Waybills, Part 47: The stop-off form

In a prior post, Part 45 of this series on waybills (you can read that post at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/12/waybills-part-45-preferred-movement.html ), I described a special waybill form used for “preferred movement” cargoes, to make that particular car a priority handling car. But there are other standard forms which are also of interest, and in the present post I discuss another one used to make sure a cargo is properly treated.
     Among the many specialized forms shown in that essential book, Railway Accounting Rules (AAR), is one to help ensure that cars that were to stop off en route, to partially unload or complete loading, were not missed. It was naturally called a “stop off” document, and was in fact an envelope, with the normal waybill inside. It can be found on page 184 of the book just cited (I use the 1950 edition).
     The regular waybill would of course have the directions for the car to stop off at one or more locations, but this was evidently easily missed. And incidentally, I notice the same with people operating of model layouts — they tend not to read the waybill very carefully, and thus miss the stop-off provision. The document I am talking about, AAR Form AD-142, was recommended, not mandatory, and was specifically intended to help with situations where stop-off directions were being missed.
     Though the prototype form was a manila envelope, I intend to use it as a supplementary waybill atop the regular waybill, and indeed, the form as designed has information on the exterior which can serve as a waybill. When the stop is fulfilled, however, the car then has a further destination, so the conventional waybill will also be provided crews for that second move.
     Shown below is the form, as reproduced in the book. The very large center legend certainly ought to do the job of alerting crews.

The directions at the bottom, having to do with placement of yard and junction stamps, are not needed for most model layouts and I will omit them. The directions at bottom also specify that this is to be a manila envelope, so manila-colored paper or card stock will be the material I use.
     I simply worked with the scan shown above to alter shape and size to fit my waybill format, which is about 2.5 x 3.5 inches (baseball card collection size). The first one I made up was for Southern Pacific. The modified form then looked like this:

I have kept the center part of the form, likely intended for handwritten information, but intend to make up these documents as though typed. As mentioned, the material is supposed to be manila, so here is an example of my model implementation with manila cardstock, together with the accompanying waybill. You can click to enlarge.

The Stop Off form will be placed atop the regular waybill, as I will use it in a plastic sleeve, and after making the stop identified, the stop-off form is removed, exposing the regular bill for continued movement, in this case to Los Angeles.
     The same form can be readily adopted for the “Micro-Mark” size of waybills, as used for example on Otis McGee’s layout. One could either use the taller form like the prototype (see upper image in this post), or simply leave blank space at the bottom. I chose the latter, and here is an example of this particular form:

     These Stop Off forms add variety (and hopefully interest) to waybill procedures on an operating layout, and should be the source of added attraction for switch crews which encounter them.
Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific diesel chronology

A few years ago I posted some comments about modeling SP’s diesel chronology, so I could accurately depict my modeling year of 1953 (see: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/03/modeling-diesel-locomotive-chronology.html ). In that post, I alluded to an article I published some years past in the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society magazine, Trainline, in issue 29 (the magazine was not dated in those days, but I believe that issue came out in 1992), pages 18–23. The printed back issue is still available for sale (to buy it, visit: http://sphts.org/store/trainline-back-issues.html ), but I decided the article needed more visibility.
     I have scanned all six pages, and made a PDF document, then put it onto Google Drive. If you would like to see it (or download, if you wish), here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_ctrHrDz4wallIS2ZaTFpxYlE/view?usp=sharing

     This article gives delivery dates, to the month, of all diesels acquired by Southern Pacific’s Pacific Lines up to 1956, and also contains some representative photos. A bibliography documents the sources of all information. I hope this is helpful to modelers of the transition era on the SP.
Tony Thompson

Two-sided freight cars

Reading the title of this post, you may be thinking, “Well, of course they have two sides . . .” but that’s not what I mean. I refer instead to freight cars with different lettering on each side. This is something I have not done recently, but Richard Hendrickson was fond of it for certain kinds of cars, and I thought it might be interesting to show a few examples.
     (For anyone not familiar with Richard, his career, and a few of his accomplishments, you may wish to read my appreciation of him, which is at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-memoriam-richard-hendrickson.html . I have also shown some of his fine models of freight cars in a couple of previous posts, such as: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/03/richard-hendricksons-multi-car-loads.html , and also a depiction of the variety of lumber loads he built for his cars; you can see that post at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/06/richard-hendricksons-lumber-loads.html .)
     I will begin with a USRA gondola model, which was built from the old Walthers kit which had white-metal castings. Richard knew of several roads which still operated these gondolas with original wood sheathing as late as his modeling year of 1947, so built one model with two sides. Here is one of the sides, L&N 74348, with a load of metal scrap.

