Introduction:
I recently added this waybill to my very small collection. It caught my eye for several reasons. It is from a small southern Class 1 railroad; I've always had a soft spot for those carriers and this is an interesting addition to my working collection of waybill headers. It uses the "STOP This Car At" provision, and I've been interested in capturing that feature in my model waybills. Finally, the shipper is a manufacturer of millwork and wooden doors, and I thought it might be interesting to contrast this smaller operation with the Algoma Plywood facility that we've seen so much of in the Ahnapee & Western waybills.
Here's the front side of the waybill:
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This is the only part of the back side that was marked:
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The waybill is not folded or creased and is in very clean condition. Unlike the waybills in the A&W collection that we have ben looking at, I don't think this particular copy was the document that traveled with the car as there are no junction or received stamps on it. From the stamp on the back I think it is likely that this copy was simply forwarded from the originating agent to a central repository for bookkeeping purposes.
I found the spelling of Charleston S.C. on the official General Agent's stamp mildly amusing.
Format:
The Charleston & Western Carolina Railway was the originating line-haul carrier. The top header is right-justified; note the simple clean san-serif block style type in the header contrasting with the more ornate typeface immediately underneath ("Freight Waybill"). The bottom footer is centered. The waybill is in the early style layout.
Typefaces, Preprinting, Stamps, and Handwriting:
The typeface on this copy is definitely from carbon paper, and the typeface is broadened and smudged a bit. The typeface is a serif style, with closed-top fours and lining numbers. This is the second case we have seen (out of a total of 31) where the typing is not all in capital letters.
The entry for the originating Station (6216 Varnville, S. C.) is definitely preprinted (not stamped) in red; this form was probably from a pad specifically for the use of the Varnville station agent.
There are no interchange or received stamps on the waybill.
There is some miscellaneous handwriting on the bill that doesn't seem too informative.
Waybill Number and Dates:
The waybill number was 6040, and may have been from a series assigned to the Varnville agent. The waybill was originated on November 5, 1954. We have no indication from this document about the duration of the shipment.
The Car:
The car is PRR 87410, a box car in 86901 to 87650. In the January 1958 ORER, the Pennsylvania listed 747 of these all steel X46 box cars, which were classified at the time as XI (insulated box cars). The dimensional data are:
IL 40' 6"
IW 9' 2"
IH 10' 6"
OL 41' 11"
EW 10' 7"
EH 15'
Door Opening 8'
Capy 3898 cu. ft., 100,000 lbs.
There is a tabulation of the X46 cars here http://prr.railfan.net/freight/classpage.html?class=X46 which indicates that they were built in 1952-3. This car must have been fairly new at the time of this shipment. There's a photograph of PRR 87516 here (http://prr.railfan.net/freight/freightphotos.html?photo=http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/prr/prr87516d.jpg&fr=clX46). The cars were of riveted construction, 5 panels on each side of the 8' door opening, and with a heavy, low, straight sidesill. There is also a vertical row of widely-spaced rivets aligned with each bolster. According to Elden Gatewood (STFMC 77011) these were the last of the 40' box cars built by the PRR and the heavy side sill was a response to bowing problems with previous designs. They were a transition design during the time when 50' box cars were coming into vogue. Elden also remarked that the X46 cars were designed for special shipments ("appliances and the like"). I don't know of an HO-scale modeling approach for this car.
The Shipper:
The shipper was the Federal Mill Work Corp. in Varnville (Hampton County) S.C. Data from the 1956 County City Databook (U.S. Census Bureau) show that Hampton County had $4,056,000 Value Added by Manufacture (which was about 0.6% of the state's total). This was one of the Hampton County's 32 manufacturing establishments.
This is a November 1957 aerial view of the facility just north of downtown Varnville:
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It lies just north of the C&WC's mainline from Port Royal to Augusta and has a dedicated siding. It is a much simpler and smaller facility than Algoma Plywood. They probably used local timber primarily, shipping finished doors to wholesalers in the north east.
The Consignees:
There were two consignees for this shipment. One was the J.A. Melnick Co. in Metuchen, New Jersey, and the other was the J.A. Melnick Co. in Brooklyn New York. The "STOP This Car At" provision was used to direct a partial unloading in N.J. before completing the shipment in N.Y. J.A. Melnick Co. was a wholesaler of millwork; selling primarily to retail lumber stores and construction companies.
This is J. A. Melnick's new facility in 1954 in Metuchen N.J. just off the PRR main line in a suburban setting:
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and this is J.R. Melnick's facility in the Bush Terminal Company's Warehouse Building in a much more congested urban setting on the Brooklyn waterfront (black arrow indicates facility):
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The Bush Terminal on the western edge of Long Island was reached by car float across the mouth of the Hudson River from Bayonne and Jersey City N.J. You can see two car floats just above the tail of the arrow, and the Bush Terminal's sorting yard is just above the head of the arrow. There is a lot of interesting background information on the Bush Terminal at this link: http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/bt.html.
