Texansoldier asked about N scale mainlines or shortlines.
I came up with the answer below.
Then I thought that it might be useful for Newbies and others hunting ideas so here it is.
Sorry it’s not 100% on the history… someone might like to help out on what, where and when…
You might like to look at these ideas…
- many modern shortlines are sold off bits of Claas 1 railroads that dumped trackage after de-regulation (I think you call it something different… there was an Act passed by Congress - or whoever- “Hagars”? something???). Anyway the track didn’t change , mostly just the paint jobs. (You can get to have some interesting locos as they often bought in what they could get/afford to start up)
- Same thing applies with Regionals… they were shed bits of Class 1 roads. Advantage is they are generally bigger/longer and have more of their own locos and stock than shortlines… which also stay on line. (Many/some shortlines were locations for investments… they sometimes had more cars with the line’s road mark out on hire “somewhere in the USA” than they had miles of track to fit them on. I think this was before the 1980s slump… when the slump hit and the cars didn’t get hired and there wasn’t room for them at home they got sold off cheap to the big boys or cut up… in the former case they ended up as “Patch jobs” for a time at least. I think that since that slump cars have been leased by straight forward leasing companies.
- To be shed from class 1s these roads had to be class 1 lines in the first place… they just weren’t the most used/most profitable bits… but you can keep them alive as class 1 road by re-writing history a bit. you end up with the same tracks again… just more trains .
- You can combine at least two of these if not all three… many smaller lines carry bridge traffic for bigger ones. So long as their track is up to standard this can mean run throughs of whole trains. So you get the Class 1 working right through the lesser