The reason I ask is, I have found myself gradually back dating everything that I started. I was going to try to use the diesel loco’s and bigger rolling stock that I had. Then I realized that I really prefer steam. The size of my curves dictated a small steamer. I purchased a bachmann spectrum 2-8-0. Now I would like some passenger cars. Once again, small curves dictate smaller,older style passenger cars. Next up was roads for my small town. Seeing how it is a very small town, I didn’t want to do the whole paved downtown look. It would have been missing too many items to look like a real town. I came up with dirt roads and wooden boardwalks. What started out as a late forties, early fifties layout, has now turned into 1910 to the early twenties. I never had any intentions of modeling this time period. The time period just kind of picked me. Have any of you started with one focus and gradually shifted earlier or later to accomodate certain circumstances.
Considering that I wanted to be able to run heavy iron steam or diesel if I felt like it, I’d say that it was a bit of both.
I found my self in some what of that same predicament. At first I was going to model WC from 1990-2000. But this was pretty broad with equipment. What I wanted to settle on a more “exact” date. One of the big things I considered was the Paint scheme of the Wisconsin Central. Around the early 90s they had allot of my not so beloved paint scheme with the V stripe nose scheme. So I Xed out the early 90s. Now I considered late 90s because it had WC’s traditional scheme AND they had the 75XX series locomotives (Favorite series). But I wouldn’t have much SOO equipment, and very little “Rainbow” consists.
So I decided to go in the middle, 1995. In 1994 WC had leased allot of ATSF SD45, but they couldn’t patch them till the lease expired in 1995. In late 1995 WC had bought the Algoma Central Railway, so I could have Algoma Central locomotives. There also was a fare amount of SOO boxcars left in SOO paint. I also could run a “Green Weenie” (Ex BN SD45) too, as one of them lasted to 1995 (6660). One of the things I do miss out with modeling in 1995 are the 75XX series. Around 1997ish WC started this rebuilding program where most of the BN SD45 would be renumbered to the 75XX, and 76XX series locomotives. Also, 2500 (WC’s only SD35) wasn’t painted until after 1995, and the WC anniversary GP40s weren’t painted yet. But this is one reason why I don’t exactly Model 1995. I model a few years off, like from 1995-1997. But as many of us know there is no perfect era/date.
So I guess I would say that I picked the era and the era found me. I picked it because of what I really wanted. But that only happened when after I looked at allot of pictures of WC.
Corey,
It sorta picked me. I started with a New York Central 2-8-2 Mike - my first loco. I then bought a NYC Stewart VO-660 switcher. With that, I was jetisonned into the early 40s - at least as a starting point. I’ve tried to hold it there. But I’ll probably end up in 1947, when it’s all said and done.
Tom
I picked it.
I originally started modeling the PC and LV in the 1970’s. The more reasearch I did on the LV the more I realized what bad shape it was in.
I then went to the RDG in the 1970’s and then gradually backdated into the 1948-1952 range.
That lasted until a couple years ago when the turn of the century bug bit me, now I’m modeling 1900-1905.
Dave H.
A combination of both - my story is not too different from yours.
When I invented the Picture Gorge and Western Railway in the 1970s, it was to be a short line started in the 1870s to link an Oregon harbor with the Willammette Valley, and eventually through the Rockies to link with other railroads to become a transcontinental. Sort of like the Oregon Pacific, which I had never heard of until 2 years ago.
My plan was to keep the era set 100 years earlier from the present date, anticipating ending up in the 1920s. Never even got the layout finished enough to properly set an era, much less advance it every year. Then came kids, and a detour into 3 rail O for 20 years.
My interest in HO, and more specifically HOn3, was rekindled a couple of years ago when I was exploring and reading about logging on the North California coast. I still liked my Picture Gorge and Western short line concept for standard gauge. But I wanted to add a narrow gauge feeder that served a dog hole port, featured both lumber and common carrier, and had an interchange with my standard gauge short line.
