looking for switchlists ( i think!)

[Anonymous]

i've read somewhere that you can sometimes find switchlists (i don't know if that's the right term) in local libraries and such. I'm looking to find information about industries in the area i plan on modeling such as number of cars/day, materials shipped, where it originated and what yars it went through, etc.

if it helps it would be the north texas area, mainly fort worth. any railroad would be fine.

thanks in advance!
Mac

[dragonriversteel]

http://rds.yahoo.com/S=96062883/K=switch+list/v=2/SID=w/l=IVR/SIG=11jsmghf3/EXP=1136338568/*-http%3A//www.nyandw.com/forms.htm

Mac,

This is the easy way to find railroad paper work.......the internet. Anyhow,heres a link that will serve your railroad,listed above. Just download the ones you want ... print ,copy and use for your pike. Hope this helps.

Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}
Making HO scale steel by the ton!!!!

[dragonriversteel]

http://www.nyandw.com/ This might be a better link.

Patrick

[Anonymous]

thanks, patrick.

i did a little digging and this one is pretty good, not fun to look at but informative:
http://model-rr.crispen.org/waybills/index.php?sb=OriginState

[leighant]

I have a source that does SOME of what you are looking for-- industries and commodities, though not cars/day or routing. It is a Southern Pacific tariff of 1972 that is a "list of industries on common points", that is, industries located in towns that are served by the SP and at least one other railroad. The purpose of the tariff is to determine what railroad directly serves a particular industry when a car is consigned to that town. If the town is served ONLY by SP, it is not listed. If the town is NOT SERVED at all by SP, it is not listed. But for most large and medium sized cities where the SP ran, there was at least one other railroad, so the tariff has a list of the industries, which railroad serves it and what kind of commodities were usually handled. For some towns, it may list only 25 industries. For another, 150. For one of Texas' larger cities-- maybe 600 or 700! Lots of info there.

Another source for planning layouts and operations is a prototype track book that shows in schematic diagram form (not to scale) each track in a town or on a district, often identifying the length of passing sidings or yard tracks, location and identification of industry tracks and specific spotting points on those industry tracks. I have several for Santa Fe Texas lines, one for Houston Belt and Terminal, and one for either Louisville or Nashville, I forget which.

Do you modern current day or some period? For Texas, the Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide has about half a page on the business of each county in Texas, county-by-county, and a page or two on each of the major and a lot of the minor industries in Texas with where that kind of industry is located, what kind of raw material is uses and in what its products are used. I model middle 1950s so I have old copies of [i]Texas Almanac[/1] for 1952-53 and 1958-59. Old issues can often be found year by year in a large reference library, or you can find them at random in antique and used book stores.