ProRail 2025

This year the annual ProRail event (Prototype Railroad Operations) was held in the Minneapolis area, and was well organized and managed by Rich Remiarz and Joe Binish. Despite some last-minute crises such as layout owners having to back out for medical reasons, substitutes were found, and everything ran pretty smoothly. By Sunday’s last layouts, many people were mentioning how much they had enjoyed an excellent week.

I participated in seven operating sessions, a full but fun program. Below I’ll make brief remarks about each layout, simply in chronological order as I worked on them. Of course a photo or two can’t do justice to large and complex layouts, so I am just offering some flavor.

The first layout I operated on was  Dave Zuhn’s State Belt, the waterfront railroad in San Francisco. Though the layout is very much still a-building, Dave’s progress gave us a very nice session. I liked several of the things he is doing with the challenge of railroading that is not just urban but right downtown. 

One idea he is using well is to represent the large buildings (many of which still stand today), with black boxes, effectively giving you the perspective and challenge of street switching. These could always be replaced someday with accurate structures. Below is my conductor on the north end of the railroad, Jim Providenza, reviewing the paperwork.

The second layout of the day was that of Randy Nord, who has a truly large railroad under construction. Parts of it are already very impressive, such as the Milwaukee Road depot and coach yard you see here. In the background is some of the mushroom construction underway.

In the evening, we visited old friend Bill Jolitz, for one more experience on the San Joaquin Short Line and its famous (or infamous) Cojones Local. This time, I drew the Aurora Local, also a job requiring careful planning, with lots of reefers and other cars to switch. 

The next day I greatly enjoyed a return visit to Rich Remiarz’ Great Northern layout. It has much excellent scenery and really outstanding rolling stock. I drew the St. Cloud switch job, which was a challenge but a lot of fun. Below is the view from my operating area, showing Rich himself at left, talking to Henry Freeman, east end switch crew.

On Friday I operated at Jeff Otto’s immense Missabe Northern layout (DM&IR plus Great Northern and Northern Pacific), with heavy ore operations, including a full and busy Proctor Yard, several mines, and two impressive ore docks (each with an ore boat being loaded), which I show below. This is a dauntingly large railroad, but with a lot of fun jobs, and operation is obviously well thought out. I liked it a lot, and came by on Sunday morning for an additional half session before departing for the airport.

Saturday I visited one of my favorite layouts, Joe Binish’s Central of Minnesota (which is kind of the M & StL in disguise). I drew the 4th Street switch job, challenging in tight quarters and with lots of freight cars on hand. Talk about requiring planning! But it was really fun. Below you see a view down the 4th Street trackage, with Bill Sornsin at right (who was working in the yard, out of view at right),

This was an excellent ProRail,with not only outstanding layouts but good organization so everything ran smoothly. These are usually great events, and I’d say this one was no exception.

Tony Thompson

The 2025 PCR-NMRA convention

The annual convention of the Pacific Coast Region of NMRA was held during March 27–30 this year, in San Luis Obispo, California. PCR is the NMRA’s oldest region, having been founded in 1940, and continues as one of the most active regions in the country. I have been attending its conventions for over 30 years, and this one had the usual high level of interest and enjoyment.

Historically, San Luis Obispo was the mid-point of Southern Pacific’s Coast Route between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and for 30 years hosted the justly famous Daylight trains. Accordingly, the choice of a convention name and logo was entirely natural and appropriate. Of course, for me as an SP modeler, it was especially attractive.

I presented two clinics, as I often do, and enjoyed the usual camaraderie around the hotel, meeting rooms, and the bar. In addition, San Luis is an attractive town, greatly enlivened by nearby Cal Poly University, with lovely weather much of the year. All in all, a nice event. And attendance was decent, about 200 in person and, interestingly, 80 for a remote (virtual) program.

A high point for me was an operating session at the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum, housed in the former SP freight house just south of the depot. You can learn more about the museum at: https://www.slorrm.com/ . Part of the museum is an ambitious double-deck model railroad, the Central Coast Model club, depicting the SP in the San Luis area, and including the Pacific Coast Railway narrow gauge, part of the scene until its rail was taken up in 1942. 

