I’ve had a
pleasant day giving Raisin his Christmas treat of apple cider and working on the
blank forms for my car cards.
It turns
out that both Car Card & Waybill (CC&WB) and Tack on car are prototypical
car forwarding methods used by the Santa Fe.
Yard clerks did tack route cards onto the 1:1 scale box cars, so an
appropriately labeled thumb tack on an HO car would at least have a basis in
prototype reality. That said, that
thumbtack looks grossly oversize and detracts from the visual appeal of the
model. Don’t think I’ll be using that
method.
Which
brings us back to CC&WB. Most of us
are used to the Old Line Graphics CC&WB system with the two/four sided way
bill sliding into a car card pocket. I’d
like to use more prototypical paperwork for my car forwarding, along the lines
of what Tony Thompson and others have been advocating over the last decade or
so. As it happened, Santa Fe, used an Empty Car Bill and Home Route Card, Form
1850 Standard, to get those pesky foreign freight cars off the railroad and
back where they came from. The
destination agent was responsible for filling out the 1850 from the inbound waybill
so the car could be properly routed home.
Using a bit of modeler’s license, I am shifting that responsibility to
the originating or junction agent so the card can take the place of the Old Line
Graphics car card and always move with the car.
Form 1850 Standard
I am
fortunate that the 1944 version is among the forms published in the Warbonnet a
few years back. I have duplicated it at ½
scale in Word and can print a sheet of eight blanks on a letter size sheet of
cardstock. In the same issue they also
published a 1944 Meat Car Card.
Form 1390 Standard
I have a
few meat reefers that will originate off layout on the SP at South San
Francisco. The original was a little
shorter than the 1850, so I was able to fit twelve into the same letter sized
sheet. And like the original, I will use
green cardstock, which will help prioritize getting the empties home for
another load.
Next, is a
card for Consigned Empties. The original
Form 1851 Standard is white cardstock with green ink, something I can duplicate
on a color printer. That’s the good news,
as is the twelve blanks on a sheet. The
bad news is that this form wasn’t in use during 1944, nor was it in the 1947
index of blank forms and the published example dates from 1965. It is useful, though, for cars in assigned
service and was a good idea. Plus, it
makes things more obvious to the casual operator, so with a bit more modeler’s
license, I created a version as it might have appeared in 1944 by combining the
elements of the 1965 version with the look of the 1944 Form 1850. I will use
this version for the auto parts cars bringing Jeep components to the Ford plant
in Richmond’s Inner Harbor.
Form 1851 Standard
(My interpretation
of what could have been)
Next is a
bit of speculation. The 1947 index has a
Form 1391 Standard, Empty Tank Car Card, listed right after the Form 1390, Meat
Car Card. I’ve not seen a real one, but
would like to confirm my assumptions. I
modified the format of the 1390 to include the last contained lading, important
for empty tanks, and eliminate the MCB classes, as a tank is a tank. I’m not sure what color cardstock to use,
green, buff, white, or some other color.
Below is my interpretation of how I think this Tank Card might have
looked. And yes, they were supposed to return
on non-revenue waybills, but this specialized card could have served that
purpose.
Form 1391 Standard
For now, I’ll
run with black ink on green cardstock.
That gives the same sense of urgency and differentiation that the Meat
Reefers get and facilitates the prompt return of a scarce, in-demand freight
car. In future posts, I’ll describe how
I plan to implement the waybills to go with these car cards and also explain
the Santa Fe way of labeling the myriad of forms that made the railroad run. I think that using the specialized car cards that the prototype actually used makes a lot of sense and will contribute to that sense of time and place that I'm trying to achieve as the US gears up to defeat the Japanese Empire at the close of 1944. Now if I can find suitable prototypes for locomotive and caboose cards . . .
Merry
Christmas!
John
Barry,
Lovettsville,
VA
