I caught the logging bug when I saw (and bought) a Bachmann Climax loco at our LHS. It was the starting point of my layout.
Simon
My inspiration was the Kettle Valley Railway in Southern Central BC. Judging from the ease of buying used equipment suitable for any era of that line I assume this is a very popular railroad that inspires many. It helps that a small section of the original line still exists with a steam locomotive hauled passenger train. Then the local bookstores carry books with information about the line.
My second locomotive purchase was a CPR C Liner which I thought at the time was just another F7A…learning that it was not and exploring the connection between FM power and this particular prototype line got me going. I now have 7 C Liners, three Trainmasters and two FM 16 44 along with suitable passenger and freight equipment to justify a KVR themed Protolanced layout.
CPR moved almost all of their FM motive power out to this part of their system and developed and kept the mechanical expertise required to keep it all running for a very long time. The FM motive power also found its way onto the transcontinental mainline and the Southern Crowsnest Pass line all the way to my City which expands the scenery options and so on.
I too bought a couple of the Bowser converted chip gondolas in CP Multimark colours. They only ran in the Atlantic region in reality but, I liked 'em so I got 'em.
This can come up with teeth when selling watches to Civil War re-enactors. Getting precisely the right amount of things like case wear and movement patina takes much more careful work than either cleaning up a historic antique survivor or restoring to perfect factory-production appearance. Very few men on a battlefield eould just have taken delivery from a jeweler… or kept their watch carefully in a case every night.
On the other hand there are those who like their watch visibly ‘genuine’ (meaning to them looking as old as a 160 or longer year-old watch ‘should’) just like there are those who relish brand spanking new mint-state-70 condition.
Back in the railroad context: I came to the conclusion long ago that proper dust effects including cumulative buildup over time were far more relevant to most ‘weathering’ effect than either dirt or rusting. Yet we see far more emphasis on the latter often in the utter absence of the former…
While my pre 1955 time frame hasn’t altered, the focus of my, still in the planning stage, layout has completely changed because of one particular model.
Freelanced Detroit River Car Ferry by Bear, on Flickr
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
Who makes them?
I presume that these are the ones in question…
https://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=40'+Wood+Chip+Hopper+RTR&CatID=THRF
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
These are the ones I bought:
https://www.bowser-trains.com/new/woodchip2018.html
QA not perfect as the hopper bars fell off due to inadequate glue. But 5 minutes “work” isn’t too onerous and the pricing is very good for the detail delivered. Trucks and wheels are very good and I think Bowser fitted scale head couplers.
The Bowser wood chip hoppers are nice too.
Athearn RTR made the hoppers in the OP pic.
[quote user=“csxns”]
Walthers made both. A long time ago. The 7000 cf comes painted generally with schemes from the 80s.
And the 61 footer (actually a gondola) a bit earlier.
That is what I thought glad I bought several when they came out can’t fing them anymore and the LBF Hubbert ones I have all of them also.
I didn’t base the layout on a model, but when I started researching the leather tanning industry I discovered how neatly it fit into my existing layout and how it allowed me to add a few more types of rolling stock. This was the Walthers Empire Tanning Company kit, a number of related structures that filled a big empty space.
I have a dual era layout, 1930s and early 1960s. This kit is perfectly at home in both time-frames. Since it only uses small single carload shipments, no large trains are needed.
I already had a slaughterhouse, so there was a supply of hides available locally. I had two undecorated Tichy boxcar kits I picked up for next to nothing at my LHS, and with some home-made decals I had a pair of old “Hide Service Only” boxcars. Bowser provided an undecorated covered hopper, which became a car for delivery of salt. One of those Hooker Chemical tankers would provide acid, and I already had tankers for fuel oil delivery and boxcars to ship the finished product.
The carfloat was one source for raw materials and one place to ship the finished leather, and staging that came along later was another.
I didn’t plan it this way, but before I even started building the kit I began to realize how this industry brought my layout together.
