Glossary of Forms and Terms

As one of the largest, busiest and most profitable railroad systems in the world for decades, the Pennsylvania Railroad took to calling themselves the "Standard Railroad of the World". They were, in fact, incredibly good at keeping to standards—their own unique internal standards not shared with any other company. Virtually everything on the PRR—from locomotives, cars and station buildings down to tools, hardware and telegraph insulators—was either made by the PRR themselves, or custom built or ordered to the PRR's own exhaustively specified standards. Fittingly, the thousands of kinds of various paper forms and documents used throughout the PRR system were all standardized as well, with each and every one bearing a unique form number. Records explaining what each one signified and how they were assigned are scarce, but generally, "A.D." refers to the Accounting Department, "C.T." to the Transportation Department, and "F.D." to the Freight Department.

Outbound carloads in the W.C.C. collection are recorded in C.T.1098 forms (no, not the 1098-T forms that we college students have to get to file our taxes!). These are "Reports of Carloads Weighed": receipts from the track scales in nearby Altoona, returned to the W.C.C. to keep record of all outbound shipments. Inbound shipments are represented by freight bills to the W.C.C., of various subtly different varieties, which generally record the shipper, destination, car, cargo, and shipping cost.

For the use of the PRR historian, and for those who wish to reproduce authentic PRR paperwork for use in model railroad operating sessions, below is a list of form numbers which appear in this collection.