Bad order cards

Some time back, I wrote a post about the Southern Pacific bad-order card I had discovered, of a 1950s vintage, perfect for my 1953 modeling era. As I described in that post, that card is now used on my layout. (You can find the post here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-new-bad-order-card.html .)
     I had reference to this SP card in my previous post, about possible reasons for a through train to set out a car at my layout’s town of Shumala, such as a defect that would prevent the car continuing its movement. That post is at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/12/waybills-part-67-through-trains.html .
     My attention has been called, however, to the fact that railroads today, and many railroads for years, instead employed two bad-order cards. One of them is for company-owned cars, and the other is for “foreign” or off-road cars. Recently I was given an example, a BNSF card with these two functions provided on opposite sides of the same card.
     What one might describe as the “home car” side of the card is a very definite red color, actually making the printed categories of defects a little hard to read (I have lightened the image a little to make it more clear, below). One can understand this level of detail as a help to the home shop workmen. You can click on the image to enlarge it if you like.

     Here is what the other side looks like, the side for the “off-line car,” with the very evident headline, “Home Shop,” indicating the destination for the carded car.

The diagonal pink stripe is a common accent for cards like this (though I have seen other colors); the old SP card I  mentioned in the paragraph at the top of the present post has a deep red stripe. The example of this card that I have was retrieved from a prototype car, and had been exposed to sunlight, so the pink stripe may originally have been a deeper color.
     I am now thinking I need to make up a bad-order slip for off-line or “foreign” cars, inspired by this BNSF example. I will show progress in a future post.
     I should mention, however, that in layout operating sessions I always emphasize to the visiting operators that if they encounter anything at all that is defective or doesn’t work right, to please let me know right away. Obviously, I can’t fix defects if I don’t know about them. I keep a sheet of paper handy during the session so I can write down any observed problems.
     So for operating sessions, the use of defect card for freight cars is perhaps superfluous (it’s obviously faster and easier for a visitor to simply tell me about a problem, rather than take the time to fill out a slip). But I like the Bad Order cards as a visual component of layout operations.
Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 67: through trains

I have posted a number of descriptions of how waybills are used in the operating scheme I have for my layout, and I think the basics have been well covered. But there is one area that I know is not clear to some readers, because I have gotten questions about it. That is the use of waybills for cars in my through trains.
     What is the problem? Through trains on my layout, which mimic the prototype practice (Southern Pacific practices in train operation have been covered in one of my posts: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/patterns-of-sp-train-operation.html ), simply run from staging, along the Coast Route main track through my layout town of Shumala, and back to staging. That is like the SP movement from division point to division point.
     These trains ordinarily don’t stop at Shumala, leave alone do any switching, as described in the post cited in the previous paragraph. So why would any cars in such trains have waybills made for them? Presumably no one would look at them if they existed, nor have any reason to do so.
     But occasionally one of them does have a reason to stop at Shumala. There are two reasons that I have used in sessions to date: one is a “bad order” car, that has to be set out because of a defect; the other is a car of some importance that can’t wait for the next local train that would serve Shumala.
     For the first of these, a train’s set of waybills, usually handled in a small cut-down envelope for convenience, would have one car with the Bad Order slip atop the waybill. The plastic sleeve for that waybill might look like this:

This Bad Order slip isn’t filled out, though for an operating session I might fill it out. But the crew running the through train would tell the crew at Shumala that the car needed to be set out. They would then hand them the bad-ordered waybill sleeve also, and the local crew would go ahead and cut out that car.
     For a “hot car” set-out, one possibility is a stock car, perhaps having missed a connection and coming up on its 28-hour limit, at which stock must be rested outside the car. Then the arriving through train, still subject to the division’s work agreement, could only make one cut and one joint in doing the setout, thus requiring the local switcher at Shumala to get into the train and pull the stock car. So the waybill might look like this:

This would be retained by the local crew, then the train reassembled and able to depart.
     So even though any through train would normally not need to carry waybills, there can be occasions when they do. That’s why I do make up waybills for the cars in through trains, to make a suitable package for the local crew to examine.
     On the prototype, of course, the conductor on the through train would ordinarily climb down off the caboose and hand to the agent the single waybill for the car being set out, and we can work it that way too. I am experimenting to see which way I like better for my operating sessions.
Tony Thompson

Fixing sill steps (one more time)

Not too long ago I posted a description of some sill step replacements I had done, because I’d put cars into service with the fragile plastic steps they were manufactured with, and those steps were soon broken. The post about those repairs is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/09/fixing-fragile-sill-steps.html . More recently, I realized that the same thing was happening to my several Red Caboose SP flat cars, excellent and accurate models of SP classes F-70-6 and-7, but not equipped with durable sill steps.
     I decided to replace the fragile plastic with A-Line Style A metal sill steps. I use a lot of these and like their sturdiness, even if their bottom corners are a little more rounded than prototype sill steps.
     What was most interesting is that I found a simple and durable way of replacing them. I simply glued them inside the side sill using canopy glue. Normally I would have glued blocks of styrene inside the sill, then drilled the blocks for the legs of the sill steps, as I have done in other cases (see the same post I cited in the first paragraph, above). But noticing that the length of the legs on the A-Line steps was just right, I simply glued them in place.
     This does locate the step somewhat behind the side sill, as you can see below, but from any distance this isn’t very evident. And the step is no farther behind the car side than if I had supported it with a styrene block on the inside of the side sill.

The step in the above photo may look as though it isn’t attached, but since the canopy glue dries clear, you can’t see the glue.
     I found that several of my Red Caboose flat cars had missing steps, once I looked closely, and have now replaced all of them with the A-Line steps. Now the cars look right, and the new steps will not break with handling. A simple but quick and satisfying solution.
Tony Thompson

The shortest day (again)

December 21 is a day that resonates in my memory, for a range of reasons, and back in 2012 I wrote a post exploring some of the background and reasons why. (That post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-shortest-day.html .) Re-reading that post recently, I enjoyed it all over again, and decided to repeat it this year. The original text follows.

One of my vivid memories from childhood is my father relishing this day, which seemed odd to me then, what with the days shortening and the nights closing in, and of course colder and rainier weather. But he always said, “Now the days will be getting longer,” and of course, so they will.
     What hadn’t occurred to me in those days was that humans for many, many centuries have had the same feelings about this day that my dad did, and in more primitive times, for better reasons.
     Ever since my wife and I discovered the performances known as Christmas Revels, we have attended here in the Bay Area, more years than not. Revels was created by John Langstaff in 1957, and the tradition gradually grew and extended over the years. Today Christmas Revels is performed in nine cities around the country (for the location of those cities, you can visit their map at this link: http://www.revels.org/about-us/revels-nationwide , and from there go to their home page to learn more about their history and what Revels is).
     A favorite part for me of the performance of every Christmas Revels is the reading, toward the end, of a poem by Susan Cooper, written for Revels in 1977 and for me a delight. I reproduce it below, with permission from Cooper, to whom I wrote an email and requested the use. (The poem is all over the Internet, in both written and spoken form, though often mis-punctuated and sometimes with words changed — imagine the nerve!)
     She sent me a copy of it as she wrote it, so that it could be presented correctly. (If you’d like to know more about her, you can go to her web site at: http://www.thelostland.com/ .) She also mentioned that she was happy to give permission for use in this blog, as she is descended from three generations of English railwaymen!


THE SHORTEST DAY

By Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing, behind us -- listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight
This shortest day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year, and every year.
Welcome Yule!

