Aren't the 1870's backwoods, podunk railroading???

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Someone E-mailed me about the limited operations the 1870’s would provide.

“Isn’t it backwoods, podunk railroading, you know shortline stuff. Not real railroading”

The DL&W yard in Scranton in 1877 during the strike. Podunk, no.

Actually most large model railroad trackplans depict a physical plant more suited to the 1870’s than the more modern era depicted. In the 1870’s there were fast freights, express passenger, sleepers and large industries.

Model the 1870’s at:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/1879/why/

Thank you if you visit
Harold

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The 1870’s started the age of the railroad Robber Barons, railroad expansion all over the place, the start of several large western railroad empires, political and financial infighting that left Wall Street gasping in shock, and the transformation of America from an agricultural to an industrial giant. Tell your friend to stop playing video games and crack a few history books, LOL! That was one EXCITING era in railroading.
Tom [:D][:D]

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Excellent history lesson, Harold![tup]

Now a 'trivia" question for you:
Do you know, or could you direct me to a website with, information about which railroad was built thru the town of DeSmet, South Dakota in the late 1870’s? The reason I am interested is because DeSmet is the home town of Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote the “Little House” book series (which later was the basis of a popular TV show “Little House on the Prairie”). I’ve been reading these books to my 6yr-old daughter as bedtime stories, and they contain some very fascinating passages about this early railroad.

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Probably either the Northern Pacific or a little line that eventually became an NP subsidiary.

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Twhite…Your absolutely right on about the history!

And In addition…guys (brakemen) sitting/roaming on boxcars to set or release the brakes (no air brakes yet…just invented in 1869).

No real brakes on alot of locomotives; just reversing levers and tooting at the brakemen to set the brakes on the rest of the consist. Alot of maimed brakemen because of the couplers were still the pinned type.

No CTC or radios…just alot of whistling to let the crew know what was happening. All watches needed to be set and syncronized cause that light on your track WAS the on-coming train. All orders were written & sometimes oral with telegraphed backup.

Wooden cow catchers…which looked great but didn’t do a great clearing job (Steel pilots didn’t become required until WW1 - I believe).

Consoladations were new & the Mogul was THE freight engine. Camelbacks were in abundance on alot of roads. Coal was coming into it’s own but wood was used extensively. 4-4-0’s were premier passenger engines but engine numbers were replacing names.

Flying switching was utilized as a method of setting out cars: The loco and front end of the consist runs past the switch were a brakeman then throws the switch and the designated cars run into the siding to be stopped by the riding brakemen. The back of the train was uncoupled and stopped befo

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Ken,De Smit was served by the C&NW line that went west to Rapid City. I also enjoy old time railroading .Favorite RR book is Fiddleton and Copperopolis. Joe

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Ken,

I found this for you…A good illustration of the nineteenth century public timetable is one that dates from 1892 for the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway (BCR&N), the self-proclaimed “Iowa Route.” This company, nee Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Minnesota and after 1902 part of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific (Rock Island) Railroad, operated approximately 1,300 route miles in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Its main line extended from Burlington, Iowa, through Cedar Rapids to Albert Lea, Minnesota, a distance of 253 miles, and forged a direct connection between St. Louis and the Twin Cities. This schedule duly lists all stations and all passenger trains. And it includes those of “way freights” that carried passengers; most freight trains, though, did not. The BCR&N warned prospective patrons that “Freight trains shown on this Time Card will carry passengers only when provided with Tickets.” Conductors, then, were not permitted to collect cash fares, probably because they were a nuisance and employees’ honesty (or lack thereoo could not be easily monitored. And as with some contemporary carriers, the road sold advertising space in its public timetables; it surely did so to offset the cost of distributing thousands of free copies to the public.

This particular Iowa Route timetable holds considerable value. Most of all, it tells much about the nature of this nearly forgotten road. Individual schedules note station stops – an indication that depots or at least shelters once existed there, and, of course, length of travel and frequency of service. Take the BCR&N’s “Iowa City Division.” This branch line ran twenty-one miles from a main line connection at Elmira, through Iowa City, to Iowa junction, where it joined the Muscatine-to-Montezuma trackage. The company operated three through trains daily except Sunday, including a mixed one, and it provided additional service to either Elmira or Iowa Junction. Speeds were modest; BCR&N trains were hardly “ballast scorchers.” Yet

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After riding the Texas State Railroad this past weekend, I have a whole new appreciation for trains of the past and the history that goes with them. When I first got into trains it was the older ones of the late 1800s and early 1900s that I admired the most-even if their average top speed was only about 20 to 40 mph…

trainluver1

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Guys, thank you for all the ‘DeSmet’ answers![tup][:)] Time for me to go explore that University of Iowa web site…

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and six foot gauge. The DL&W was six foot through Scranton in the 1870’s.

Railroad scams were the “dot.com’s” of the nineteenth century.

Just at though
Harold

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and what’s wrong with backwoods , shortline , podunk railroads ???

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I would think that the 1870’s would be a great time to model. sure, the engines are smaller and the rolling freight are as well. But think of the other things you DON’T have to have…telephone poles and wires, no cars or trucks, no paved streets, just “ruts” across the layout; no four story monster buildings that have to be painted and weathered (…and detailed)…You could concentrate on modeling the TRAINS, man!!!

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JohnT14808: Actually, telegraph poles cropped up as fast as the railroads did–so while they weren’t technically “telephone” wires, the “talking wire” was already up and running, even in fairly remote places.

Cars or trucks, no, but plenty of horses and wagons and other horse-drawn conveyances.

Paved streets? Yes, paved in cobblestone. Mud/dirt streets provide their own challenges to model.

Four-story buildings? Certianly possible, and definitely probable if the ralroad stops in towns of any serious size–and plenty of towns grew to serious size shortly after the railroad’s arrival.

I suppose that if you dislike building and detailing structures, then you could always model a stretch of mainline in the proverbial “middle of nowhere”, but you could do the same thing and use a modern-era layout–ride Amtrak through Nevada or Utah sometime, there are plenty of places where the only sign of human habitation is the train you’re riding and the track it’s running on.

Modeling the 1870s certainly does not exclude cities, cobblestone-paved streets, talking wires, and lots and lots of ornate, gingerbread-covered Victorian buildings, detail-rich backwoods shanties, rip-roaring Western towns with every cowboy cliche’ featured, from the town drunk stumbling out of a saloon to ladies of the evening beckoning to the railroadmen from the second story of the red-light district.

The Panic of 1873 wasn’t so much due to the overbuilding of railroads (but the Panic of 1893 was, among other things.) In 1873, railroad executives ran out of people to sell bonds to, starting with the Northern Pacific, and so the value of their stocks plummeted.

Oh yea, another reason why more people don’t model the 1870s: knuckle couplers weren’t in general use, so you kind of have to “handwave” their presence on your layout (or assume that your railroad was particularly forward-thinking in terms of safety.) Link-and-pin couplers are a royal pain in HO scale…

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My first attempt in the early 1970’s at modeling the 1870’s in HO, using Mantua General’s, I tried link and pins. I developed a “link and pin” as a staple arrangement… The “U” shaped link can be placed into the link holes. I am experimenting with adding a tab on the top to make it easier to handle.

Harold