Good morning folks. Ya know, we’ve had discussions here before on eras and times our railroads represent. There are indicators that we see on a layout that tell us what years or era the modeler is protraying. There is something happening right now, this year that if applied to a layout would indicate the layout is representing the mid 2010’s. The answer in a moment, but first, what does give the layout not only an era, but a more precise time period? In general, we have the steam era, modern or diesel era and the transition era. Then we can break that down to specific years and thats what I,m rambling on about here. Locomotives could, but then how many years do locos serve a railroad? Same with rolling stock except their trucks could be an indicator as friction bearings were on the way out in place of roller bearings in the mid to late 50’s. Buildings could, but then again, there are many buildings built back in early 1900’s that are still standing and in use today. So, to me anyway, the most accurate indicators of a year the layout represents is it’s highway or road system and vehicles on it. If we see a layout where we see nothing but dirt rods and horse drawn buggies and wagons, we know the era represented would be the late 1800’s or very early 1900’s, where as a layout with paved roads and the latest autos are 1957 vintage Fords and Chevys, we know it’s the mid 50’s. Now this brings up another question. Does anyone know what year the hwy system went to center lines, or started the use of yellow center lines with white edge lines, or when stop signs became red and what color they were before that? Does anyone know what year we became dumb and couldn’t read anymore so the hwy signs became pictures? Ok,Ok, I’m done rambling, and now the indictor that started all this. Our sign system is being changed again this year. Yep, those galvanized posts that hold the signs up are now getting a reflective vertical strip that matches the sign color. A stop sign has a red strip, a yeild sign a yellow stri
Stop signs weren’t always red in Indiana.I remember yellow stop signs back in the early 1960’s,same shape as now. Joe
Ken - How you gonna indicate the mid-2010’s? We’re not there yet! If you can see a decade into the future, maybe you could give us all some tips on who will win the next few superbowls? [:D] (Wouldn’t the decade of the 2010’s be the years 2010-2019? I thought we’re in the decade of the 2000’s, the years 2000-2009).
The move to picture road signs started gaining steam (so to speak) in the 1960’s, I think. By the mid-1970’s driver’s tests were being rewritten to recognize sign shapes, rather than wording. White-on-green roadsigns (mileage markers and so on) started appearing on roads other than Interstate Highways in the very late 1960’s, at least in Wyoming. I don’t remember seeing green and white street signs until the 1970’s. In some areas where I live now (NJ), some very old concrete vertical post street signs are left, some with added green and white vertical signs, some without. A lot of old Black and white street signs are still around.
Mark,
Actually the decade of the 2010’s would the years 2011 to 2020. The reason for this is that the 21st Century started in the year 2001. 
Dan
Technically you’re right, Dan. Popularly, I’m not quite so sure…[}:)]
There are several sites that I know of that can help with questions like that. The one with the most extensive information is that of the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society. They’re the folks that created the New England, Berkshire & Western Railroad. Their website, maintained by John Nehrich, is at:
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/
and is worth a look for any number of reasons. Their model railroad is superb, and the site is a treasure trove of information. It’s worthwhile to join their site, even if only for a month or two, since there is so much more info collected which is available to site members only. At $5 to $8 a month, you can’t go wrong, especially since you can join for as little as one month. (Usual disclaimers apply. I’m just a satisfied user of the site.)
Another page from Roger Reid’s site, at:
http://www.rreid.net/OldTrails/index.html
is very good for road signage. The standards from 1927 were not changed much until the 1950’s and 60’s, so they’re useful for a lot of people.
Using the info at these sites, we find that the National Highway Act in 1956 set the stop sign as red and white. The first known use of red and white seems to be in Seattle in 1942. After that, various municipalities started to adopt it, but it wasn’t a national standard until 1956. Before that, it was yellow and black. Information on the color of center lines, and their presence or absence, is a little harder to find, since it may have varied from state to state. Some information can be gleaned from pages similar to Roger Reid’s Old Trails page http://www.rreid.net/OldTrails/&
If you really want to tie down a date (and know the time line) I would have thought that political campaign posters and/or graffitti would indicate very specific parts of years.