     A far more eloquent presentation of our traditions than I could ever have written. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific’s whistle post

Southern Pacific, like all railroads, employed whistle posts, though they called them “whistling boards.” And they were of course used to notify engineers when they were approaching grade crossings, so that whistle (or horn) signals could be sounded as warnings.
     The standard SP whistling post was for many years an actual wood plank, 6 feet tall (above ground), painted white, and with a 10-inch high letter “X” near the top. (Many railroads used a letter “W,” to indicate “whistle,” for a grade crossing. SP used an “X” instead, no doubt standing for “crossing,” which perhaps makes better sense after all.) There was a Common Standard (CS) drawing for wood posts, CS 14, but I have not found a copy.
      To illustrate what these looked like, the photo below shows a post alongside the first car behind the locomotive. (The photo shows Mogul 1644 doing some switching at Winters, California in June of 1950; it’s from the Eddie Chase collection, courtesy of John Signor.) The post may not look like it’s six feet tall, but it’s hard to see exactly where the bottom is.

     There were variations in the original wood post design. Jerry Kitts sent me a photo of an NWP whistle post that he has in his yard, and it is interesting both that the letter “X” is routed into the board surface, and that the “X” is only 7 inches tall. The board is 12 inches wide. The post originally had white paint on the entire face, like the photo above, and the “X” was filled with black paint.

     Some time in the early 1950s, as a couple of former employees stated to me, the SP began to put a smaller sign onto a galvanized steel post. Interestingly, it had the same tapered top as the ones you see above, and also that shape at the bottom. I don’t know how widely installed these newer posts may have been, but the one in the photo below dates from 1956. (The photo shows Ten-Wheeler 2366 at Gustine on the West Side Line south of Tracy on March 24, 1956; it’s an Alan Aske photo.) The sign is alongside the first box car in the train. You may wish to click on the image to enlarge it.

     I should mention that there does exist a successor drawing, CS 1360, a 1972 revision of the original CS 14 drawing, and like most such signage drawing revisions in the 1950s and thereafter, it primarily replaced wood with aluminum. As the drawing below shows (scan provided by Bruce Morden, and much appreciated, Bruce), this was a one-foot-square sign, standing 6 feet above ground.

Some of the text at right states that these were to be placed one-fourth of a mile from the crossing indicated, and were to be on the engineer’s side of track, 13 feet from the track center line.
     I want to add some model whistling boards, and will probably use the simple plank design as the likeliest installation for 1953 on the branch line I model. (Or maybe one board will be the newer style on a post . . . then it will be a test to see if any visitors ever notice.) I will return to the modeling aspects in a future post.
Tony Thompson

Prototype lettering, Part 2

I have long spoken up about accuracy in model lettering, using as a standard, what else, the prototype. Among  my explorations of this topic is this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/small-rant-manufacturer-lettering.html . That is part of the background to the first post in the present series, Part 1, which showed several examples of stencil lettering practice (you can see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/12/prototype-freight-car-lettering.html ).
     Continuing in the same vein, Southern Pacific used stencils for entire words in lettering in later years, for example after 1946, when the initials “SP” were replaced as the reporting mark by the spelled-out road name. Here is an example of the process, with a spray gun being used (SP photo, negative 30630, CSRM).

Note against the car door another of those “half ladders” used for decades by SP painters.
     Another point, mentioned in the previous post, was the widespread use of what was called “stencil paste,” not a liquid paint but a semi-solid material, applied with a short, stiff brush. An example of that use is the photo below, which depicts a workman applying reweigh data by hand, using individual number stencils. Obviously such application did not always result in perfectly aligned and spaced characters.

     At this point, I want to mention something raised previously(see the first post cited in the paragraph at the top of the present post). Nearly all railroads used lettering characters they had designed themselves. Someone on the drafting room drew up a set of letters and numbers, and such a drawing was the basis for making stencils. Naturally this meant that a separate drawing had to be made for every height of letter, from 1, 2 and 3 inches up to 9 inches or more. It is always intriguing to compare the letters of different sizes. Invariably, the thinner parts of each letter are much lighter in the large sizes.
     There has long been, among modelers, a belief in a kind of lettering usually called “Railroad Roman,” and decal sets have been so identified for decades. There is in principle a possible prototype for this, because early in the 20th century, the Master Car Builders suggested a "standard letter," and this was sustained by the ARA and later the AAR. The catch is that no railroad of which I’m aware followed it entirely, though a few (CB&Q comes to mind) did use parts of the AAR alphabet.
     To show what I mean, below is presented the AAR characters, and below them, the actual SP 4-inch letter drawings for each letter and number in the AAR set. You can readily see that they do not match, with the SP numerals in particular being distinctly more condensed than the AAR numerals.

