Looking to model the B&O of the 30s-40s. What kinds of names would I see on the rolling stock(besides the B&O). Basically, I’m asking who were the B&Os competitors, and who were it’s partners. thanks
Fenderpanzer…Welcome to the B&O !In the 30’s and 40’s, every multi-state northeastern /north-central railroad was a competitor, depending on area /state operated, and commodity hauled.This being said, it was still common to see freight cars of other eastern roads in B&O trains, especially empties, headed for an interchange point.It was rare to see the equipment of western railroads, such as ATSF, SP,NP,GN,CB&Q,CMStP&P, C&NW etc.
There were some ‘very unusual’ freight and passenger cars seen on all carriers from 1942-1945 due to the nature of wartime traffic.
Do you have a specific city, town, state or area in mind? If so, I can note you with a list of which other roads the B&O connected at that point.
Best regards / Mike(a Canadian B&O guy for 45 years)
Probably the westren area of Maryland, or maybe the Baltimore area(my home town).
B&O Connections that existed as late as 1948:
At Cumberland:
–Cumberland & Pennsylvania
–Pennsylvania
–Western Maryland
At Hagerstown:
–Norfolk and Western
–Pennsylvania
–Western Maryland
At Baltimore:
–Baltimore and Annapolis
–Maryland and Pennsylvania
–Pennsylvania
–Western Maryland
Also at Baltimore, northbound freight from Washington, of the Chesapeake and Ohio, Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac, and Southern.
Also, southbound freight from Philly/Wilmington
of the Reading.
regards/Mike
So it would be possoible to see a B and O freight with Maryland and Pennsylvania, Western Maryland, and say Norfolk and Western rolling stock? Oh yeah, thanks for responding.
It sure would, and you’re welcome.
NKP,CB&Q,NC&STL,SP,UP,Sp&S,MILW,NH.D&H,KCS,T&NO,SOU,IC,MP,FEC,ACL,PGE,CP,CN,NYC,AC&Y,B&LE,COTTON BELT,SLSF,MISSIPPI CENTRAL,TENN CENTRAL,KO&G,SF,T&P WABASH,AA,and any other railroad before the mergers.
No offense, Larry, but I tried to keep my responses in this thread focused on the road names found MOST FREQUENTLY in B&O freight consists in the 30’s and 40’s.Your inclusion of NKP,NH,D&H,and a couple of others fits this bill, but some of the western roads are a reach.
Yes, every railroad you list COULD have a car, in a B&O freight, but some were so rare, as to be 1 in 10,000.
regards/Mike
Mike,None taken,However,The odds would be alot lower then that.I do not know where your information comes from,I surely recommmend some more research.I know this is the current trend to model only the given roads connections(off line)cars.This was not the case.check old photos,books,speake to retired railroaders,sorry don’t mean to sound like a know it all,I just happen to remember the by gone years-I have a very good memory.railroads have always gone after the long haul.Look,trucks was still sometime off for long hauls,interstate high ways was not heard of.the only way durning that time frame was by train.how do you think autos from detroit got to the west cost,furture,food,other goods got to the south,east,west,north? Think about it,not all things are made locally.Yes,interchange of all railroad cars was common then as it is today.the I.H.B.,BRC.and other terminal roads made a good living in interchanging cars from western roads to the eastern roads.1 in 10,000? LOL! Best to you,Good luck!
Thanks to both of you.
Mike,
I agree. I have seen so many different names and car #'s in a B&O here in Cinn that anyone can say that the B&O did sevice to the world. Mostly seen were NKP, N&W, C&O. Just strictly speaking in this area.
John
Larry…that’s why these forums are interesting.I admit I may have overstated the odds [I got that way honestly, as my late Dad used to say: “I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate”…and I may have said the same to my own kids…]All I was trying to home in on, was that, at ‘eastern-only’ terminals, freight cars from western roads were rare. I based this on my actual observation of various eastern freight yards in the 50’s and 60’s.[Toronto,Buffalo,NY,Cleveland,Washington].
In the 30’s and 40’s,the concentration of medium and heavy industrial manufacturing was in the east, and northern midwest.It was far more common to see eastern manufactured-commodity freight cars in the west than vice-versa.On the other hand, there were great numbers of agricultural lumber, and natural-resource loads headed east from the western roads.There was very little Asian-manufactured freight headed east. Thing was, that much of the western commodity was processed in some way prior to being finally shipped further east…meat being a good example…stock cars from Wyoming didn’t get to Hagerstown, MD, but reefers from Chicago did.
[I have a Mantua D&RGW stock car given to me in the 50’s by a dearly departed relative…I use it, and pretend it was routed to Cincinnati by mistake, from Chicago,and somehow wound up at Martinsburg,W.Va.]
To continue, the average HO freight train might consist of 5 to 20 cars??? In that, any more than one ‘western’ car is probably a bit of a reach, unless it’s 1942-45, which I mentioned earlier.I’m no purist, so you are probably correct in many of your observations.
We’ve already been thanked for our efforts by the originator of this thread, so I’ll close off with a ‘told-you-so’ statement, that the odds of seeing a T&NO or SP&S car in Cumberland or Hagerstown was 10,000 to 1…but maybe in Baltimore it was only 5,000 to 1…only kidding I think…Best regards and happy railroading /Mike
John, I’m just so glad there are so many B&O fans on this site.What you mostly saw, confirms my own findings, as far as likely looking cars:
Had our originator specified a Cincinnati location , I would have ticked off, as B&O connections,:
C&O, L&N and Southern from the south,N&W from the east,Pennsy [and Erie, via Dayton] from the north, and believe it or not, NYC from the WEST [Indiana].
I covered a lot of my ‘rebuttals’ to Larry in a previous post.By the way, the Cincinnati Union passenger station has to be one of the greatest looking terminals in US history.