Note the end, which although photographed in shadow, is in fact seriously dirty from weathering. This might be a choice to show a dirty end, but has the convenience that now one cannot read road initials on the end which could conflict with the side lettering. Here is the other side, SL-SF 85327:

You will note that the weathering pattern and chalk marks are a little different on each side.
      Richard had been the source of prototype information on the Mather Patent box car models first produced by Proto 2000 (now Walthers), and received a whole box of the cars when they were produced. He wanted to depict two of the smaller roads which owned (or leased) them. He chose the Illinois Northern and the Port Huron & Detroit (both schemes were offered on the Proto 2000 kits). This side is IN 2059.

This is the other side, PH&D 1168. Here again, ends are pretty dirty.

      Another good prospect for this treatment is flat cars, partly because they have no end lettering. Years ago, Richard cut down a Roundhouse short flat car to make a gun flat. These are familiar as the Pennsylvania F22 flat cars, shown here as PRR 435376, shown at Shumala on my layout with a Westinghouse transformer load.

The Milwaukee Road had some very similar cars, so that was the basis for the lettering on the other side, MILW 67126.

      On layouts like mine,where there is no reversing loop, and accordingly one always sees the same side of any rolling stock (unless it is physically rotated to show the other side), cars like this are very practical. But of course in staging operating sessions, the correct waybills have to be selected for whichever side is visible in that session.
     I like the ability to portray more railroads with fewer models, and may construct a few cars like this myself. One additional possibility, for loads which need to be glued onto the car, is to have different road numbers on each side of the loaded car, and the same two numbers on both sides of an empty car, permitting the same two waybill pairs (loaded and Empty Car Slip) to serve both. And again, you do get two cars to operate, though both have the same load. This would be okay with a fairly generic load, such as lumber.
Tony Thompson

Vachon tank car photos

My title refers to John F. Vachon, one of the Farm Security Administration photographers in the late 1930s. Among his FSA colleagues were such famous individuals as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans and Arthur Rothstein, not to mention renowned railroad photographer Jack Delano. Vachon worked for the FSA from 1936 to 1941, then for the Office of War Information (OWI) during 1942 and 1943, when the FSA photographic group was moved to OWI. As these were government agencies, all his photographs from this time (and those of his colleagues in the same period) are in the public domain and readily available in digital form from the Library of Congress.
     One of Vachon’s assignments in the fall of 1942 was oil refineries, and he took many dozens of images, most at the Phillips refinery in Borger, Texas. (After leaving the OWI, he went to work as a photographer for Standard Oil, and created images for them until he joined Life magazine in 1947, and then Look magazine in 1949). There are several biographies of Vachon on the Internet for anyone wishing to know more about him.
     Most of Vachon’s refinery photos show refinery equipment, and many more show refinery workers. But a few show tank cars, and are of period interest. Some of these images only depict tank cars in the background or in the distance, but some are closer up and very informative. I show below a few of these, and each is identified with its Library of Congress (LC) negative number. These and many more images are readily viewed at the Library of Congress website with the use of these numbers. The full negatives were scanned, so the surrounding black frame is shown too, and the OWI negative numbers are shown at lower right of each frame (you may have seen images like this published with only the OWI identification).
     Here a string of Phillips tank cars is being loaded through the dome manway at Borger (LC-USW3-011623-D).

Another view of a loading platform shows the loading pipes, with rotating elbow joints, here loading an Oil States tank car (OSKX 443); the photo is LC-USW3-010112-D. The Oil States cars would soon become part of the Mid-Continent Petroleum fleet (COSX marks)

     Another photo from the series shows a workman starting to open a screw-top manway cover (LC-USW3-010108-D).

Note the shiny spillage on the side of the dome, more evident in the next shot of the manway open, and the workman dipping a sample of the cargo (LC-USW3-010110-D).

     Loading was quite different for pressure cars (ICC 105A types), containing such cargoes as propane or LPG. Both sampling and inlet hoses were connected to valves in the valve bonnet (not an expansion dome). Also connected was a relief hose, to conduct away any air or vapor already in the empty car, as the liquified gas filled the car  (LC-USW3-010331-D).

     When loaded, the cars naturally received appropriate placards, as you see here with an insulated pressure car (LC-USW3-011346-D).

