Manifest Destination Letters

[enginewhistle]

What are all the letters for a manifest supposed to be like U-LAUMQA1-08A (Laurel, Montana to Minnequa, Colorado)? I've never understood any of those ever

 

[amrail2000]

I gotta agree with you. I miss the old SCL when trains had numbers and were easy to understand. I knew where K-656 was coming from and where it was going and what to expect.

 

[JCitron]

The old B&M and now PAR/PAS have names that makes sense such as NMLA or LANM - North Maine Junction, ME to Lawrence, MA and reverse.

There are others too like the locals LA-1, LO-1, SA-1, etc., for Lawrence, Lowell, and Salem, respectively.

The ULAUMQA1-08A is, well a bit confusing! I'm sure it is for the dispatcher and road crew as well.

John

 

[RRSignal]

I remember Conrail had some reasonably sensical names as well. BAPI was Baltimore to Pittsburgh and PIBA was Pittsburgh to Baltimore. CAPY was Camden, NJ to Potomac Yard and so on. Seems this makes more sense than using the cryptic symbols that, say, CSX does.

 

[mjolnir]

What are all the letters for a manifest supposed to be like U-LAUMQA1-08A (Laurel, Montana to Minnequa, Colorado)? I've never understood any of those ever

This is an educated guess, but most railroads have a symbol that they use internally for marketing purposes to describe the purpose of the train, it's origin, it's destination, and the date it operated. Someone from the BNSF may be able to identify the codes in the first position (U), i'm sure there are several, for unit grain, intermodal, unit coal, unit auto, &c. the next set of letters is the origin and destination, as you mention Laurel MT and Minnequa, CO, respectively. The third set is the date (ran on the 8th of some month); the meaning of the A is less clear; it might mean a train which operates on a regular basis, it might mean the first train of that particular date on that particular day.

Added at 0900 UTC:

Subsequent to writing the above, I used the parameters "BNSF train symbol meanings", and came up with this file http://www.utu426.org/pdf/BNSF Train Symbols.pdf which lays out the various parts and what they mean. Note that at the top of the first page, the vertical pipe characters are intended to line up below the carets (upside down "v"'s). From this document, one can determine that U-LASMQA1-08A is the first section of an "unspecified unit train", originating at Laurel Montana, destined to Minnequa, CO, on the 8th of some month. The document does not clarify the meaning of the "A" at the end.


ns

 

[JCitron]

I remember Conrail had some reasonably sensical names as well. BAPI was Baltimore to Pittsburgh and PIBA was Pittsburgh to Baltimore. CAPY was Camden, NJ to Potomac Yard and so on. Seems this makes more sense than using the cryptic symbols that, say, CSX does.

The B&M used to have POPY or Portland (Rigby) to Potomac Yard. They used to do run throughs with Penn Central then Contrail later on. I'm not sure if PAR still has this symbol.

John