Era ended up being set by a reasonable compromise among things I wanted to model. 1870s/1880s would have been my preference but I struggled with the idea of switching operations using link and pin couplers. So I was constrained by knuckle couplers and early air brakes, the dog hole port still being served by sail, reasonable use of geared locomotives (my chosen HOn3 locos were the Keystone Shay), beginning of logging in coastal Oregon, economic recessions of the 1890s (with many railroad bankruptcies), and the standard gauging of most profitable common carrier narrow gauge lines in Oregon and California by 1906. Putting it all together, I came up with 1900 as a not-too-far-fetched time that would suit my constraints.
yours in period modeling
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it’s always 1900…
When I was a child, I modelled as a child, and I bought trains as a child. And then I put away childish things…
Fortunately, I put them away carefully, so I’ve still got all my rolling stock from the early 1960’s, which came out a few years ago. Back then, I mostly bought what was around, which was “modern era” and included GP-9’s and F7’s. So, the era kind of picked me, because that’s where I was.
Then, though, I was at my LHS and heard a P2K 0-6-0 with sound. Oops, there goes my historical accuracy. For a while, I intended to run it only as an “excursion” train with a few old passenger cars. The old cars, though, were too far gone to easily get running again, so I gradually formed a plan to dual-era my layout - 1960’s and 1930’s. I’ve been acquiring autos and rolling stock from the 30’s for a while now, and I’m almost ready to bring out some boxes for the 60’s stuff and go pure steam.
I tried running my GP35 with railbox cars around my layout. It just didn’t look right. The fifty foot boxcars looked silly going around some of my 18inch curves. My F7 looks ok, but building my layout so I can run my old Athearn coffee grinders is not a good idea. Those older engines will look nice on my shelf! As I’ve progresses, I’ve realized that smaller means older time periods. Even the buildings look better set in an earlier time period. Now I can use smaller buildings. I guess I should have just started in N scale. The reason I didn’t was because I was trying to use my older equpment and buildings. Thanks for your stories.
MB,
Good thing you waited till now to model the 30s. Even only a couple of years ago, the selection for autos in the 30s was pretty much limited to Jordan Models. Thankfully, now there’s Sylvan, Ricko, and a few others who have filled that void very nicely.
Tom
I have related in other similar threads that I was a toddler when my Dad worked at INCO in Sudbury, ON in the early-mid 50’s. There was tons of rail switching, as you might expect, and it was all steam. I have a surprisingly vivid memory of seeing the vast yard from inside the car as we drove by…I would have been 4 maybe? We moved up into the Andes mountains and lived at 14,000 feet for nine years. The railroad was active at all places where we lived ( we moved like people in the Army, two years here at this mine-site, three there…).
Steam was all there was at that altitude. The Peruvian Central was deemed one of the engineering wonders of the modern world at the time. The engines were 2-8-0’s and there were two Beyer-Garratts. The very first diesel the company bought was probably a GP-7, but I honestly never learned. I was present the day it came around the bend partway along the first fairway on what was at the time the highest golf course in the world according to Ripley’s. It was a modest consist, but shoving from the rear was a Consolidation. The diesel needed to be set up in some way to operate at altitude.
So, it would be 80% I got picked, and the rest was entirely up to me.
I am enjoying reading the other accounts.
I had already chosen my prototype (with more than a little help from my wife!) but hadn’t pinned down a location or a time period. Then we took a trip to Agematsu, since I wanted to find out what I could about the Kiso Forestry Railroad and that was its interchange with the JNR.
As we stepped off the DMU car that brought us the 2-8-2 powered freight that had been waiting for our train to clear the single track whistled off and began stomping up the 25/1000 grade. At the marker end of the rather short train, a 2-6-2T was leaning on the rear coupler and blasting coal smoke 15 meters into the sky. As I watched, thoroughly enthralled, I thought, “I have GOT to model this!”
I’ve been trying, with varying degrees of success, ever since.
Chuck (modelng Central Japan in September, 1964)
1st for the “Givens”…
To model live overhead interurban traction = no later than 1960.
