I am in the process of building an N scale layout based in the 1880’s and would like some info on the type of trains that were on the rails back then. I doubt that any of you know first hand but may know more than me. I have seen in cowboy movies where a cowboy rides the train and gets off the train and gets his horse. I am figuring the loco and tender, a mail car amd maybe a boxcar or two, then 3 or 4 passenger cars and a stock car and a caboose. How close am I?
I would like to know what locos were in use in 1880 as well as what type of freight cars were being used. I know these are going to be difficult to find and would like to start trying to to locate some of them pretty soon so any info you could share with me would be helpful. I did a Google search on 1880’s trains and didn’t come up with much. Thanks. Mike
If you are modeling the 1880’s you need a copy of John White’s The American Railroad Freight Car. He explains all about operating a railroad in the wooden car era.
Locos - mostle 4-4-0’s, maybe a 4-6-0 or two. Consist - 1 to 3 passenger cars, no more than 5 or 6 cars unless double heading the loco’s. Horse travel was only somewhat common in the “wild west”, and it was more common for the horses to belong to the sherrif or the US Cavalry than to a cowboy - it would cost him half a month’s wages to ride 50-100 miles!! My [2c]
As for 1880’s engines pretty much anything that has a wooden cab and no trailing wheel is appropriate.
4-4-0 were by far the most common, but 2-6-0, 2-8-0, were by then common on freight service, 4-6-0 were becoming the preferred express passenger engines, even the 4-8-0 Mastadon wasn’t uncommon in frieght service, the Southern Pacific even had a monsterous 4-10-0 on helper service in the 1880’s.
Trailing wheels were developed in the late 1890’s as locomotive technology increased boiler/grate sizes over the rear of the drivers and didnt become commonplace till after the turn of the century with the 4-4-2 Atlantic and the 4-6-2 Pacifics leading the development, the same is true for all steel cabs, which were not common till the 1900’s-10’s.
If its a western/mid-western layout, then mixed local trains were fairly common, engine a couple passenger cars and then a few freight cars and maybe a caboose or hack (a converted boxcar with windows/no cupola) bringing up the rear.
The best search terms to plug in, for 1880s train supplies are “Old Time”, and “OT”. That won’t hit every possibility, but it will hit more than most others.
Look at Roundhouse/MDC and IHC for RTR locos and rolling stock, also Spectrum’s ten wheeler may serve as a base for modification. Durango Press, Grandtline and Campbell’s will lead to accessories and structures, Labelle for rolling stock, Musket Miniatures for figures and accessories, and Jay’s Trains, online, to order hard to find or out of stock items.
For hard data from the time period, free, www.narrowgauge.org will take you at least a week to tour respectibly, and will provide months of additional links.
Basically they were the same type of trains they have now (except for intermodal) but shorter with smaller cars and engines. Don’t use movies as a reference, I can pretty much guarantee the trains depicted there are NOT accurate and are purely a invention for the story.
You had an engine, then whatever cars that train carried. If it was a freight train, then you had boxcars, reefers, tank cars, stockcars, gons, hoppers and flat cars in the 28 to 36 ft range, but there were 40, 50 even 60 ft cars. There wre solid trains of one car type (actually commodity) such as coal trains or grain trains or stock trains. Coal was mostly handled in gondolas or wooden hoppers. There were virtually no steel cars, all wood. Freight trains were in the 30-50 car range, depending on how big an engine they had, in hilly/mountainous rea they would drop down to 20-40 cars. Freight trains had 4-4-0, 4-6-0, 4-8-0, 2-6-0, 2-6-2 or 2-8-0 engines. Switchers were mostly 0-4-0 or 0-6-0’s.
A through passenger train would have wooden passenger cars in the 70-80 ft size, a local would have cars more in the 40-60 ft range. Passenger trains generally had 4-4-0 or 4-6-0 engines.
The 4-4-0 was the same as a GP-7 in the 50’s or a GP-38-2 today. They were used for everything.
