimate authority for any lettering decisions.
Tony Thompson

Choosing a model car fleet, Part 10: ore cars

There was little usage of “classic” Missabe-Range-style ore cars in the Far West, particularly on SP’s Coast Division, but there definitely was a certain amount of mining activity. I have only a few ore cars and don’t want more, partly because of the ubiquitous SP GS gondolas which are known to have been used for such service. For what traffic could I use the classic ore car?
     Among the minerals found in many parts of California is chromite. In high-grade form, it can be smelted to yield chromium metal, but the California deposits are well below that quality. Their main use, therefore, was twofold: smelting for ferroalloys (mixtures of iron with other elements, which in turn were used in making alloy steels), and use in refractory brick. Chromite is a temperature-resisting mineral and “chromite” brick, as it’s called, is a premium refractory used in extreme conditions. This latter usage is appropriate for shipments of chromite ore.
     In one of my posts containing part of a Mac Gaddis interview, he mentioned chromite shipments near San Luis Obispo (link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/01/modeling-freight-traffic-coast-line_19.html), so this is part of my thinking. There was a company called Monarch Mining at one time in the central coast area, and it was involved in the chromite traffic. I can use GS gondolas, as Gaddis mentioned, or perhaps an ore car or two in Monarch lettering. (I should mention that I have no evidence that Monarch in fact ever owned any railroad cars.) The likely destination of the chromite would be the Kaiser refractory brick plant at Moss Landing, near Watsonville. Kaiser made magnesia brick there, and magnesia-chromite brick is a common type.
     In the central coast area of California, there were also low-grade deposits of lead-zinc ore. This was mostly smelted at Selby (along Carquinez Strait) at the American Smelting & Refining Company (Asarco) facility. Whether I will eventually model any traffic of that kind, I haven’t decided.
     Incidentally, for California or anywhere, there are extensive research resources on mineral deposits and usage. (The term “mineral deposit” is used rather than “ore,” because the definition of an ore is an “economic mineral deposit,” and of course what is economic in one time or place may not be in another.) I have used the following for my own research: J.S. Diller, Guidebook to the Western United States, Part D. The Coast Line, Bulletin 614, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, DC, 1915. Also of value was The Central Coast Geologic Guidebook, Bulletin 61A, Division of Mines, State of California, Sacramento, 1937, and an older but still interesting volume entitled California Mines and Minerals, Calif. Miners Association, San Francisco, 1899.
     One model of a Monarch car, using MMCX reporting marks, is shown below. (In 1953, there was no assigned holder of an MMCX reporting mark.) It is built from an old Model Die Casting white metal kit. It is depicted coupled to an Ulrich gondola model, lettered for Utah Coal Route. Both open-top cars contain removable loads, built on balsa wood platforms which are fitted to the particular HO scale car model, with real mineral glued to them. Switching at Shumala is Class C-10 Consolidation no. 2836.

I mentioned the reasons for coal traffic in my post about my gondola fleet choices, available at:  http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/04/choosing-model-car-fleet-8-gondolas.html.
     Thus although my needs for ore cars hover dangerously close to zero, I will probably roster and operate a few of them, in keeping with what I know about central California ore deposits and mining.
Tony Thompson