Though not a great image, this plan from the museum’s website shows the overall scheme. The three lobes at the bottom, with two decks, allow a long run. San Luis Obispo is at the top of the drawing for the lower level. It’s evident how a really long run has been achieved. The narrow gauge is in an adjoining room.

As it turned out, this was the first organized operating session on the layout, which has a number of very promising scenes and a few near completion, but much work in progress. Their session planning was good, and eight of us really had fun operating in a layout like this, headed for prototype excellence and already running well. Naturally there were a few growing pains, but nothing serious.

One scene that is essentially compete and quite attractive depicts the early days of oil extraction in Price Canyon. I thought this was very nicely done.

Another very interesting and challenging scene is a depiction of the sugar beet unloading facility at Betteravia. The prototype was well photographed, and thus the model has to meet a high standard, and what has been done so far certainly is up to that standard.

And a signature part of the SP’s climb over Cuesta is the Stenner Creek viaduct just below Horseshoe Curve. Here is the train I was operating, heading over this very nice model bridge. Interestingly, the view here is southwestward, away from the mountainside, not what most modelers would have chosen, but very effective.

Lastly, I should show a view of the narrow-gauge pier at Avila, and the hotel at its foot. We weren’t operating the narrow-gauge part of the layout, but this modeling really is stunning. This somewhat distant view doesn’t do justice to the impressiveness of the exhibit.

This operating visit really made a nice feature of the convention for me. I’ve been interested in San Luis Obispo during the transition era for many years, and actually operating it was really fun. And I heartily recommend a visit to the museum if you happen to visit San Luis Obispo.

Tony Thompson

 

Layout ideas and design

I was stimulated by conversations at a recent modelers’ get-together in my local area to reflect on how layout designs evolve and how they depend on the owner’s intentions — and how those intentions evolve. Many layout owners concede that they began without much idea of the final goal, however much they might have been inspired by what they saw in the model magazines. 

I should immediately mention that I realize a certain fraction of modelers are really inspired by building scenery, or structures, or complete layout scenes, without any particular interest in operations. They may well run trains here and there as part of the scenes, but without an interest in what a prototype may have done. That’s perfectly okay as a hobby, and some superb modeling has been done in this mode.

There is another subset of modelers who are interested in the locomotives and cars of railroads, and are engrossed with building superb, even museum-quality, models of them, without much interest in operating them in a prototypical manner, or necessarily even building a layout. Here again, it’s fine as a hobby, and the resulting models can be stunning.

On the other hand, there are modelers interested in operation before scenery and structures and rolling stock. I have often mentioned to friends, my experience in the Chicago area, years ago, visiting a layout which was entirely plywood track supports, Homasote track bed, and track. Not a hint of scenery or structures; stations were named with small cards at each location. But complex trackage was complete and running perfectly. We had a busy and interesting and challenging operating session because of the busy schedule, operated by timetable and train order (T&TO).

So where would my preference lie? I appreciate both extremes in layout and modeling choice. But my mind can’t escape recollections of Tony Koester’s comment (in the Foreword to CJ Riley’s book, Realistic Layouts), that modeling railroading implies that we model not only the material objects and environment of professional railroaders, but also “the actions they take to get cargo and people safely and efficiently from A to Z.”

This resonates with me. My own layout choices are primarily aimed at trying to reproduce what the actual railroading job of a local freight crew was like. I have tried to achieve as many components of that as possible, recognizing of course that a visiting operator who has never seen the layout before is in a quite different place from the prototype train crew, who in most cases did that same job every day.

But when a model railroad operating crew, following waybills and other paperwork, spot a box car at an loading dock, they are to some extent doing just what a prototype crew would have done. The photo below, from my layout, is the kind of thing I mean. 

The same goes for other actions that a crew might do in the course of their time on duty, such as spotting freshly loaded reefers at an ice deck to receive the first icing before departing on their journey (the tariff language for this is “initial icing”).

Of course, for a fair number of layout designers and builders, it’s also important that we direct our work in model operations with realistic paperwork, that is to say, prototypical paperwork. I won’t say more on this topic here, since I expanded on my ideas in this direction in a blog post last fall, part of a three-part series on “realistic operations” (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/12/realistic-layout-operation-part-2.html ). The point here would be that layout design doesn’t much turn on paperwork, except in the sense that a layout builder may wish to include space for operators and a dispatcher.