The best reference in White’s history of the American Freight Car. It has more information than you could hope for. They are available at places like Amazon and occaisionally on e-bay.
in the 1880s there were very few 60’ freight cars, generally they were used for shipping wagons, carriages and furniture. most freight cars in the early 1880s were 30-34 feet in length, although there were still many 4 wheel freightr cars in service. 36 foot cars began to show up in the 1890s. very few freight cars had air brakes. most had link and pin couplers. most freight cars were either box or flat. although refrigerator cars were in use as early as 1851 (they were called “butter cars” then) they were rarely used in interchange service. most were rebuilt from obsolete boxcars. purpose built stock cars did not appear until the 1890s, before that old obsolete boxcars with ventilation holes cut in the roof were used. cabooses usually were short 4 wheelcars. most locomotives were 4-4-0s (and usually woodburners), there were some 2-6-0s and 4-6-0s. curiously RRs that had 2-6-0s generally did not have 4-6-0s. the first 2-8-0s were built in 1866, but outside of eastern coal roads the consolidation type was not seen in significant numbers until after 1900. trains were short. 12 cars was considered a long train, although trains of 30 cars were not uncommon. double heading was common. i would suggest looking at period photos from the area you are modeling to see what traffic looked for in the period you are modeling.
Gotta take exception here. The largest single commodity moved by rail, tonnage wise, was coal. The vast majority of it was shipped in 2 axle coal jennies, 4 axle wood truss hoppers and gondolas (hopper bottom, drop bottom or solid bottom). They were a huge component of eastern railroads. The PRR had 10’s of thousands of class 30 ft GD hopper bottom gons for hauling coal, rock etc.
Boxcars were probably the majority of the cars, but gons would be a close second. then probably stock, then reefers, then flats and lastly tank cars.
The problem is that the model manufacturers have abandoned (if they ever supported) the pre-1910 eras. There has never been a mass produced HO wood hopper car, coal jenny or even a typical gon or hopper bottom gon. Even thought they compromised 25-30% of all the cars of eastern roads.
Not by the 1880’s, they were specially built cars with distinctively different designs. the doors were much narrower and much lower, many cars had ice bunkers under the roof line, there were dozens of varieties of ice hatch sizes and arrangements.
Once again, I have take exception here since White’s book has pictures and diagrams of purpose built stock cars from the 1870’s and I have books documenting stockcars built for the P&R back to the 1850’s and 1860’s.
According to White (again) 40 car trains were common in the 1870’s. There are example given of roads with common train si
in my post i was referring to what was common in the 1880s. according to White (A History of the American Locomotive) the typical locomotive in 1880 was a 4-4-0 weighing about 30 tons. Sure the PRR was doubleheading 1000 ton burden trains of about 90 cars downhill to tidewater in 1889 using class “O” 2-8-0s (they were later reclassified as class “H”) but such locomotives were rarely seen outside of the coal hauling roads of the east prior to 1900.
A typical 4-4-0 locomotive of 30 tons (with 20 tons on the drivers) would produce 10,000 lbs TE and could pull a train of 312 tons against a maximum 1% grade. Assuming cars of 20 ton capacity with a car weight of 5 tons that works out to 12 loaded cars before helpers were needed.
Likewise hopper cars were uncommon, in fact William Voss, master car builder of the Burlington Cedar Rapids & Northern writing in National Car and Locomtive Builder (1888) reports that the majority of coal shipped in the US was transported in gondolas (without hopper bottoms) only in the south and east were hopper bottom cars common. He further stresses that Gondolas (at that time) were a peculiar form of platform (his term) [flatcar]
Yes purpose built Stock cars were around in the 1880s, I too have plans for them as early as 1862. However they do not appear to be common. Voss describes purpose built stock cars as a new concept that was catching on. He gives a technical description of the revolutionary differences between the new stock cars and those of the 1870s, starting with the fundimental way the framework attaches to the platform. Earlier stock cars were built with stakes in pockets supporting the sides.