I found it quite interesting that this shipment started off in such a rural setting and made its way to what was the wholesale capital of the U.S. in the 1950s.
The Route:
The route was:
VARNVILLE - CWC - YEMASSEE - ACL - ACCA - RFP - POTOMAC YARD - PRR - JERSEY CITY - BUSH TERMINAL
Note that the car was stopped en route in Metuchen N.J. (on the PRR) for partial unloading. Also note that the agent apparently felt that the ACL/RFP/PRR connections were standard enough that the interchange connections didn't have to be fully listed.
I calculated the following short-line hauls for the shipment:
C&WC 17 miles ( 2%)
ACL 458 miles (56%)
RFP 117 miles (14%)
PRR 227 miles (28%)
Total 819 miles
The Commodity:
The commodity was a carload of wooden doors, weighing 30 tons by shipper's load and count. 500 lbs. were allotted for dunnage.
Wooden doors were in ICC Commodity Class 677, Building Woodwork & Millwork. During the 1950s, the 1% sample contained an average of 277 (+/- about 30) carloads of building woodwork and millwork each year:
1957 was pretty typical. In 1957 the 1% Carload Waybill Survey contained a total of 281 carloads of the commodity class out of a total of 304,767 carloads in the survey (i.e., about 0.1 %). 277 of these shipments were in box cars, and 4 were in flat cars (either flat cars per se or trailer on flat car). The 281 shipments averaged 22 tons/car, traveled an average of 1263 miles, and generated an average revenue of $374.
Our shipment was a good bit heavier than average, traveled less than the average distance, but generated significantly more revenue than the average.
In terms of state-to-state distributions, South Carolina was not a big shipper of this commodity class. In fact, in 1957 the sample contained no shipments from South Carolina. (This is a good time to remark that because the 1% sample doesn't contain a particular commodity flow doesn't mean that flow didn't exist; it just means that it wasn't captured in the sample.) During the years 1950 through 1960 there were a total of 3,044 carloads of this commodity class captured in the sample. A grand total of 6 of these carloads originated in South Carolina, and of these, a grand total of 1 terminated in New York. In any case we can certainly conclude that this was not a dominant commodity flow and probably should be modeled sparingly.
Special Instructions:
The car was to be weighed at Yemassee S.C., probably just prior to interchange with the ACL.
Freight Car Distribution:
This shipment is a good example of how the system should work. A free-rolling foreign box car (PRR 87410) was found empty and forwarded to the C&WC agent at Varnville for loading. The load was shipped via the owner's line (i.e., over the PRR) to a destination (not on the PRR) in the same AAR District (District 16). We use a car selection code of 2A to describe this usage (2A - a foreign car loaded via owner's road to any destination).
At the start of the shipment, the PRR box car was 2 districts away from home, and at the end of the shipment the car was 0 districts away. The net change was +2 districts. This use of the PRR car promoted the AAR's vision of proper freight car utilization.
Points to Ponder:
In thinking about this post I am drawn to the question of what was typical on the prototype. In general, I think prototype modelers like to strive for the typical, and use the unusual very sparingly for accent. Part of what makes the study of commodity flows so interesting to me is that if we think about all of the different variables pertinent to an individual shipment (say the origin, the destination, the car, and the commodity), we find that each of these variables is widely distributed on the prototype, and the distributions are very broad, so that the "typical" is really made up of a large combination of what really were individually improbable events.
As an example, in 1957 there were about 15,800 items listed in the ORER, and the most numerous of the box cars items in the U.S. fleet were CB&Q's 29000 to 37749 40' steel box cars with 6' doors. There were 7817 of these cars, which sounds like a large concentration (the average number of cars per ORER item in 1957 was about 144). But this big series represents only about 0.3% of the total.
The most typical commodity class shipment in box cars in 1957 was Animal and Poultry Food, with about 5,700 shipments in the 1% carload sample that probably represented about 570,000 carloads in 1957. This was about 6% of the box car loads.
So the combination of the most common box car commodity shipped in the most common box car probably occurred about 0.01% of the time. In striving for prototype plausibility it strikes me that while each individual combination of car, commodity, origin, and destination are pretty unlikely, over the long haul its the average of a large number of these individual events that determines the prototype character (flavor) of what we are trying to reproduce in miniature.
Another way to say this in terms of waybill modeling is that you need a large pool of potential waybills from which to draw upon, but the frequencies for any particular set of characteristics should be carefully chosen to provide the prototype flavor you are trying to reproduce.