     To conclude, I show the SP lettering process of later decades, now with the workman wearing protective gear, but still using single-character stencils. There is a least a chalk line to guide the application. This was taken at Sacramento General Shop (SP photo).

     Being aware of these processes helps guide us as modelers in how we apply lettering to models, and tells us where we can permit irregularities in lettering, and where it really has to be done right. I will return to this topic in a future post about modeling.
Tony Thompson

SP 200-ton flat cars, Part 3

In the previous two parts, I showed the Southern Pacific prototype 200-ton flat cars, riding on four trucks under span bolsters (Part 1). I then followed up with a description of the Athearn model of this type of car, including my efforts to make it look better (Part 2). Citation of a link to Part 1 is in Part 2 (which can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/12/sp-200-ton-flat-cars-part-2.html ).
     At the end of Part 2, I mentioned that there is a new resin kit from Funaro & Camerlengo, their number 8471, for exactly this type of flat car built from a General Steel Castings (GSC) one-piece frame. I purchased one of those kits, and looked forward to seeing what modern resin casting technology could do with this prototype.
     The body is all one piece, in the spirit of the GSC original, and includes the deck. Here is a view of the body from below. I have already cleaned up some sprue marks and drilled out the truck screw hole.

     Perhaps the most interesting part of this kit is the trucks. The prototype 100-ton trucks had very short wheelbase, shorter even than 50-ton trucks. The F&C truck frames are cast in resin, and look quite good. One might wonder how durable they would be if a model is operated for large numbers of scale miles, but most of us will only run this unusual car occasionally, so I doubt it’s a problem for many. Shown below is the unpainted F&C truck frame, sitting atop a conventional AAR 50-ton truck from Kadee. You can see it is shorter overall, but note where the centers of the journal boxes are located. This shows you the dimension of the wheelbase.

You can also see that the 100-ton sideframe is a deep and heavy design, compared to the 50-ton truck.
     The kit also includes a nicely made and suitably dimensioned span bolster. In Part 2 (link provided in the top paragraph of the present post), I showed the Athearn span bolster I had filed and sanded down to give a reasonable appearance. The F&C span bolster is even thinner, and really looks nice when placed on the trucks as a test. Note you can see the tops of the wheels behind the bolster. The trucks and bolster here are unpainted,and nothing has been assembled yet.

The trucks are shown here with Kadee wheelsets, as recommended in the kit, but in fact these have axles too long for these sideframe castings. They barely roll at all. I substituted Reboxx 1.010-inch wheelsets and they roll nicely in these frames.
     Next came drilling and tapping the various screw holes to put these truck arrangements together. The only interesting part was drilling the hole into the car body for the screw that holds the span bolster. You need to avoid drilling all the way through the body, for cosmetic reasons, and then you need a bottoming tap (or “gun tap”) to thread that blind hole. If you don’t have one of these taps, you can readily buy one on line from any of a number of sources.
     When completed and with 2-56 truck screws inserted, the span bolsters look quite good. Shown below is one of them, now with the Reboxx wheelsets, and all painted with Tamiya ”German Grey” (paint no. XF-63). The top surface isn’t painted as it will be invisible under the car.

Testing these span bolster assemblies showed that they roll freely and swivel nicely into the tightest curves and turnouts. I am pleased with their looks and performance.
     Next in kit assembly are a number of straightforward steps that simply require following the directions, and I won’t go into them. But in a following post, I will take up addition of weight to the car, as well as painting and lettering.
Tony Thompson