    These kinds of images are very informative, as they can be found few other places. They literally relate of course only to 1942, but throughout the period from World War I until the late 1950s, these images are reasonably typical of tank car practice.
     My upcoming column in Model Railroad Hobbyist, which I understand will appear in the February 2016 issue, is about prototype tank cars, and will hopefully explain many of the details shown in the above Vachon photos, for those who may not already recognize them. But none of the photos shown in this post are in that MRH column.
Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 46: More car slips

I have written in a number of previous posts about the Empty Car Bills of various railroads (see for example: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/04/waybills-part-40-more-empty-car-bills.html ), and as time passes, more of these documents come to light. This post shows two interesting car slips from the Northern Pacific, sent to me in physical original form by Gary Wildung.
     The first is yet another version of the Empty Car Bill, shown below. It combines the “home” routing with the “to load” routing, as do many examples of this type of document. And it seems designed for handwritten entries; the material is light card stock, about like a file folder. (You can click on the image to enlarge it.) The NP’s document date for this form is 8-51.

     I also found it interesting that the NP used a Car Card for loaded cars, This is less commonly encountered among the railroad paper I have seen. It is intended for dispatch of cars for which the waybill has not yet been received, but which needs to move. It is dated 6-50.

Interestingly, the instructions at the bottom explain that the slip should accompany the car to destination, and that the waybill, when prepared, will be sent separately to the agent at destination. Here is a larger image of those instructions:

This document is a quite logical approach to moving a “hot” car when for some reason the waybill is not ready. I have not seen anything exactly like this for other railroads, but it could serve as an abbreviated waybill for those modelers who do not wish to make up full, detailed waybills, as there is less information required. Of course, if you used only these slips, visitors could wonder why none of the agents on the railroad could prepare a timely waybill. <grin>
     Thanks to Gary for making these interesting car slips available. They may give those interested in model layout operation some idea for document design.
Tony Thompson

Modeling an insulated tank car, Part 2

In the previous post (see: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/12/modeling-insulated-tank-car.html ), I described the model I wished to build, and showed a photo of the Mathieson prototype car I wanted to use as a guide. At the end of that post, I had completed modeling of the new expansion dome and surrounding details. I then finished body work by adding grab irons at each corner of the tank, with 0.010-inch brass wire.
     With Athearn tank cars, I usually decide whether to replace the handrail supports (that are molded onto the car body) on the basis of the final body color. If the body will be black or a dark color, those Athearn supports are not very visible and are acceptable to me. But if the body will be a light color, the clumsiness of the Athearn feature is all too evident, and then I remove those supports and replace them with Precision Scale brass ones (their part no. 32110). The brass parts are more work but look hugely better — if they will be seen. The car being modeled here will have a dark green upper body, so I did not replace the Athearn supports.
     The Athearn handrails supplied nowadays are not too oversize, though back in the day these were quite big. They used to be 0.029 inches in diameter; now they are about 0.023 inches, a 20 percent decrease and an improvement in appearance. But they are still oversize. Nearly all prototype tank car handrails were made from 1-1/4-inch iron pipe. That “nominal” pipe size, as it is known, can be seen in any lookup table to be 1.66 inches outside diameter, which in turn converts to exactly 0.019 inches in HO scale. Here again, on a light-color tank body, I would replace the oversize handrail, but on a dark body like my model will have, I will retain the Athearn wire parts.
     If the Athearn handrails are retained, then the question of replacing the Athearn ladders arises. Again, if they end up a dark color, they look all right. The one thing they do need is have the top filed flat, as the “bulges” of the Athearn design look quite odd and certainly not prototypical. This is a 10-second job, to go from the left ladder to the right-hand one:

     My next step was to attach ladders and handrails, then airbrush the entire upper body Dark Green, while the lower body is black. The ladders then need to be touched up as black (see the prototype photo in the prior post) below the level of the bottom sheet, which is just visible here.

The body is ready for decals. In my decal stash I had Champ sets HT-211 (Mathieson) and HT-70 and -71 (GATX and SHPX). The Mathieson set had the MAWX reporting marks used on a minority of Mathieson cars, but most were leased from SHPX, so I decided to use those reporting marks. The GATX set supplied basic data for a car built by General American (the Athearn underframe is a GA design). For locating details, see the prototype photo in the prior post.
     Meanwhile, I carried out my usual upgrades to the Athearn underframe. I separated the draft gear box covers from the rest of the Athearn center sill, and drilled and tapped the lid, and the center post in each coupler box, for a 2-56 screw. The brake gear is reasonably well located, but the parts of the brake rigging which extend to the trucks are not represented. I usually add wire or styrene rod. On this model, I used white Plastruct 0.015-inch styrene rod, as can be seen here. No piping has been added yet.