San Luis Obispo operations

I want to take the opportunity to include some more of my 1992 interview with Malcolm “Mac” Gaddis. I visited him at home in San Jose, mostly to ask about operations on the Coast Division. I was well aware, from talking with academic colleagues about oral history, that “facts” which may be stated in such interviews are often erroneous. But factfinding is not the primary reason for an oral interview. The great potential value lies in the fact that only someone who was there can tell you how and why things were done.
     Another segment of some of Mac’s comments was in an earlier post (here’s a link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/01/modeling-freight-traffic-coast-line_19.html). Mac went to San Luis Obispo as an electrician in September 1951. I began by asking him about cabooses.
     Gaddis: I was responsible for the cabooses. We had about 30 cabooses assigned, probably six to ten wooden cabooses used strictly for locals, like the Surf turn, King City turn, Guadalupe local, all wooden cabooses. Steel cabooses were about half and half cupola and bay window. All the steel ones were equipped with electric generators, 1 or 1.5 kW engine generators, and that’s the reason I went up there. That’s also about when the radios started on the Coast Division. I was involved in putting radios in F units at Los Angeles, all F units in those days. Later we got those SD9 engines and later the GP9.
     Thompson: As I read the timetables, it looked like train numbers were assigned by the subdivisions, and each one terminated, then got a new number to run to the next terminal. Is that right?
     Gaddis: Right, the trains had a number series, 800s or 900s, I’m not sure I can recall exactly. But they were scheduled.
     Thompson: Well, mostly 800 numbers. I noticed in the timetables that usually there is a long time between a scheduled arrival time of a freight, and the time the next one in that direction leaves. Why was that?
     Gaddis: Well, a train came in, they would switch it out, maybe shorten it to go up the hill, or make it bigger to go south. If you had really low-priority cars sitting in the yard, like empty drop-bottom gondolas, they might sit awhile before you had space on a train to move them out. Hot cars like perishables of course would go right out, usually on the WPB [Watsonville Perishable Block] if they were eastward loads.
     Thompson: Did the WPB operate extra, or did it have a scheduled number?
     Gaddis: Oh, it was a scheduled train. Other symbols were in use too. At the time of the earthquake in ’52,1 really worked a lot of hours, and I had to ride the WPB down to Santa Barbara, and come back on the Starlight or the Lark.
     Thompson: What about other hot cars? Would they go in the WPB too?
     Gaddis: I don’t know, but hot cars would have been in one of the manifests. Of course we had the “Zippers,” No. 373 and 374, sometimes 50 cars. [The “Overnight” trains.] We had 71 and 72 [the “Mail”], now 71 used to pick up strawberries in Santa Maria, Guadalupe and take them to Oakland. One time I was there, I just happened to see these express reefers come in on 71, then I rode the Lark to Oakland, where I boarded the City of San Francisco. I happened to see that those same two reefers were in the City when I got to Ogden, and when I got to Chicago, they were still at the head end. So they moved them right along, they were a hot cargo.
     Thompson: Were there express cars on 72? like milk from Oxnard into LA? There are photos from the 1930s that way, but I wondered if that continued in the 1950s.
     Gaddis: I don’t recall that, but of course that was on LA Division. But 72 was usually equally heavy as 71. That was the one the Superintendent usually had his car coupled to. That was Jimmy Jordan, he was Super for years.

     After relating some stories about Jordan, we looked at some more photos I had brought, showing the San Luis roundhouse and shop area.

     Thompson: You had a real car repair facility down there at the south end, I guess.
     Gaddis: Well, cabooses were up there on the caboose track. We had 15 or 18 machinists, but I was the only electrician there for several years, so I had to do all the annuals for electric components. Then there were three or four boilermakers too. We mostly did light repairs on locomotives. We had a pretty good size car shop, probably 75 or 80 people just in the car shop alone, working on car repair.
     We had inspectors in the yard. The unfortunate thing was that the inspectors were very fussy. It was a way to keep their job, you know, so they looked at everything. It was a 200-mile inspection at San Luis, so that’s where they inspected every car, lifted every lid, you know. But that was just on the day shift. Of course, there were just as many cars went through there on the afternoon and night shifts, as in day shift. So the carmen didn’t really have it covered as well as they thought.
     I guess there were nine or ten carmen in the yard, they did all the inspections on the through trains, and locals too, of course. And we had about a three-car rip track there too, in the shop area. You could change out couplers, you could change out trucks. We had several programs on cabooses, where they changed wheels, heavy repairs, and do some other improvements, even painted them.
     Thompson: I didn't know they did painting there.
     Gaddis: Oh, yeah. It was amusing, they had a thing called a “bazooka,” in five minutes you could paint the whole side of the caboose. That was after you masked all the windows and that. We had a relief outfit there too. I knew that fellow quite well, Lawrence Lightner, who was the crane operator. That was his primary job, running the crane, and he spent all this time fiddling with it. And he had a tool car that went with it, then in addition there was a kitchen car, and a flat car with three or four trucks, brasses, parts, all that. Sometimes there would be a car with ties and track parts. It had a tank car for water, because it was a steam crane, but I don’t remember how it was connected up to the crane.
     Cars in the relief outfit, whatever kind of car they were, were lettered as “tenders.” Some of those tenders that carried the trucks, they had small tanks on them too, just 4 or 5000 gallons of water.
     The MOW department would have their own Burro cranes, they would not use the relief train equipment except very exceptional conditions. They would have their own string of work cars, 3 or 4 or more cars, a locomotive and caboose, and would go out and do the work on their own, the work they needed to do, pick up rail and ties, do repairs.