It’s a well-worn piece of advice, to think carefully about what you really want to accomplish in a layout you are designing (or only dreaming about). But inevitably goals and desires evolve with time, and layouts can change with them. I would just encourage layout owners faced with such evolving ideas to grit their teeth, and modify the layout as needed to achieve those goals. You”ll certainly be happier in the long run.

Tony Thompson

Operating sessions for BayRails 10

 This year our bi-annual local operating weekend, called “BayRails,” had its tenth renewal, and it took place last weekend. Actually it began, not 20 years ago as you’d guess, but 22 years ago, because we missed 2021 in the pandemic. This year my layout hosted two operating sessions on successive days, and they happened to be my sessions #100 and #101.

The first day the crew was Al Daumann, Dean Deis, Mike Allee and Mel Johnson. Al had operated before on the layout. He’s shown below working at Shumala with Mike, and I was impressed he wore a very appropriate shirt for a layout with five packing houses and lots of reefer traffic. And you can tell he’s the conductor here, with all kinds of paper in hand.

The other crew was Dean and Mel, shown below figuring out their work at Ballard while running the Santa Rosalia Local. If I remember right, Dean was the conductor on this side.

The following day the crew comprised Joe Green and Lou Adler, who had been here before, and newcomers Tim Costello and Mike Cee. The photo below shows Joe (clearly conducting) and Tim holding the throttle, in the middle of switching Shumala.

On the other side of the layout,  Lou and Mike were sorting out the work they needed to do at Ballard. I think this was Lou’s turn to conduct, which is probably why he looks really thoughtful here.

When we were all done for the day, Tim wanted a photo that would include me, so he took the shot below, including his operating partner Joe. I hadn’t thought about getting a photo with me in it, so I’m glad Tim had the idea to take one.

Really nice sessions both days for the most part, though we continued to be bedeviled by the track issues at the Santa Rosalia throat switches. That is just going to have to be rebuilt entirely. I’ve spent several multi-hour sessions trying to get it right, and it’s true that the subsequent problems are often a little different than before, but the track just isn’t what it should be.

Of course, as readers of the blog will know,  I resisted as best I could, the threat of “Host Flaw Hysteria” (a malady originally recognized by Paul Weiss), in which problems in five percent of the session make the host think it was 90% ruined, while actually everyone had a good time. But that trackage does need to be fixed.

Tony Thompson

Line-ups for operating, Part 2

A few years ago, I posted a description of the kinds of line-ups that I use for layout operating sessions, and explored several ways of letting local switch crews know of the expected arrival time of mainline trains. That post can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/01/line-ups-for-operating.html . Looking back at that post, I can see I left an incomplete expression of usage.

But before going into a clearer statement of my layout usage, let me show the Southern Pacific form used for line-ups. This is a standard form introduced in 1947, later modified a few times, and the example below was filled out in 1972. Now that’s a form that was in use for quite a time! Though it is intended for track cars (or speeders), it could be useful for a variety of recipients. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

My own line-up at present is more complicated than what I showed in that previous post, and I show below an example of a current typical line-up, as always for 1953. As I have seen in the SP prototype, for both line-ups and train orders, sometimes warnings such as the presence of the Division Superintendent’s car, can be included. Crews at Shumala have to consult the timetable for times at that intermediate location between Guadalupe and San Luis Obispo.

This particular form also includes a “high-wide” movement westward, Extra 2575, as I showed in a recent post (you can see the background at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/03/operating-high-wide-loads.html ). Below is a photo of this train, operated at a distinctly slow speed, as such train normally were moved.

 Also noted in the line-up, as I pointed out, is the Superintendent’s official car, Coast, SP 119, attached to a passenger equipment extra. I described modeling that car awhile back, in a three-part series concluding with this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/08/operating-sp-business-car-conclusion.html . Two different SP former employees I interviewed mentioned that no one took a chance on not performing perfectly when the Superintendent was around.

Some visitors have immediately asked, upon considering this topic, why a line-up is needed. The segment of Southern Pacific’s Coast Division main line that passes through my layout is at the town of Shumala, and is entirely within yard limits, on the visible part of that main line on the layout. That means, as many modelers know, that Rule 93 is in effect.

