164, these instructions are brief, less than a third of a page. But
they are far more extensive in the separate Special Instructions
document. [5] shows what one looks like; this particular edition is
for April 1950 and is the companion to [4].
To give some idea of the extent and complexity of the material in
this Special Instructions document, I show in [6] a pair of pages
for the Guadalupe Sub. Note on the right-hand page that tonnage
ratings for both steam and diesel locomotives are shown. There
is also a table (not shown) of speed restrictions for the subdivi-
sion, as there was for each subdivision. At the front of the docu-
ment were also five pages of
instructions for all subdivisions.
This material, of course, is much
more extensive and detailed than
what is included in the employee
timetable.
7
7. The cover of the
Southern Pacific manifest
freight schedule book,
4¼” x 6½”. This same
cover was used from the
1950s at least until the
late 1960s.
8. A page from the 1965
freight schedule book,
showing the Golden Gate
Manifest train.
I browsed through the Special Instructions and chose some
selected rules I thought were relevant. On the prototype, these
would be included in the separate Special Instructions document,
not the timetable, but I wanted to compact everything into one
document, and these rules add flavor. They also provide informa-
tion permitting operators to reference any specific rule which may
affect operation. I decided to place these at the back of my time-
table, as the prototype did.
The third element I wanted to add to my timetable is, again, a
separate document on the prototype, namely freight train pro-
cedures. The SP did have a document describing manifest train
schedules [7] but I wanted to get everything into a single docu-
ment for operators.
These procedures identify the
purpose and schedule of spe-
cific trains. [8] and [9] show
8
MRH-Oct 2014