To model Pennsy tuscan red & brunswick green = no later than 1968.
To model some K-4 steam prior to PRR full-dieselization = no later than 1959.
2nd for the “Druthers”…
To timeline all three “givens” = “I Like Ike” billboard = circa 1956.
- The “traction-part” of the railroad name, Conemaugh Road & Traction, provides not only the era’s PCCs & box motors, but the “road-part” also allows for small industrial diesel and/or steam switchers.
- 1956 provides: First-generation diesel (EMD E/F/GP7/SW, F-M & Alco) plus steam motive power; shorter freight car length means smaller track radius; traction needs an even smaller track radius; passenger and freight interchange between the Pennsy & local “short-line” interurban traction, and; N Scale maximizes the available layout space.
I knew I would not be able to model modern era equipment, tho I bought modern stuff, it was more for the club I was in, a la running modern serssions. I am sticking to mid-fifties era, large power, most steam, and some diesel, but cars are still small, doing careful planning, mainlines standard 24 inch minimum. No 18’s here. What will happen to my modern stuff, sell most of it.
It picked me. I grew up in the latter part of the ‘big steam’ era, in the California mountains around SP’s Donner Pass line (Nevada City, Truckee, CA) and my memories were of big AC cab-forwards and other SP steam. Never did get with diesel–they were pretty, but kind of boring to watch (I like reciprocating valve gear). Started MR’ing in my 'teens, and always bypassed the diesels for steamers. It’s just kind of kept that way. So the Yuba River Sub is set in the California Sierras during WWII (though I have kind of developed a grudging attraction to early diesels, as long as they aren’t newer than an F-3 or an E-6 or one of those handsome Alco PA’s), and is primarily big steam. Just a personal preference, mind you.
Tom [:)]
A combination of the two. I’ve been around the KCS for many years. I chose to loosely base my layout on the modern day KCS southern division. With a simple change of structures, vehicles and trains I can change eras quickly.
Sorta both, I went with what always sticks in my mind because as a kid we lived right next to a MLW line and I grew up with the MLW. Just seems proper to model all those good memories.
My layout is set in the mid 1970s. I love the look of Geeps, but I also wanted to run steam and early diesel. My fictional short line (Clinton-Golden Valley RR) is wholly owned by a wealthy albeit altruistic eccentric who grew up riding the rails during the transitional heyday. As such, he owns restored steam and early diesel motive power and rolling stock that he uses for railfan trips. The nice thing about a small midwestern town is that MOST of the buildings were built many years ago, so they look right on a layout based in either era.
My era sort of picked me, right after I picked it.
In the era I model (1930s-1940s), car length was generally 40’, though there were certainly longer exceptions. As we get closer to the modern era the average car length increases. Since I wanted to run trains with a decent car count but not completely clog the layout with an outsized train, I was pushed back to the late 1940s.
I also much prefer steam over diesel motive power, which led me back to the mid-1950s at the latest.
My chosen locale (Wyoming) and operating desires tended to move me back slightly more (industries I wanted to model started disappearing in the 1940s, along with the switching they needed) , so I wound up where I am.
I picked very deliberately. 1989, June, ATSF in Oklahoma. Many reasons, some involved operational changes made by Santa Fe during that period, train consists, changes in the different Oklahoma towns modeled on the railroad, changes in the industrial mix at that time, and so forth.
I was born and raised and schooled in that area, I picked June because it was my birth month. my dad was a Santa Fe engineer in that area, I worked for Santa Fe after graduating from college for 11 years so that chose the road I model.
Bob
Mine picked me, back when the kato dash-9’s came out me still being a youngster in 1997, my mother recieved a call about them being instock.
Needless to say 3 BNSF dash-9’s wouldnt go over well on my dads 1961 layout downstairs, since then I started to try my hand at painting and now well over 50% of my roster out of the 113 have in storage are custom done. Though I would love to back date to 1970-1971 BN with all the stenciled power running about.