I was in Cincy first in '71, last in '92…great city…kind of always liked Covington,KY as well…
best regards/ Mike
Mike,Not to get off topic,Didn’t the NYC run a stock train west to Chicago? I remember one on the PRR that ran through Columbus in the mid 50s going west around 7-8 pm.There was also a reefer block off the Santa Fe headed east along that time.The reason I recall the stock train is because my dad was a engineer would some times be called for that run.Needless to say it was not his favorite run.Also my grandfather was involved in a wreck with that stock train in 1950.By the time I hired on the PRR the stock train was long gone,but not the reefer block.Up to the early 90s CR would haul some stock cars west 2-3 times aweek at lease that is what I read in Trains mag.I will come clean and tell you I come from a family of railroaders,both grandfathers my dad,all his brothers,my mom,1 of her sisters and all of mom’s brothers.I was raise with railroads.get my family together,you could hear alot of railroad talk.Plus my dad was a modeler and railfan,he always took me with him to watch trains.
Mike,Not to get off topic,Didn’t the NYC run a stock train west to Chicago? I remember one on the PRR that ran through Columbus in the mid 50s going west around 7-8 pm.There was also a reefer block off the Santa Fe headed east along that time.The reason I recall the stock train is because my dad was a engineer would some times be called for that run.Needless to say it was not his favorite run.Also my grandfather was involved in a wreck with that stock train in 1950.By the time I hired on the PRR the stock train was long gone,but not the reefer block.Up to the early 90s CR would haul some stock cars west 2-3 times aweek at lease that is what I read in Trains mag.I will come clean and tell you I come from a family of railroaders,both grandfathers my dad,all his brothers,my mom,1 of her sisters and all of mom’s brothers.I was raise with railroads.get my family together,you could hear alot of railroad talk.Plus my dad was a modeler and railfan,he always took me with him to watch trains.
Larry…I see where you get your knowledge. Very impressive RR background. Question for you…there are many reasons given for the demise of so many railroads, but do you think that one reason, seldom or never addressed, was the sheer number of empty cars heading back to the home roads ? That, along with too many duplicate routes between carriers, must have kept freight rates high.
regards/Mike
Mike,I sure do believe that may have been the reason.Now remember that reefer block? It headed west empty.That stock train return east empty.Now,railroads would try to send a car back to the home road loaded if possible.Say you had a empty general service GN boxcar,and had aload on your divison headed to Washington State.You would load that car.Your railroad made money as well as the GN.Now if the GN would have one of your empties they would do the same.However this was not always the case.Your car would be returned to the nearest connection point empty.You see as long as that car was on your road your road had to pay for it.let’s say that you unload a B&O car and there was a B&O interchange in the same town.You would leave that B&O car on the interchange and not haul it back to the terminal.Some times:Return when empty to B&O Columbus Ohio.That means it would be hauled to your terminal for fowarding to Columbus for the B&O-empty.So,yes,there was money lost in hauling empties,you still have to pay a 5 man crew,fuel and up keep on your locomotives.Now if road A charged road B for handling road B’s empty I don’t know.I really don’t think so.After all you would be hauling a empty for road A.Now,If you detained that car as I said your road would have to pay a fee for doing so.There is goverment rules in handling empties and when you may load foreign roads cars.As far as the fright rates yes,they was high untill deregulations of the railroads in order for them to lower fright rates.This is what help save the railrods from going brankrupt.The railroads could not compete with trucks on freight rates before that.Now,lets look at the Penn-Central.You may have heard it was poor management,true.But there was many other things going against it.Such as to many duplicate routes,poor routing of freight due to the loyal PRR employees and NYC employees trying to route the freight as they did before the merger,branch lines that no longer made money could not be abandon due to state goverment intervention preventing PC from doing
sorry im jumping in like this but when you said B$O for 45 years i felt your the man. I really need your help. have a B&O. Atearns HO rubberband driven 6 car set thats in great condition, but have nothing to help me know about it history.do think you could get me some leads or help if you can. Please… Howard.
Hello Howard.Don’t know exactly what you’d like to find out, but the train set you have is could be a 1957, but more likely a 1958 release.These sets were available 1958 to approx.1964.
Although the first Athearn “Hi-F” [ rubber band drive ]units in train sets was 1956, there weren’t any B&O engines by Athearn yet.You don’t state the engine, whether it’s an F7 or a GP-9 [actually a GP-7 ]. The F7 sets had a powered A unit, and dummy B unit with metal underframe. The Geeps in the sets had no handrails, you had to buy them separately.The freight cars in these sets were all from the regular Athearn 1957 available variety, with fully sprung metal trucks.
All cabooses in the sets were Santa Fe type, end cupola, painted in whatever road name the engine was.
Hope this helps, best regards/ Mike
This is totally not related to this topic…but I was searching for L&N information and thought that those responding to this thread might be able to help. I am extremely brand new to MRR. I am getting involved for my son who adores trains, but the more I research, the more I find my own interest and excitement developing. I bought my first introductory “how to book” and have 6 more on the way. I have not even bought the firs train or piece of track yet.
My great-uncle was a railroader at Cinncinati’s Union Terminal (do not remember which rr he worked for). I grew up in Covington, KY and am interested in modeling the L&N in N scale. I have been doing some research but am finding it difficult to find steam locos. I have found similar models from other RRs, for example 2-8-2s, 4-6-2s, etc. But can not see spending $50 - $150 for a loco that I am going to have to paint if I want to run the L&N. As a beginner, I do not think I am ready for kits even if I could find them. Am I going to have to just decide on another line to start with or does anyone have any suggestions? I know I could go HO, but really do not have that much room for a decent layout…
Thank you.