How would the prototype identify a destination on a waybill that involved either team tracks or the freight house? For example , a boxcar destined for the “freight house” at Canton Junction, or a boxcar destined for a "team track "at Canton Junction. Era of interest is the transition period ( i.e., when there were active freight houses and team tracks at Canton Junction). ( Intent is to use this information for a car card forwarding system)
Mr. Mick
Modelling the New Haven, East End.
the station name would appear in the destination section of the waybill. the consignee’s name and exact delivery location or address would appear in the consignee section.
Charlie
Two different methods.
First the easy one. Team tracks. The consignee would be whoever the car was going to. the destination would be the team track (sometimes called "public track.) Sometimes in “shipper’s guides” (lists of shippers at each station on a railroad, the railroad will denote whether the customer is served by a private track or a public track. Public track = team track.
So if the Nehi Bottling Co. of Coatesville PA recieves traffic via the team track (a real customer from the 1954 Reading Co. shipper’s guide), the car would be billed to the Nehi Bottling Co and the destination would be the Reading team track at Coatesville, PA.
Customer : Nehi Bottling
Station: Coatesville
Track : Team track
Commodity : Bottles
So if your car card has a destination line and a customer line, the customer would be Nehi Bottling Co and the destination station would be Coateville, destination track would be the team track.
The freight house depends on whether its a car of LCl or a car load shipment. If its LCL the commodity would be LCL and the car would be billed to the agent at the station with the destination as the freight house.
Customer : Agent, RDG
Station: Coatesville
Track : Freight House
Commodity : LCL
If its a carload shipment it would be billed to the customer in care of the agent at the freight house.
Customer : Nehi Bottling c/o Agent, RDG
Station: Coatesville
Track : Freight House
Commodity : Bottles
unfortunately, many of the card systems used in model railroading were developed by people who had no firsthand knowledge of how things worked in the real world. i am sure they did the best they could with the information they had but perhaps a little more explanation would help.
i am now talking about how things were done back when we still had a paper world on the railroad and electronic data processing was done with punched cards read through IBM machines. i don’t know how things are done in the current electronic age.
every local and every industry switching job got switch lists that were provided by the agent or a clerk that took care of that particular station. (station meaning a point on the railroad that had a name) not a building. these switch lists identified every car to be handled by the local train or industry job and gave explicit instructions as to what track and what spot on that track the car was to be spotted. these lists also showed any cars to be pulled and the disposition of those cars. any cars to be left as is or re-spotted were identified as such.
the agent or clerk would telephone the customer and advise them that their car was available and the customer or his representative would put out the instructions to be passed on to the crew doing the actual work. at one time, railroads had and may still have traveling agents that called on each customer daily and picked up shipping orders for outbound loads and got verbal instructions as to pick ups and set outs.
on rare occasion, the crew might just show up with the car and the customer would tell them where to spot it but in that case, the same paperwork would be done after the fact for an official record and to protect the demurrage and switching charges, if any.
Charlie
Charlie,One thing I notice on the PRR as likely as not the customer would change what he needed done…A car that was supposed to be unloaded is partially still loaded…Those cars was usually lumber or boxcars being manually unloaded by two workers.Some times we just had to spot the car on the industry lead due to a foul up in the paper work…
While I like CC/WB I can’t help but wonder if a switch list would be better? But,as a former brakeman I would rather put my experience to use doing the required work in a prototypical manner by allowing a few seconds for the brakeman to do his require work…
one of the first things the PRR adopted right after the PC merger was the industrial car control system the NYC was using. later, their entire car reporting system was changed over to IBM like the NYC had.
railroads seemed to always be about ten years behind other industries when it came to technology and the P company was about ten years behind that. (we called them the standard railroad of the old world)
in 1968 i went over to the PRR operation at E St Louis prior to the merger to check things out and it reminded me of Bob Cratchette in the Scrooge Movie. they were one step removed from chiseling everything into stone tablets. their freiden system required the giant car movement cards to be hand fed into the reader and it took almost an hour to run a wheel report for a hundred car train. after reading each card, the machine would make a loud “DING” and that would wake the clerk up so he could insert another card and go back to his nap until the next ding.
a major source of outbound train crew initial terminal delay was waiting on the bills.
sometimes they would just run the train east with a hand written wheel report and forward the paperwork on the next eastbound.
i really shouldn’t bad mouth their system since i made a fortune in overtime trying to straighten it out and when i went back to braking, the transfer job bought me a new mustang in about 2 months. and to think, we were all afraid that the merger would cost us our jobs. HAH!!
actually the PRR had several on line industries that they switched at our location while the NYC had none at all. most of the Big Four’s industrial switching around my neck of the woods was up at East Alton and Roxana where we had a lot of Olin and refinery business. business out of Shell Oil was so heavy, we had a full time clerk and assigned yard job there on second trick just to switch the refinery.
Charlie
OK, here’s my [2c]
You can use whatever prototype system you feel works best, although if you’re modeling a certain era/prototype you might want to do some research to determine what is best for you.
In the end, whatever you choose needs to be clearly communicated to your crews. It’s OK to go into detail verbally about a customer who’s off-layout via a team track, drayage company, etc, but if you’re putting it down on the waybill you need to think in terms of what are the best 5 to 8 words maximum (preferably less) on a couple of lines (consignee, spot, whatever) on the actual waybill. They need to be chosen in terms of someone looking at a station on your layout, seeing any other clues like signage, etc, then getting the car spotted correctly.
The following is speaking of the yard office of 40 and more years ago in Los Angeles on the U.P., before computers.
While most of the business was routine and repeat business, a surprising amount was simply waybilled to the consignee in Los Angeles with no street address or further instructions. It was up to the yard office to figure out where to send it.
The railroads each distributed a publication that showed all industries on their railroad in the Los Angeles switching district. If that did not work we had a card index file on a big wheel. The last step was to ask fellow employees who might have a better memory, or call the other railroads. If nothing could be found, the cars were sent to the hold track and a postal notice would be sent if an address could be found in the telephone book.
Some industries in the Los Angeles area were on joint track and switched by more than one railroad. As long as there were no specific or standing instructions, the rule was to keep the car on the U.P., and not to pay another railroad to spot the car. A car showing up in the yard with no previous record was usually the result of a car being brought into the yard in error from a consignee on joint track.
The U.P had Industry Clerks who were assigned one or more switching districts. They went out daily and made a list of all cars on their district(s). They also signed bills of lading and handled the paperwork between the shippers and the U.P. The Traffic Department handled relations with the front office of the shippers.
Two infrequent consignees that I remember always arriving with no street address or any other instructions were L.A. Popular Furniture and C.F. L’Hommedieu. They both went to the East Los Angeles Team. C.F. L’Hommedieu was always difficult to find on the big card index wheel. From what I saw recently, what I thought was L.A. Popular Furniture was actually La Popular Fur
.