Charles Hostetler and Andy Laurent
I recently added this waybill to my very small collection. It caught my eye for several reasons. It is from a small southern Class 1 railroad; I've always had a soft spot for those carriers and this is an interesting addition to my working collection of waybill headers. It uses the "STOP This Car At" provision, and I've been interested in capturing that feature in my model waybills. Finally, the shipper is a manufacturer of millwork and wooden doors, and I thought it might be interesting to contrast this smaller operation with the Algoma Plywood facility that we've seen so much of in the Ahnapee & Western waybills.
Here's the front side of the waybill:
This is the only part of the back side that was marked:
The waybill is not folded or creased and is in very clean condition. Unlike the waybills in the A&W collection that we have ben looking at, I don't think this particular copy was the document that traveled with the car as there are no junction or received stamps on it. From the stamp on the back I think it is likely that this copy was simply forwarded from the originating agent to a central repository for bookkeeping purposes.
I found the spelling of Charleston S.C. on the official General Agent's stamp mildly amusing.
Format:
The Charleston & Western Carolina Railway was the originating line-haul carrier. The top header is right-justified; note the simple clean san-serif block style type in the header contrasting with the more ornate typeface immediately underneath ("Freight Waybill"). The bottom footer is centered. The waybill is in the early style layout.
Typefaces, Preprinting, Stamps, and Handwriting:
The typeface on this copy is definitely from carbon paper, and the typeface is broadened and smudged a bit. The typeface is a serif style, with closed-top fours and lining numbers. This is the second case we have seen (out of a total of 31) where the typing is not all in capital letters.
The entry for the originating Station (6216 Varnville, S. C.) is definitely preprinted (not stamped) in red; this form was probably from a pad specifically for the use of the Varnville station agent.
There are no interchange or received stamps on the waybill.
There is some miscellaneous handwriting on the bill that doesn't seem too informative.
Waybill Number and Dates:
The waybill number was 6040, and may have been from a series assigned to the Varnville agent. The waybill was originated on November 5, 1954. We have no indication from this document about the duration of the shipment.
The Car:
The car is PRR 87410, a box car in 86901 to 87650. In the January 1958 ORER, the Pennsylvania listed 747 of these all steel X46 box cars, which were classified at the time as XI (insulated box cars). The dimensional data are:
IL 40' 6"
IW 9' 2"
IH 10' 6"
OL 41' 11"
EW 10' 7"
EH 15'
Door Opening 8'
Capy 3898 cu. ft., 100,000 lbs.
There is a tabulation of the X46 cars here http://prr.railfan.net/freight/classpage.html?class=X46 which indicates that they were built in 1952-3. This car must have been fairly new at the time of this shipment. There's a photograph of PRR 87516 here (http://prr.railfan.net/freight/freightphotos.html?photo=http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/prr/prr87516d.jpg&fr=clX46). The cars were of riveted construction, 5 panels on each side of the 8' door opening, and with a heavy, low, straight sidesill. There is also a vertical row of widely-spaced rivets aligned with each bolster. According to Elden Gatewood (STFMC 77011) these were the last of the 40' box cars built by the PRR and the heavy side sill was a response to bowing problems with previous designs. They were a transition design during the time when 50' box cars were coming into vogue. Elden also remarked that the X46 cars were designed for special shipments ("appliances and the like"). I don't know of an HO-scale modeling approach for this car.
The Shipper:
The shipper was the Federal Mill Work Corp. in Varnville (Hampton County) S.C. Data from the 1956 County City Databook (U.S. Census Bureau) show that Hampton County had $4,056,000 Value Added by Manufacture (which was about 0.6% of the state's total). This was one of the Hampton County's 32 manufacturing establishments.
This is a November 1957 aerial view of the facility just north of downtown Varnville:
The Consignees:
There were two consignees for this shipment. One was the J.A. Melnick Co. in Metuchen, New Jersey, and the other was the J.A. Melnick Co. in Brooklyn New York. The "STOP This Car At" provision was used to direct a partial unloading in N.J. before completing the shipment in N.Y. J.A. Melnick Co. was a wholesaler of millwork; selling primarily to retail lumber stores and construction companies.
This is J. A. Melnick's new facility in 1954 in Metuchen N.J. just off the PRR main line in a suburban setting:
and this is J.R. Melnick's facility in the Bush Terminal Company's Warehouse Building in a much more congested urban setting on the Brooklyn waterfront (black arrow indicates facility):
The Bush Terminal on the western edge of Long Island was reached by car float across the mouth of the Hudson River from Bayonne and Jersey City N.J. You can see two car floats just above the tail of the arrow, and the Bush Terminal's sorting yard is just above the head of the arrow. There is a lot of interesting background information on the Bush Terminal at this link: http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/bt.html.
I found it quite interesting that this shipment started off in such a rural setting and made its way to what was the wholesale capital of the U.S. in the 1950s.