In the period that I model, the 1950s, individual railroad rule books differed in the exact language of many rules, even though the intent and rule number was consistent almost everywhere. In SP rule books, Rule 93 was modified from the 1943 rule book to the 1951 rule book, and further modified in 1955, so for exact language, one needs a specific choice of era. 

Since I model 1953, I use the 1951 language, which states that “Within yard limits, engines may use main track without train-order authority, clearing or protecting against first-class trains, and without flag protection against second- and inferior-class trains, extra trains, and engines.

“Second- and inferior-class trains, extra trains, and engines must move with caution on main track within yard limits, except where movements are controlled by block signal indication.”

This clearly places responsibility for cautious movement upon the mainline train if other than first class, and in most of my sessions, the mainline trains are second-class, third-class or extra. So what is the purpose of a line-up? It helps the yard crew know what to expect, even though any mainline train arriving during yard-engine use of the main track will simply have to wait.

So to sum up, I know from employee interviews that SP freight schedules in the steam era had almost the character of suggestions. It was not only routine but almost standard for them to run various amounts late. But it would be unusual to issue run-late orders to cover any discrepancy; the Coast was not busy enough to need that. That’s why, in my line-ups, I am assuming the dispatcher is just using the line-up to pass along what he knows.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 119: Operating MOW equipment

A few years ago I went beyond the modeling of maintenance-of-way (or MOW) equipment, equipment many of us enjoy modeling, and touched on some operating possibilities with such equipment. (If you’re interested in a few of the modeling projects, you can find them using the search box at the right, with the search term, “modeling MOW cars”). The previous post on today’s topic is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/02/operating-mow-equipment.html .

 In some ways, that previous post was a little simplified, as I did not try to really enter into use of much of the equipment movement that might occur in connection with an outfit track (for commentary on a track of that kind, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-role-of-outfit-track.html ).  Below is a view of my outfit track, in the layout town of Ballard, with Nipomo Street at left.

This view shows a pair of what Southern Pacific called “Boarding cars,” cars that track gangs or other forces might live, sleep, eat or ride in, both formerly box cars. To the right of those two is a water car. SP commonly provided wash as well as potable water by delivery with such cars, and of course I can duplicate such deliveries with a suitable waybill, such as the one below. The old saying is that the railroads were just like the military: nothing moves without paperwork.

Another perhaps more interesting case is the use of company refrigerator cars to deliver ice to on-line employee residences, depots, and work gangs on the road. (My car like this is described in an earlier post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/04/modeling-some-sp-mow-cars-part-2.html .) Here is an example of arranging such movements:

Of course work materials might arrive in company equipment other than MOW cars, for example including ballast when a track gang is working in the vicinity of an outfit track:

And finally, as I have shown in a previous post, one can readily arrange a full load or half-load of ties, to be delivered to track forces. (That post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/02/open-car-loads-ties-in-gondolas.html .) Here is what such a waybill might look like, in this case partially unloading the carload of ties before arriving on my layout:

These are all interesting variations on conventional railroad freight movements, and I enjoy including them in some of my operating sessions on the layout.

Tony Thompson

Operating “high-wide” loads

Prototype railroads operate special trains for loads that are very wide or very high or very heavy, compared to conventional equipment, though of course such loads must still pass under all bridges and within the width of tunnels. Particularly when these are very heavy loads, they usually ride on special railroad cars. And as a possibly interesting complication to layout operation, they usually run at considerably reduced speed.

I have wanted to try and add such trains to my operating sessions occasionally. For this purpose, I have already created a few loads that would qualify. One of them merely comprised assembling a Class One Model Works load, which I described in a post last year (you can find it here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/05/building-classone-model-works-car-load.html ). The load was then placed on a Class One flat car. I repeat a photo from that post below.

A second example is a truly large crosshead for a hydraulic press. I described preparing this load for service in a post awhile back (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/06/blocking-for-big-loads.html ). It’s shown below riding on one of Southern Pacific’s 200-ton flat cars, a Funaro & Camerlengo model; construction was described in a series of posts (the concluding one is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/05/sp-200-ton-flat-cars-part-5.html ).