Refeigerator cars, as stated they first showed up in the 1850s and yes i have loads of plans for them. But were they typical, no, other than a few lines running out of Chicago, refrigerato
One source to get would be the Clover House decal / dry transfer catalogue. They specialize in 19th c. and early 20th c. lettering sets and are good about noting the exact car type and era for that lettering set (i.e. “34’ boxcar c.1890”).
One thing to keep in mind is that artificial paint coloring was created in 1859. Before that, the color of the paint was connected to how rare the natural material was that was used in making it. Freight car red was dirt cheap because it was made from…well, dirt (or clay) that had red iron oxides in it. It made a long lasting tough paint, which is why boxcars and barns etc. came to be painted that shade of red. Purple was made from some sea animals ink or something, so was very rare and expensive - only royalty could afford it basically. When artificial colors came in, colors became more diverse and cheaper, so people went nuts in the later Victorian era with color. Painting a house 4-5-6 different colors wasn’t unusual, so our view of the old west era as being filled with dull lifeless buildings really wasn’t true.
Trains became more colorful too. Before “Pullman Green” became standard later in the century, many passenger cars were painted straw yellow or dark yellow (like “English Stagecoach yellow” of the CNW) or even white. (Several railroads had “White Mail” trains made up of all white or cream passenger cars.) Many boxcars were painted yellow, but dark red continued to be very common too.
Cars were much smaller than we’d consider normal today. Civil War era 24’-28’ boxcars would still be around, with a 6’-7’ interior, although 34’ and 36’ with an 8’ interior would be becoming more common. Tank cars might be just that - a flat car with a couple of circular tanks laid flat - like two swimming pools on a flatcar. Passenger cars would be in the 50’-60’ range, although 80’ ones may have started to appear - they became common in the 1890’s. Except m
Assuming you were on a grade. A quick page through White showed 4 or 5 pictures of trains with c. 1880’s 4-4-0’s where you you can count more than twelve cars in the picture and there were numerous references to trains of over 30 cars. I think that saying the max train size is 12 cars is understating it a bit. Probably on a line with significant grades it wouldn’t be far off. In reality it doesn’t make any difference since a model 4-4-0 isn’t going to pull more than 12 cars on the level, let alone on a grade, so from a modeling perspective the point is moot.
Hopper bottom gons were less common before the 1880’s and they probably were less common even after that west of Indiana. I would say though that the vast majority of coal was mined in the south and east, so the cars used to haul coal in those areas would be the predominate types of coal cars. The drop bottom gon was very popular. If you look at the big coal roads of the day north of the Mason Dixon line (P&R, PRR, B&O, LV, LNE) they used hopers (wood truss or steel pot) or two axle coal jennies. White has plans for various road’s 2 axle coal jennies on pages 304-309. It appears that in the south (N&W, L&N), drop bottom gons seemed to be m
Thansk all for all the good info, I do appriciate it. I an not 100% going to model in exactly 1880 but around that time and will model in and around the Central US , Kansas plains and Indian Territory if I can.
Does anyone know a good place or manufacture to start looking for wooden rail cars? I am also thinking of putting a cattle drive on a spot of the layout, I thought that would look neat. Thanks again, Mike
In Kansas you would see mostly boxcars as they were used for general commodities and grain, which would be a big deal in Kansas. Stock cars would also be big in Kansas as cattle shipments to KC, Omaha and Chicago. What coal was burned would come in gons, either drop or solid bottom from the IC/LN/MP/CBQ via St Louis most likely. Lumber in flats, gons and boxcars from Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa would also be a big commodity. Hay would also be a big commodity.
I think Kadee has some older cars, otherwise it would be very easy to scratch boxcars since they are basically a box with a roof. Evergreen made N scale car siding. It would also be easy to cast your own cars out of resin since they would be samll and relatively simple.
Also check out Art Griffin decals, he has thousands of them from the 1880’s to 1920’s.
There is a great book on railroads in Minneapolis, while not Kansas, it has lots of shots of early cars and trains, plus pictures of elevators and flour mills that might be useful.
