A Prototype Waybill - 30

Here is the waybill for this shipment (click to enlarge):

Andy prepared a listing covering waybills received on the A&W during July 2, 1962 through the 1st half of August 27, 1962 (http://www.greenbayroute.com/1962ahwwaybills.htm).  Searching through that list I found two related shipments.  The entry on line 99 of the table is the waybill discussed in the 7th post in this series referenced above.  The entry on line 316 of the table describes a waybill in which the EJE was the originating line haul carrier, the car was a gondola (PRR 366687, a gondola), and the route was identical to the waybill that is the subject of this post.  So there were three shipments of steel plates from U.S. Steel in South Chicago to Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in the roughly two month time period.  

The EJE was the OLHC, and this form is identical to the EJE form described in Post 7.  It has centerline symmetry, has the newer style layout of data fields, has the carrier and interline code number right justified across the top, and the carrier and interline code number are centered in smaller type across the bottom.  

The typeface is similar, if not identical to the typeface shown in Post 7.  It is san serif, clean and condensed, with old-style numbers and open-top 4s.  

There is no preprinting on the waybill.  

For the most part, the use of stamps is completely typical.  The stamps that were used include interchange stamps (square), received at yard stamps (round), the destination agent's received stamp (lower right), and the round shipper's weight under weight agreement stamp (middle right).  Less common, but not atypical, is the MANIFESTED stamp at the upper left.  We have seen this stamp on several waybills originated by different carriers and I have not been able to decipher its use.  

In the extreme upper left there is a new stamp that I thought was really interesting.  It says "CAR AHEAD MEMO BILL CARDING PHONED".  I spent some time looking into the subject of memo (or memorandum) bills.  Surprisingly to me, this topic wasn't covered in the Freight Traffic Red Book, so I looked on line a bit and found this information:

"The Memorandum Waybill is designed to give sufficient information as to the points of origin and destination, the consignee, the character of the freight and its weight, to permit of all of the functions to transportation being satisfactorily performed and the car being delivered in due time to its destination."

{Economics of Railway Operation, Morton L. Byers}

"... a memorandum bill is merely something improvised to carry a shipment to its final destination without reference to final charges."

{Railway Station Service, Benjamin C. Burt}

So a memorandum bill or card was probably prepared and accompanied the car and shipment when it was picked up in South Chicago.  The agent received the information about the shipment by telephone and prepared the waybill.  The agent probably applied this stamp at the time the waybill was prepared.  Finally, this waybill must have been forwarded to wherever the car was, when the memorandum waybill was no longer necessary.  Note that the waybill was connected with the shipment prior to leaving the EJ&E - perhaps at Rondout, which was a major station and interchange point on the EJ&E. There is a MILW received stamp on the waybill itself that was applied at Rondout (lower left).  

The type of the car (G) is indicated in handwriting.  I find it sort of odd that this was filled in by hand yet the car reporting marks and number were typed.  We've seen this little oddity in several other cases, so perhaps the car type was just added as an afterthought.  

The waybill number was 419018.  It does not appear to have been part of a special series.  Note that the EJ&E waybill in the previous post was numbered 417742.  If the numbers were used sequentially, and none were wasted, this suggests 1276 shipments in 46 days, or about 28/day for whatever area was covered by this clerk's territory.  

The waybill was prepared on August 18.  On August 21, the shipment was on the MILW in Rondout, on August 23 in Milwaukee, on August 24 in Green Bay, and on August 27 in Sturgeon Bay.  

The car was EJ&E 31342, a gondola.  The January 1958 ORER lists 547 of these steel, flat bottom, fixed end GBs in EJE 31000 to 31549.  The dimensional data are:

IL  49'

IW  9'2"

IH  3'

OL  50' 6.75"

EH  6' 6.5"

CAPY  1360 cu. ft., 100,000 lbs.

I've haven't been able to find much else about these cars.  I have a low resolution scan of EJE 31445 in my collection of unknown pedigree.  It shows a black car with white stenciling, fishbelly side sills with prominent rivet lines outlining the fish belly, side grab irons (not ladders), and 14 side panels (unequally spaced).  

The shipper was the U.S. Steel Plant in South Chicago.  This plant was covered in detail in Post 7.  

The consignee was Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. in Sturgeon Bay.  The consignee was also covered in detail in Post 7, but a few new pieces of information have come to my attention since that post was written.  

There's a nice history of the predecessors of Bay Shipbuilding, including our consignee here (http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/2large/active/bay.htm).  If you scroll a little less than half way down on that page you can see that in 1962 Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding built three boats:  the Peach State, a tug; the RL1401, a barge; and the Beaver Islander, a ferry.  So our steel plates might have been assembled into one of these three boats or perhaps they were for some repair work.  

In addition, the USGS has made a number of high resolution scans available, and I thought this area of Sturgeon Bay was worth showing again in much greater resolution than was available at the time Post 7 was written.  This was a busy and interesting area all the way at the north end of the A&W:




Just to the south was Christy Corp., where the Badger and Spartan were built:

The Route: 

The route was essentially that discussed in Post 7 without the stopover in Gary on the EJ&E.  The route was:

SO. CHICAGO - EJE - RONDOUT - MILW - GREEN BAY - KGB - CASCO JUNCTION - AW

The commodity was about 45 tons of steel plate.  The ICC commodity class was 583, Manufactured Iron and Steel.  Statistics from the 1% Carload Waybill study were provided in Post 7.  

There were no special instructions.  

This shipment was a home car shipped to a foreign destination, which is car selection class 1B.  The car was in its home district when loaded, and 1 district away from home at destination for a delta for the move of -1.  

The three shipments of plate steel from U.S. Steel to Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding we have seen so far are not enough to draw any statistical inferences, but they are an interesting assortment:

Andy Laurent and Charles Hostetler