I’m planning on modeling the Omaha Road’s operations in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in the early 1950’s. I’ve already gotten my hands on a copy of the employee timetalbe for that time. What I am curious to know is how you go about ‘fleshing out’ the information found on the ETT? I have train numbers, arrival and departure times, stops, and all kinds of other great information. What I don’t have is the purpose or even make-up of each train. Some trains I know a bit about from reading and research-the Twin Cities 400 is an easy example. However, most of the numbered trains I have no idea what kind of train they were or what their normal consists were. How do I find this information?
The first class trains will be passenger trains. Not all of them will be name trains, most of them will be just passenger trains. You can probably find out what a typical consist was like by contacting a historical society.
Second class trains will be through freights. If its a hot shot train it will have a tighter schedule.
Third class trains will be drag freights and locals.
Once again a historical society might be able to tell you what types of engines or cabooses were typically assigned to those types of trains. The cars would be whatever they have to haul
Yeah, I got the ETT from the historical society. They were quite helpful and I figured I was going to have to ask for more information eventually. Mostly what I’m looking for is what to ask for-is there a specific railroad document that would contain this information? They get a lot of requests for information and can be quite busy; just wanted to do as much of the legwork on my own as I could.
There might be for name trains or some railfan may have produced one. Probably not for other than name trains or only in a very generic sense.
If the railroad did have some sort of document, it would have loooooong been discarded and the only ones who might have a copy are the historical societies or some other modeler/railfan.
Really you might be better off with a public timetable, since what you want is more public ammenities rather than operational information. The ETT doesn’t care whether the train has a diner or not. It makes zero impact on the movement of the train. A public timetable would show which trains had dining service and which allowed checked baggage and which had Pullman service.
For freight train numbers and what kind of train they were, the Chicago & North Western Historical Society sells a book of CNW freight train schedules. I cannot guarantee that it includes Omaha Road trains but by your era quite possibly they are in there. It is reasonably priced and available from the Society’s website. Here is their description of the book:
1938 Freight Train Schedule;1960 Freight Train Schedule;1965 Freight Train Schedule;1958 Way Freight and Switch Runs;1965 Way Freight and Switch Runs; 1958 Yard Engine Schedules;
170 pages/ Not indexed by page number/Compilation of official C&NW documents. Plastic cover, spiral bound
I wonder also if there might not be some incidental information, even if just in photo captions, in Stan Mailer’s book on the Omaha Road for freight trains.
By the way the C&NWHS website now has a very nice feature: you can search the table of contents of every issue http://www.cnwhs.org/nwldb.pl
For the part of the CNW that I model, (not the Omaha Road part), I found the photo captions in Jim Scribbins’ book on the 400 to be extremely useful in terms of passenger train consists and typical power – and not just for 400 trains either.
Dave Nelson
Have the Mailer book and agree the photo captions are quite useful. The photo’s and captions in the book will help me with at least one of the first class trains, the ‘Viking’.
That book of frieght train schedules looks quite interesting; the Omaha effectively ceased to exist in 1957 so the 1958 schedule should have all the info I’d need. I was shooting for more of a 51-52 period but one can’t be too picky; sometimes you have to go with ‘good enough’ until you can find something better.