I’ve got two trains so far that I purchased before I even started my layout - a Western Pacific and a Great Northern (both GP’s).
Now to my knowledge, these companies had no ties, and as I’m freelancing I’ve got no qualms about having them together, providing there’s a good backstory for them.
So I was wondering, anyone have suggestions on how these two companies (or just the trains) have wound up together? Hopefully there are few different views on how to go about this.
You’re freelanced RR has yet to re-paint them? That’s my stock answer (especially if it’s a shortline). For a large RR, The owner lkes old R paint schemes and runs them.
If you freelance a railroad you set the rules yourself. That means that you rent or buy locomotives from whatever other railroad you want to do business with. Repainting some locos in your own colors is of course a good option too.
When I have studied pictures from the modern US railroads I have seen consists that have have a lot of different loco colors so I think you can use whatever combinations you like.
Your RR Company could also be leasing them. If you wanted to take it setp farther, you could get some decals with small lettering that says “Leased Motive Power”, and apply them to your locos. I don’t know if that is prototypical, but it sounds good. My RR is also frelanced and I will probably have some leased engines.
Actually, the two of them did have ties. They had an end to end interchange at Bieber, CA, when the GN, building south from Klamath Falls, OR and the Western Pacific, building north from Keddie, CA met in Bieber creating the “Inside Gateway”. http://www.gngoat.org/inside_gateway.htm
You don’t need a backstory if you model the Inside Gateway. The WP & GN already provided you with one.
Andre
You know, if you’re freelancing and if your setting is east coast in present day pretty much anything goes (within reason) I mean back in the 80’s I saw CP Rail, and UP Helper units/Purchased power In Winston Salem NC on SOU/NS Track. Couple days ago here in Northern NY a Conrail/NS Unit went by with a Guildford (GP 38-2…at least I think it was a -2) in the Middle of that was a CP-Rail Loco. So… you have three Major Roads and a short-Line (Though for some unfathomable reason a lot of locals get cheesed when I call Guilford a short line) I don’t really think you need a “story” guy…folks take this things at face value nowadays.
Or the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Western Pacific could merge to form the Great NorthWestern Pacific! [:)]
As Andre posted, the two did meet - so an interchange can be set up. Another prototype running is shared power - it was common in the '90’s - I don’t know about today. I live in northern NJ and have seen UP, CN, and just about anything else you can thionk of!! (is that ending with a preprosition?)[%-)]
Two words - Beiber, California.
The ‘other’ route from the Spanish Fork Bridge (aka Keddie Wye) was built north to Beiber, where the WP interchanged with the (pre-BNSF, pre BN) Great Northern. Now all you need to do is research a real location where your two prototype locomotives would be at home in the same place.
If in doubt, follow the prototype.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
As the others have said the GN and the WP did the last great railbuilding project of the U.S.A together. The idea was to get GN access to the California ports. It gave the WP another interchange partner and directly to the great lakes. Until that time it just had the UP, the D&RGW, and the Santa Fe. The SF already had their own route all the way to the Gulf and Chicago so why carry a rival companies (WP) traffic? The UP was still too friendly with the SP from “Harriman Lines” days.
Thanks everyone! [:D] I knew there would be some good suggestions around it. I think I’m going to try and have some sort of combination of the merger (love the Great NorthWestern Pacific name!) and maybe have track rights issued from another ‘local’ company.
The conductor and engineer from one company went out and committed a (GTT) Grand Train Theft and stole one locomotive for their train.