Depends on his era…
1980-2000 is 20 years, to current day is 40 years, and the original car is of course much older than the 1980 re-build/re-weigh date, which would pretty much put this thing out of service before the start of the 21st century.
Those stubby hoppers were replaced by bigger hoppers designed and built in the 70s. They may have lasted a while on the CIRR, but that railroad bought the big ones new.
RRpicturesarchives.net. Date, 1991
The model does show “BLT 12-50” but I’m not sure that means it couldn’t be used on a “modern” layout. I believe CN is still using some DMIR ore cars built around that time, I think the max time for a car is 70 or 75 years.
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the OP’s idea of doing two eras, my own layout is being built to rotate between several time frames over a 50 or 60 year period. But I don’t know if this car (well weathered anyway) would really look that wrong on a 2001-2021 era layout, even if it technically is?
It wouldn’t be a problem really. License can be extended, as I’m not a real stickler. Thruth is that I like a lot of other aspects of both eras, and that would ultimately be the motivation for two layouts, or dual era in one.
Another option for wood chip hoppers outside of era would be these, which are mainly used for trash hauling presently. Originally a 50 foot coal gondola.
What no one has mentioned is that if you have a 2020’s era railroad, someone, somewhere could be running a 1950s passenger train as a historical restoration, a “dinner train” or some person’s expensive 12 inch to the foot scale hobby.
If you have a 1950’s railroad, the only what you can have a GEVO locomotive is if someone invented a time machine. You can always “time travel” forward in time by being placed into some kind of Rip Van Winkle deep sleep and waking up in the future. Going back in time is something the professors in the Physics department haven’t yet figure out how to do.
When mechanical refrigeration became widespread, CN and CP both converted a lot of their ice-cooled reefers into wood-chip cars, with the hinged doors welded shut and the sides heightened using the upper portion of scrapped hoppers and gondolas.
In the '60s and '70s, trains of them passed through here frequently, on their way to the paper mills in Thorold, Ontario.
My layout didn’t originally have a set time-frame, and I had more diesels than I did steam, and more modern ('60s/'70s) rolling stock than older style cars.
As I continued to develop my layout, it seemed that there were more structures that weren’t modern at all, and many were not all that large, either.
It finally occurred to me that many would have never been rail-served in that era, and that’s when I decided to back-date my layout to the “late '30s”.
Further impetus for that timeframe came from Bachmann’s release of their new Consolidations, soon followed by Athearn’s Mikados and Pacifics.
I sold-off (or gave-away) most of my diesels (there are some regrets there) and almost all of my too-modern rolling stock, freight and passenger, and some steamers that weren’t really appropriate for my layout’s era and supposed-locale.
I did make a considerable bundle on that sale, though, which allowed me to stock-up on era-appropriate locomotives and rolling stock, along with structure kits and a very good supply of scratchbuilding materials.
I still have several diesels left, usually in a display cabinet, but I’ll sometimes put them on the layout when my grandkids want to see diesels…none of which are “modern”.
Much of my layout represents memories of industries and businesses in m
True, although my buildings can cover a timespan of about 50 years. I remove all vehicles and then pick those that fit my flavour of the day.
Simon
Those SW1200RSs were very nice.
I think its important to have a sense of era, place, and operations to build a good understanding and foundation.
But what operations ultimately look like probably evolves into simply finding reasons to employ our favorite models in a realistic setting.
Thanks for your kind comment, Douglas. Even though they weren’t true replicas of the SW1200RS diesels, they were my favourite EMD/GMD diesels (as were the real ones).
The ones from Rapido are much truer examples, but I did get one of mine returned, as it apparently wouldn’t run. I drove down to a place near Syracuse to pick it up and re-imburse the buyer.
When I checked it over, the can motor was missing one of the carbon brushes - I can’t imagine how it was lost (the loco ran fine the day I packaged it for mailing) so I simply replaced the missing brush with a piece of lead from a mechanical draughting pencil…she runs like a charm and pulls like an ox, and gets track time when the grandkids ask for a diesel.
Wayne