Another example is a 3D-printed heat-exchanger vessel I purchased from Dimensional Modeling Concepts, as I related in a previous post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/07/another-impressive-load.html ). This can be carried on a suitable 70-ton car. For example, I have loaded into a 65-foot mill gondola. The gondola is a Precision Scale brass model, with some added detail and weathering by Richard Hendrickson. Here Consolidation 2575 powers the one-car train leaving Shumala westward.

A rather long-term project, on which I’ve slowly advanced for a number of years, was stimulated by finding at a train show (and purchasing on impulse), a very old Fleischmann 16-wheel heavy-duty flat car. This model had been modified to accept horn-hook couplers, but was otherwise stock, including typical European end buffers. My first job was to remove the couplers and their complex mounting, and to saw off the buffers. I could then insert Kadee no. 158 whisker couplers in their own boxes.

Next I needed to letter the car. Since it isn’t actually a U.S. prototype as far as I know, I had some freedom in doing this. I used some large-capacity data from an SP heavy-duty flat car decal set, and gave it reporting marks for General Electric (GEX), though not a number of an actual GEX car.

One version of the model as sold by Fleischmann had a large turbine included as a load. That was the version I acquired. The timber cradle for the load is visible above. I did want to change the label on the turbine, which originally read “Brown Boveri,” a perfectly appropriate European name, but not what I wanted. I needed to replace that sign.

A major American manufacturer of turbines for many years has been General Electric; their classic logo is readily found by Googling it. Signs were made and then applied to each side of the turbine. And speaking of signs, “DO NOT HUMP” signs were obtained from a Jaeger HO Products placard set and applied to the car at all four corners of the car.

From what I have read, equipment like this turbine could be bolted to the railcar using the attachment points that would be used when the turbine was installed for service. Accordingly, no hold-down straps or extra blocking was used, beyond the side support timbers. With all work completed on both car and load, here is the car in action on my SP main line. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

In the photo above, the car is being operated as a “high-wide special,” with the load being wider than the railcar, though not especially tall. In the view below, the power is Baldwin DR-6-6-1500 no. 5212, a re-detailed and custom painted Stewart model with aftermarket decoder and sound, shown passing the engine terminal in my town of Shumala.

As a contrast to other mainline trains, a “high-wide” special occasionally makes a contrast in an operating session. I expect to continue to operate them.

Tony Thompson

Operating sessions 98 and 99

This last weekend I hosted a pair of operating sessions on my layout, intended as a kind of “dry run” for the upcoming bi-annual BayRails operating weekend here in the Bay Area. These happened to be sessions no. 98 and 99 on the present layout. As I wanted to happen, a couple of modifications to the operating scheme worked well; as I didn’t really want to happen, a couple of electrical glitches popped up, but of course better now than with out-of-town visitors.

I used my usual set-up approach with freight cars in various locations, to be switched in various ways in accord with the waybills and other paperwork. Here is a view looking toward the Shumala depot (middle distance), illustrating what the first crew at Shumala faces when they begin work.  The foreground track is the main line of Southern Pacific’s Coast Division.

What you see is a mixture of cars headed up the branch to Ballard and Santa Rosalia, along with cars to be switched within Shumala, and some ready for pickup by the Guadalupe Local, a train that will pass by toward the middle of the session.

The crews for session 98 were Mike Stewart, Bob Fisher, Dan Miller and Robert Bowdidge. The photo below shows Robert at left, and Dan holding the throttle, while they were working at Ballard.

For session 99, we had a last-minute cancellation by one attendee for health reasons, so we operated with three people only. I volunteered to be engineer, but Mark Schutzer said he actually would prefer to do the entire job by himself, so he proceeded to do so. With all the years of experience under his belt, he worked efficiently and every bit as fast as a two-person crew. Here he is at Ballard.

The other crew was Seth Neumann and Jon Schmidt, shown below during their stint at Shumala. It looks like Seth (at left) was the engineer at this point, as he's holding the throttle.

These were valuable sessions for me, as a set-up for how I will structure my BayRails sessions, though I confess it is hard to wrap my brain around having had 99 sessions on the layout in its present form. But it must be true; I have records of all the sessions. Never thought about getting this far. But the best news was that everyone had a good time and seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.

