After filling in the register every time a train traversed the line for almost a year, it was time to add some more pages. With all that experience came some improvements.
First, I did away with the Tonnage column. In terms of model operations, it’s as useful as a spoon in a sword fight. Indeed, it’s hard to guess how the tonnage column would have been used by a real railroad. I have an aversion for busy-work, and estimating the supposed tonnage from the number of loads and empties felt like busy work from the first time I shirked the column.
In its place, I added a column for number of passengercars. Whether these were loads or empties was imponderable when I started operating. If it was a question for me, it would surely be a question for future guests. Adding an explicit column for passenger cars takes the question away.
Even though I barely use them for their intended purpose, I kept the columns for signals. I use these to keep track of derailments, which helps me to prioritize fixes.
The omission of tonnage and the addition of passenger columns were both supported by real train registers I found online. In the non-prototypical category, I added a prompt for the real date at the bottom right of the page. I was trying to add dates there, but most of the time I forgot. It’s interesting to look back on the real timeline of operations occasionally, especially as the model calendar is stuck in August.
Pembroke:87 
I can see where tonnage might be of interest on a territory where that might affect a trains running time. Also, in the railroad world, train makeup is seldom expressed without that statistic – for example, Loads/Empties/Tonnage/Feet.
Interesting thought, Jeff. Are you supposing that a following train would look at the register entry for the train ahead, notice it was heavy and adjust their behaviour accordingly?
Possibly. It might be an indication of the likelihood of running up behind them. There were flagging rules that required slower trains to periodically drop lit fusees to slow any following trains. Not sure if that is period appropriate for your CA. But it is a fun piece of trivia for the operations crowd.