     Also, provision must be made for a vertical-staff handbrake. For this, I usually fill the locating hole in the Athearn underframe with the Athearn handbrake stand, then cut it off flush with the deck. Then I drill for a brass wire staff and add a Tichy or other appropriate brake wheel. I also apply the Athearn placard boards, though they are oversize, because they are steel stampings and thus sturdy. When I glue a correct-size placard to them, the black border isn’t too obvious.
     The assembled and lettered car is shown in the photo below. It still needs weathering, which I will do fairly lightly to indicate a recent coat of paint. A few chalk marks were added; placards will be attached after weathering. (You can click to enlarge.)

The trucks are Athearn with Reboxx wheelsets (I think the 0.088-inch wheel treads are essential on a model that has the wheels as visible as a tank car), and the couplers are Kadee #158.
     This car makes an interesting addition to my fleet of insulated tank cars, though it would be a much more common car type if shortened to 10,000-gallon size, as I did in the Warren car I mentioned in the previous post. I plan to make another of the shortened cars in a future project.
Tony Thompson

Modeling a gas station

I have written in numerous prior posts about oil companies, bulk oil dealers, and the tank cars owned by the oil companies. You can readily find those posts in the archive of this blog, by putting the desired key word into the search box directly to the right on this page. But I also wanted to show the retail side of this topic on my layout.
     I have always planned to have a period gas station (or service station, if you will) on the layout. There have been plenty of gas station kits over the years, and many prototype stations were simple enough that they could be scratchbuilt without too much exertion. But there is an excellent gas station kit made by City Classics, which I especially like because when I lived in Pittsburgh, I knew City Classics’ proprietor, Jim Sacco, pretty well. That made me want to build that kit. It represents a “Moderne” style building, on which porcelain-enamel steel panels covered the building. The plain, glossy look led to structures of this style being called “iceboxes.”

     Very properly, the kit comes in plain white, and you then need to decorate it. Each oil company had at least a general standard of color use, lettering, etc., though individual stations varied considerably in some cases. I immediately started looking on the Internet to see what I could find, for period decoration, and in fact there are a lot of photos out there. There is ample modeling information for almost any oil company chosen.
     I decided I should choose one of the oil companies already represented on the layout by a bulk oil dealer. Among them is a Union 76 dealer, as I have described (see:  http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/09/modeling-union-oil-dealer-part-2.html ). When I was a teenager, I tended to fill up at the Union 76 station near my home, so I naturally leaned toward doing the City Classics kit as a Union station. Here is a photo from the Phillips 66 website (the current owner of Union’s brand names), and it shows both the paint colors of gas pumps, and the use of orange on the building. It’s a large and more modern building, but shows the decoration theme. Pumps are white with blue on the sides. Other Union photos show orange used for a ground-level stripe around buildings, and in one case doors in the station were orange.

     Another image found on the web is an older station, probably a one-off design, but of interest for its paint scheme. It was located in Big Bear, California.

     Just for background, Union Oil, founded in 1890, created its “76” brand in 1932, and continued in the consumer marketing business until all retail operations were sold in 1997 to Tosco, which in turn was acquired by Phillips, which became ConocoPhillips in 2002. In 2012, ConocoPhillips split into two companies, one of which, renamed Phillips 66, carries out consumer marketing, and uses the “76” brand today (though they have replaced the distinctive Union orange with red). Union’s corporate parent since 1983 was Unocal Corp., which continued oil production and refining after the sale of its marking division to Tosco, and was acquired in 2005 by Chevron.
     So I had a clear idea of some paint scheme and decoration ideas, which would be easy to adapt to the City Classics kit. Even the pumps in the kit wold be easy to model, matching the ones in the upper photo here. I acquired some round orange “76” emblems on the web and tried printing them out at small sizes, to use on gas pumps as well as on the building itself.
     The subject of gas pumps led to thinking about related issues, such as the price of gasoline in my modeling year of 1953. I suppose it’s no surprise that prices for past years are readily found on the Internet. I used this site: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1953.htm , and learned that gas cost about 22 cents a gallon in 1953. It’s not an idle curiosity, by the way, since in that day gas prices were often prominently advertised at stations, and I want to do the same. The City Classics kit includes a curbside sign for regular gas at 23 cents a gallon, perfect for me.
     With this research under my belt, I am now starting work on my City Classics filling station kit, to be branded as a Union 76 station. More later.
Tony Thompson