Tony Thompson

More granddaughter operating

My granddaughter was in town in town this weekend, as was expected, and I organized a short operating session for her at my layout town of Shumala. I have been trying to guide her into being the conductor, in these sessions, and she gets some of it, but prefers being the engineer. I do notice, though, that occasionally when I ask, “What do we do next?” she usually knows. She is not really a “kid” any longer, having recently celebrated her 13th birthday.

I should mention that she has operated a fair number of times previously on the layout, and on both sides of it (for an earlier example, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/12/more-family-ops.html ). Sometimes my wife has acted as conductor (with my guidance), but more recently I usually fill that role. The goal is for the granddaughter to enjoy herself.

At the beginning of this session, she leaned all the waybills against the cars, in order to identify which ones were which, which I think is a good step, but then the bills were all moved off the layout to the J-strips on the fascia. Below you see her doing a run-around with the switcher to pick up the cars for the first spots to be done, and looking over the waybills.

From there she moved to East Shumala to take care of the switching there. Here is her train on the main line, approaching East Shumala to switch. A few waybills are still standing up until she gets there, and she has the waybills for her train in her hand.

In East Shumala, she sorted through the pickups and set-outs, and pretty efficiently was able to complete all the moves. Here she is just finishing up that work, with the cars that were already picked up sorted onto the main track, and the last set-outs about ready to place. Here the waybills have been moved to the J-strips.

Then she returned to town to complete a few more pickups and set-outs, along with spotting the loaded reefer she picked up, to the ice deck for icing. In this photo, she has run around the consist again,and is bringing the switcher back so she can retrieve an empty gondola at the sand house. That will complete the work. Waybills are also on the J-strips here.

She did this smoothly and well, and really efficiently in terms of time spent, though of course this was far from her first session on the layout. The work I had assigned for the session was really the same amount as the work I would assign to a typical adult operating crew, except that she didn’t have to assemble the next train to go up the branch.

I don’t detect that she is very interested in the models on the layout as models that could be built or collected, but she does enjoy the work done by a switch crew, whether at Shumala (as shown above), or on the other side of the layout with Ballard and Santa Rosalia. She isn’t ready to act as a conductor (though not far out), but I would not hesitate to assign her as an engineer in a session with skilled operators.That’s fun to observe.

Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 118: more information

For a number of years now, I have been writing occasional posts in this blog about both information and issues relating to waybills, in both prototype and model form. (To find previous ones, use “waybills” as a search term in the search box at right.) A recent example was this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/waybills-part-114-managing-fleet.html . This may be a daunting backlog; a guide to the first 100 of these posts is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/11/waybills-part-100-guide.html .

Today I want to share yet another source of prototype information on this topic. A single example is shown below. This was part of an approximately annual issue of “question and answer” format from the journal, Traffic World, and was issued by the publisher of Traffic World, the Traffic Services Corp., in Washington, D.C. The magazine was published from 1907 until 2011 or thereabouts.

This is a 6 x 9-inch book, hardbound, and contains 155 pages. The points made in it stem from question-answer pairs in the magazine between July 1964 and June 1965, and it was issued in 1965. How long these volumes continued to be published, I don’t know, but at least until 1976.

Many of the questions, it must be said, relate to minutiae of the rules, and often turn on extremely microscopic examination of Interstate Commerce Commission rules and other authorities of a legalistic bent. Those, naturally, make extremely dry reading, and might be ideal for perusal when you are having trouble getting to sleep.

But there are nevertheless gems in here. Here’s one that isn’t too long or too detailed (adjacent material was removed from the page to focus attention on the point I want to discuss). I will comment below. You can click on the image to enlarge it, to help read the text. The topic is routing.

This example makes very clear that priority in routing lies with the shipper, even if that route results in higher rates than some other route. But it also makes the interesting point that if the shipper has not designated the route, the railroad is obliged to route via the route of lowest rate. 

It is long-established dogma among modelers that the railroad would route a car so as to traverse company rails as far as possible, and no doubt that was the desire; but such routing must not be at a higher rate than another approved routing, even if resulting in lower mileage on the originating railroad.

Here is another example, this one unfortunately longer, and again, I will comment below. This entry extends over two pages, but a lot of it is citations of authorities, which can be skipped for our purposes. It has to do with leased cars.