The Route:
The route was:
VARNVILLE - CWC - YEMASSEE - ACL - ACCA - RFP - POTOMAC YARD - PRR - JERSEY CITY - BUSH TERMINAL
Note that the car was stopped en route in Metuchen N.J. (on the PRR) for partial unloading. Also note that the agent apparently felt that the ACL/RFP/PRR connections were standard enough that the interchange connections didn't have to be fully listed.
I calculated the following short-line hauls for the shipment:
C&WC 17 miles ( 2%)
ACL 458 miles (56%)
RFP 117 miles (14%)
PRR 227 miles (28%)
Total 819 miles
The Commodity:
The commodity was a carload of wooden doors, weighing 30 tons by shipper's load and count. 500 lbs. were allotted for dunnage.
Wooden doors were in ICC Commodity Class 677, Building Woodwork & Millwork. During the 1950s, the 1% sample contained an average of 277 (+/- about 30) carloads of building woodwork and millwork each year:
| Year | Carloads |
| 1950 | 275 |
| 1951 | 273 |
| 1952 | 248 |
| 1953 | 279 |
| 1954 | 248 |
| 1955 | 340 |
| 1956 | 308 |
| 1957 | 281 |
| 1958 | 252 |
| 1959 | 293 |
| 1960 | 247 |
| Average | 277 |
| Std Dev | 29 |
1957 was pretty typical. In 1957 the 1% Carload Waybill Survey contained a total of 281 carloads of the commodity class out of a total of 304,767 carloads in the survey (i.e., about 0.1 %). 277 of these shipments were in box cars, and 4 were in flat cars (either flat cars per se or trailer on flat car). The 281 shipments averaged 22 tons/car, traveled an average of 1263 miles, and generated an average revenue of $374.
Our shipment was a good bit heavier than average, traveled less than the average distance, but generated significantly more revenue than the average.
In terms of state-to-state distributions, South Carolina was not a big shipper of this commodity class. In fact, in 1957 the sample contained no shipments from South Carolina. (This is a good time to remark that because the 1% sample doesn't contain a particular commodity flow doesn't mean that flow didn't exist; it just means that it wasn't captured in the sample.) During the years 1950 through 1960 there were a total of 3,044 carloads of this commodity class captured in the sample. A grand total of 6 of these carloads originated in South Carolina, and of these, a grand total of 1 terminated in New York. In any case we can certainly conclude that this was not a dominant commodity flow and probably should be modeled sparingly.
Special Instructions:
The car was to be weighed at Yemassee S.C., probably just prior to interchange with the ACL.
Freight Car Distribution:
This shipment is a good example of how the system should work. A free-rolling foreign box car (PRR 87410) was found empty and forwarded to the C&WC agent at Varnville for loading. The load was shipped via the owner's line (i.e., over the PRR) to a destination (not on the PRR) in the same AAR District (District 16). We use a car selection code of 2A to describe this usage (2A - a foreign car loaded via owner's road to any destination).
At the start of the shipment, the PRR box car was 2 districts away from home, and at the end of the shipment the car was 0 districts away. The net change was +2 districts. This use of the PRR car promoted the AAR's vision of proper freight car utilization.
Points to Ponder:
In thinking about this post I am drawn to the question of what was typical on the prototype. In general, I think prototype modelers like to strive for the typical, and use the unusual very sparingly for accent. Part of what makes the study of commodity flows so interesting to me is that if we think about all of the different variables pertinent to an individual shipment (say the origin, the destination, the car, and the commodity), we find that each of these variables is widely distributed on the prototype, and the distributions are very broad, so that the "typical" is really made up of a large combination of what really were individually improbable events.
As an example, in 1957 there were about 15,800 items listed in the ORER, and the most numerous of the box cars items in the U.S. fleet were CB&Q's 29000 to 37749 40' steel box cars with 6' doors. There were 7817 of these cars, which sounds like a large concentration (the average number of cars per ORER item in 1957 was about 144). But this big series represents only about 0.3% of the total.
The most typical commodity class shipment in box cars in 1957 was Animal and Poultry Food, with about 5,700 shipments in the 1% carload sample that probably represented about 570,000 carloads in 1957. This was about 6% of the box car loads.
So the combination of the most common box car commodity shipped in the most common box car probably occurred about 0.01% of the time. In striving for prototype plausibility it strikes me that while each individual combination of car, commodity, origin, and destination are pretty unlikely, over the long haul its the average of a large number of these individual events that determines the prototype character (flavor) of what we are trying to reproduce in miniature.
Another way to say this in terms of waybill modeling is that you need a large pool of potential waybills from which to draw upon, but the frequencies for any particular set of characteristics should be carefully chosen to provide the prototype flavor you are trying to reproduce.
Charles Hostetler and Andy Laurent