     This concludes this excerpt from my interview with Mac Gaddis. Fascinating stuff if you want to model San Luis Obispo, or operate it, or both. I will post more of the interview material in future.
Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 7

Operating my layout has revealed an issue I had not thought about previously. This is the problem of waybills for cars in through freights. On the SP, these moved between division points with no switching along the route. (Switching along each division was the job of locals and turns, not through freights.) The cars in these through trains still possess car sleeves, in accord with my original plan (see, for example, my article in Railroad Model Craftsman, December 2009). The problem is what kind of waybills should be in those sleeves.
     They could, of course, be waybills like any others. But these would have to reflect both shipping and receiving industries throughout the U.S.A., not just shipping or receiving industries on my branch line. In other words, they would have to be waybills originating off the layout and terminating off the layout. The thought of generating that many waybills, for through trains which are not switched, was daunting. I might still attempt to do such a project some day, if an efficient way to do so should suggest itself, but in the meantime I decided to experiment with alternatives.
     One simple alternative which occurred to me is simply to use regular waybills, from a variety of railroads, but not filled out, that is, blank forms. That way, a quick glance at car sleeves for a through train would show an appearance superficially resembling trains which are switched. By use of Empty Car Bills for empties, the load vs. empty difference could be maintained also. The result would be something like this:

I did try out this approach, but when encountering a car sleeve like this, found myself thinking “this is a mistake,” and sometimes looking on the back to see if the waybill was merely turned around. (Even though it’s my own system.) I’m guessing that visiting operators would have a similar reaction. Then I thought, why not just use a plain card (though still with the usual color codes, pink for perishables, yellow for empties, and white for regular bills). That way, it doesn’t look like a failure to fill out the waybill.
     Here’s such a sleeve, representing a perishable load with pink:

But in a way this is even worse. Now you really tend to turn it over to see where the “real” waybill is. So I think this looks even more like a mistake.
     My next idea was to try something I’ve seen on a few layouts: the waybills which are for cars not switched are entirely different. For my purposes, these are the “through cars” that won’t be switched on my layout (though of course they are switched in staging). I tried this idea out using a light green waybill, quite different from all other waybill colors:

As you can see, I chose a number of “off the layout” destinations, north (Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Roseville, Ogden, Portland) and south (Los Angeles, Colton, Tucson, Tucumcari, El Paso) for variety. Now when these are in the car sleeves, it’s clear that they are a different category of waybill.
     This doesn’t seem like an entirely satisfactory solution, because now these cars don’t have prototypical waybill-like documents. Also, this bill looks something like an Empty Car Bill, but in green, suggesting perhaps that it’s a different kind of empty. I will continue to explore ways to deal with this through-car problem, hopefully an improvement over the green through-car bills, although these are effective in the short run. One thing I plan is to try making some complete waybills for through cars, for the destinations and origins I know, such as auto parts, and see how well a partial set works.
     I also wanted to try out caboose cards and caboose car sleeves, so that all cars in a train would be represented in a train packet (or a handful  of waybills). Again, I chose a color not otherwise in use for waybills, a light blue. Here’s what they look like:

By the year I’m modeling, most SP divisions, including the Coast, had relegated most wood cabooses to local service, and mainline service was nearly all accomplished with steel cabooses. Thus my car sleeves indicate “road service” for all general-service cars, and “local service only” for restricted cars. I also want to explore assigned cabooses, as most cabooses in 1953 were still assigned to individual conductors. One use for such assignments would be for local trains, which tended to be operated by crews with high seniority, who would likely hold caboose assignments.
     These ideas are very much a work in progress, and I don’t regard any of them as final solutions. But they are working all right as interim measures. I hope to post in the future about improvements in these ideas.
Tony Thompson

Weathering flat car decks

In discussing my car fleet plans for flat cars, in an earlier post (available at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/choosing-model-car-fleet-5-flat-cars.html) I alluded to the need to weather flat car decks in a realistic way. Now I want to illustrate a couple of examples. They are all taken from the same starting point, the fine Red Caboose model of SP’s Class F-70-7 cars in HO.
     These cars have been available with either plastic decks or real wood decks. Some modelers feel that real wood is the best medium to reproduce wood parts in HO scale. However, I don’t agree. If wood grain patterning is visible in your wood, it is way out of scale, and if you distress the deck, the splinters and gouges are likewise way out of scale to what would happen in the prototype. Lastly, a freshly decked flat car might look like raw wood (many railroads, including SP, did not use creosoted decking), but after a few years of hard use, along with sun, rain, and dirt, a car deck does not look remotely like new wood.
     This sounds like a strong preference for plastic decks, and indeed, that’s my position, but it’s worth looking at how to weather both types. I’ve had to do so because I’ve been helping with the weathering needs of Otis McGee’s freight car fleet, and it is a large fleet. His layout models the SP’s Shasta Division in 1952, and he correctly has a mammoth number of SP flat cars to carry lumber, a very large traffic segment on that line at the time. (The layout was featured in this year’s issue of Great Model Railroads from Kalmbach.) Why am I mentioning that? because quite a few of Otis’s flat cars have wood decks.
     The starting point for Red Caboose decks is either styrene, which is delivered painted boxcar red (and SP did not in general paint its flat car decks), or natural wood. Either way, I like to distress them before weathering. A trip to your nearest yard or siding to view a prototype flat car will typically show considerable damage to the decking, more than is easy to represent on a model (and this isn’t a modern problem; the same is true for period photos of steam-era flat cars). But I do gouge and scrape different areas, and also roughen with coarse sandpaper. If it’s a wood deck, I would then go over it with fine sandpaper to remove fuzz and out-of-scale splinters. On a plastic deck, styrene debris should also be smoothed and cleaned up.
     Here is a wood deck, sanded, scraped, scratched and gouged (in moderation), and with all fuzz and splinters carefully removed. You may wish to click on the image to see it larger and examine any details of interest. I have done decks more heavily distressed than this, and some with less or minimal distressing.

Once decks, whether wood or styrene, have been appropriately distressed, I paint them with acrylics. I like to use a mixture of Ivory Black, Neutral Gray, and Burnt Umber. I partly blend these on a convenient piece of scrap cardboard, and as I paint the deck (all strokes crosswise to the car), I remix and re-blend to get color variation from place to place. I may add a little “wet water” (water with a single drop of liquid detergent) to dilute and mix the colors. At the end of the process, I often go back and add additional color to some areas.
     I should mention that this isn’t a very “wet” process, which would potentially be bad on a wood deck, and could result in warping. The amount of water I use is small, and the painting is primarily a straight pigment mix.
     The intent is that no two flat cars are the same, and I think I achieve that, both because of the variation in color mix during painting, and because I rarely do more than one car in a particular session. Here are three completed car decks.

The top car in this photo has a plastic deck. The car in the middle has a wood deck and is the one seen above in unpainted condition, and the bottom one is another wood deck done earlier. The upper deck happens to be more of a gray tone, as one sees on older wood decks, while the lower two have a darkened look, like a more recently renewed but weathered car deck.
     Once you have modeled a few flat cars this way (or if you have looked carefully at prototype flat car decks), an unweathered or “body color” deck will look really wrong. Luckily this is an easy and quick technique. And it has the advantage that if you don’t like it while it’s going onto the car, it rinses off with water; and if you don’t like it later, just repaint over it. Try it, and I think you’ll like the results.
Tony Thompson