The key point in this question runs from the bottom paragraph in the first column, to the completion of that paragraph in the second column. In essence, it asks whether an empty specialized or leased car, moving under a car order to return it to a shipping point, generates demurrage before actually being placed for loading at the shipper. Evidently the railroad involved said yes, and the shipper said no.

The answer is interesting, as it reminds us of the railroad distinction between “actual placement,” that is, the car placed at the shipper’s dock or loading door, and “constructive placement,” meaning the car is nearby in the same town on a track that can be considered an “off-spot” (for example, if there is no space at the shipper’s dock). If the latter, the railroad must furnish the shipper with notice of the constructive placement. Otherwise, there is no demurrage.

I don't see simple ways these points could be utilized during a model railroad operating session, but they do suggest things to keep in mind for such aspects as waybill contents, for example with routing. There are so many prototype examples of indirect routing that it might be considered commonplace. And the railroad would try hard to avoid off-spots, certainly not accepting them for “crew convenience.” Those are things we can keep in mind when striving for realistic operation.

Tony Thompson

Car Service Rules, again

The Car Service Rules of the ARA and its successor, the AAR, are a topic of ongoing interest to many who attempt to mimic prototypical freight car handling. I’ve written about these rules before (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/01/car-service-rules.html ). The topic was large enough that I needed to complete the discussion in a follow-up post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/01/car-service-rules-2.html . 

Although those two posts were fairly thorough, there did arise further commentary some years later, as contained in a post discussing a comment to an earlier post; I wanted to clarify several aspects of the topic. (That post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/05/freight-car-handling-and-distribution.html ).

Just recently, I encountered several verbal discussions on the topic, most recently in the bar at the Cocoa Beach meeting two weeks ago (for a meeting summary, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/01/cocoa-beach-2025.html ). As commonly occurs, there were several misconceptions and misunderstandings expressed in those discussion. Let me see if, once again,  I can clarify.

Let’s say you’re the Car Distributor at an Illinois Central yard in the St. Louis area. You have just received a car order for a 40-ft. box car to go to Seattle, to a consignee located on the Great Northern. The “empty” track in your yard has six box cars: two IC cars, and one each New York Central, MKT, Rock Island, and Western Pacific. What do you choose?

Let’s look at the rules. These were reproduced for decades in the back of each issue of the Official Railway Equipment Register, or ORER. You can click on this image to enlarge it if you wish.

As can be seen with a little thought, the purpose of these Rules was to reduce the number of empty miles run off by freight cars. If every railroad always loaded its own cars, and sent all foreign cars homeward empty, at least half the miles moved by the national fleet would be empty miles, of no benefit to anyone. In practice, these Rules were found to reduce empty miles to a little less than a third of all miles. In a sense, then, the Rules reduced the need for car purchases, through better utilization.

Now to our car order. Rule 1 says that you shouldn’t use the IC cars. For the further rules, you have to look back at the Bill of Lading, which includes the shipper-designated routing, via Wabash as far as Council Bluffs. That would be one railroad’s car you could use, the Wabash, so that the car could run off some miles on its own road, but you don’t have one. At Council Bluffs, the route designates UP, but you don’t have a UP car either. The routing designates UP as far as Portland, Oregon, then via GN to Seattle, but here again, you don’t have a GN car. This means you can’t follow Rule 2, 3 or 4.

We now consult Rule 5, to load a car to a Home District before or adjoining the destination District. Here is the official map (from the ORER), and the destination in District 1 adjoins Home Districts for the WP, in both Districts 2 and 5. So the right choice for this load is the WP car. The Rock Island car could be used also, as the adjoining District 5 of District 1 is a Home District for the RI.

What else may come into play? The empty NYC, MKT and RI cars could all be readily returned directly to their home rails in the St. Louis area, provided that there was no car shortage, so this could be a further reason to use the WP car for loading.

The example above is a little misleading, in only having a single car order to fill. In most situations, the IC Car Distributor would have several. From the Car Service Rules, you could expect the NYC car to be used for destination in the northeastern quadrant of the U.S., the Southern car for the southeastern quadrant, and the MKT car for the southwestern quadrant.

