NS&T Train Order Book

Posted byTrevorPosted inLayouts I have designed or built, Niagara St Catharines & Toronto Railway in 1:64, Operations

I recently acquired an excellent piece of prototype paperwork: A complete, unused order book for the Niagara St. Catharines & Toronto Railway.

The instructions on the cover explain how this is used.

As the cover of the book notes, conductors and operators carried two of these at all times, so they’d always have a spare. These would allow conductors to copy train orders from any phone – such as the phone box at Welland, where the crew of southbound NS&T 83 has just obtained permission to cross the tracks of the the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo Railway and the Canada Southern division of the New York Central:

The grey structure is a phone box. Note the boxcar in the background, which is on the NS&T / TH&B interchange track.
Each book contains 50 train order pages, stamped with the book and page number.

I did not know these existed until I stumbled across one online, and it tells me a lot about how the NS&T operated. So I’m very pleased I found this!

Published by Trevor

Lifelong model railway enthusiast and retired amateur shepherd who trained a border collie to work sheep. Professional writer and editor, with some podcasting and Internet TV presenting work thrown in for good measure.