Modelers often think that a railroad would load the home-road car first, and that might be necessary on some occasions, but the Car Service Rules clearly prioritize using a car from quite far away from the originating point, as in the case described above. A consequence that may not be obvious is that on a layout like mine, an SP layout in California, loaded cars arriving from far away have a good probability of being SP cars, not cars from railroads in that faraway location.

For a somewhat different example, here is a Great Northern box car spotted at the type foundry on my layout (to learn what a type foundry is, you can consult this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/05/whats-type-foundry.html ). The car came from Elizabeth, New Jersey and in accord with Car Service Rules, was routed to a Home District adjoining a Home District for the GN. The car, incidentally, has drifted a little into Alder Street, but should properly stand clear.

I should also mention a factor often overlooked by modelers: the state of the economy. When the economy is slack or in recession, each railroad tends to have more empties on hand than it needs, and priority goes to returning those empties; thus there are usually lots of empty cars to choose from in filling an order, and one can readily follow the Car Service Rules.

But when the economy heats up, cars tend to be in shorter and shorter supply. Then the Car Service Rules get ignored, in favor of getting your shipper the car that is needed. In such a case, you might fill the car order described above with an empty Southern box car, even though it would violate all six rules, if that was the only empty on hand. Railroaders sometimes called this provision “Rule Zero,” in reference to the Car Service Rules, as the most important rule: satisfy the shipper first.

Whether you choose to take these Rules into account in your model railroad layout, as part of car flow in operating sessions, is of course a personal matter, but it is one more component of achieving realistic operation.

Tony Thompson

Role playing for operation

Whenever model railroad operating sessions are discussed, the topic of role playing usually comes up. By that, we mean fulfilling a role of a railroad employee, most visibly the engineer of a locomotive. And of course there are other roles too, from dispatcher to yardmaster to brakeman, and not least, conductor. And there are others. These roles are played during the session.  I’ve recently posted a blog about those kinds of roles (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/01/realistic-layout-operation-part-3.html ).

But awhile back, my friend Jim Providenza pointed out some additional roles that end up being played, before and after operating sessions. These too are railroad jobs that have to be done, every bit as much as those that are pursued during operating.

An obvious one is track maintainer. It is a rare layout indeed that does not require maintenance, repair, upgrade or even replacement of track elements between operating sessions. (We also clean track, which the prototype does not need to do, so I don’t mean that part.) I’m referring instead refer to the rails and their correct arrangement.

As a person who has, to date, written fully 14 episodes on a continuing series of posts, all titled “Trackwork wars” in part, I know this well. (To check on that series, you can readily find them by using “trackwork wars” as the search term in the search box in the upper right of this post.) And I know from talking to many a layout owner, I am not alone.

I recognize, in my own layout, that there are areas that have been perfect in operation for years, but there are also trouble areas that I know will need work from time to time. The scene shown below, with an ancient NMRA Mark II gauge, is all too familiar.

Another kind of role, of course, is car maintainer and locomotive maintainer. Most cars and most engines are fine in any given session, but a coupler may be pulled out of alignment, or truck screws get too tight for trucks to rotate into curves, and so on. Between sessions, they have to be brought back up to standards.

On my layout, and I think on many, a significant time-sink of an off-session role is that of clerk. All the paperwork for a session, from train line-ups to notices of all kinds, have to be prepared, and of course whatever system of car forwarding is in use has to be exercised to provide the right waybills, car cards or other documents for the session.

Hopefully, of course, we don’t encounter an immense amount of such paperwork, so that setting up an op session doesn’t require a prototypical force of clerks (SP yard office photo).

Instead, we work through whatever our system requires, as it’s been developed for reasonably efficient resetting of the layout for the next session. As often as not, I find myself setting the waybills against the cars to make sure I have every one covered, and the bill is correct for the session. (Visiting operators are discouraged from doing this except at the outset of a session, when all cars need to be identified.)

What is shown above is not so different from the yard clerk attaching route cards to freight cars in the yard, as in this Missouri Pacific photo (courtesy Charlie Duckworth).  

So as Jim observed, we do play some roles between sessions, just as we play them during sessions. It may be a different kind of “play value,” but it’s mostly enjoyable just the same. And of course the core of all this is that you choose to have an operating session at all. My own sessions on the present layout are about to reach 100 in number.

Tony Thompson