- I wasn’t around when center lines started but I do remember the change from white to yellow was 1959. 2. Stop signs went to red about 1956. Before that they were yellow with back letters. 3. Traffic signs with pictures are a development due to “globalization” and have nothing to do with people’s perceived intelligence, or lack of same. This started in Europe where you have a lot of relatively small countries with different languages and were an attempt to create some commonality across international borders.
Here’s another good one: when did US curbside mailboxes go from olive drab to red & blue? Late 1950s, but I don’t remember the precise year.
I absolutely love discussions like this, with modelers who care about reproducing accurately a slice of time. The Kalmbach book Modeling in the 1950s, published last year, was an excellent book intended to deal with exactly this matter!! Here’s an example of something that book proposed: what politicians are running for office on your roadside billboards?
Now (drum roll), the biggest questions of all: when did Howard Johnson’s change from their old style simple gable-roof restaurants to the modern style?
Some details are era or time indicators:
A 48 star flag sets your era to between 1912 and 1959.
A swastika sets your era as prior to 1933. (Once the swastika acquired its present connotation, it disappeared quickly in the United States.)
Anything named after John F. Kennedy sets your era as after November 22, 1963. Likewise, anything named after Martin Luther King sets your era as after March, 1968.
Advertising signs with URLs set your era to the late 1990’s or beyond.
Referring to a particular team as champions sets your era to the year that they won the championship.
Vehicles also play a very large part in determining what era your layout is set in. For example even the most casual visitor to your layout can tell a 1987 Chevy pick-up truck does not belong on a layout claiming to be set in 1957 and 48 star flags on a present day layout are ludicrously outdated. The way your figures are dressed plays a big part too. Figures of punk rockers and folks on cell-phones just won’t fly in say the old west unless maybe these people arrived in Bill and Ted’s phonebooth.
Using information obtained from US Postal Service historians, and presented on the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society’s site, the switch from olive drab occurred on July 4, 1955. After 1971, solid blue was used. This information is also available in more detail on the USPS history site at:
http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/morehistory.htm#style
-Ed
One interesting detail on buildings - particularly, but not exclusively, houses - are TV antenna’s. They were virtually unknown thru WW2, became common from the late forties thru the eighties, then became fairly rare again in recent years due to cable TV.
Another one on schools, churches etc. were the yellow and black Civil Defense signs. These indicated that the building had supplies and a ‘safe’ area in case of nuclear war / nuclear fallout. They had some kind of cracker/wafer thing that supposedly would remain fresh for like five years as I recall, and bottled water. Those signs were common in the 50’s-60’s but by the end of the seventies were mostly gone.
Vegetation, particularly on mountain railroads. The most remarkable difference between pictures taken of a mountain line built in the nineteenth century and the same line today is the return of the trees that were cut down during construction and the growth of vegetation on fill. It’s possible to locate lines in the background of a lot of nineteenth century shots (I have William Henry Jackson in mind, but you see the same thing in a photographers’ work) by the large swathes of bare earth with flat tops, set against the darker background of a hillside. That bare earth is fill; I don’t know whether it was the practice to seed it with something to prevent erosion, or whether they just trusted to time and nature, but the newly-filled areas are usually completely bare. The pictures Jackson did of Hagerman Pass on the Colorado Midland are fascinating - in the 1887 views, it’s essentially denuded, and the upper and lower loops are perfectly visible. He did some excellent panoramic shots of the Hagerman Pass line from a lower level that really capture the deforestation that railroad construction entailed in those days. It tells you something about how radically our aesthetic sense has changed in a century - what American nowadays would view a picture of a piece of clear-cut ground as a triumph?
It was also a feature of the steam era to keep lineside growth cut down in order to reduce the risk of fires from sparks and hot ashes. Trees never got any kind of a start because the grass was cut and a seedling went with it. Once diesels didn’t have this problem (for the most part) the grass cutting could be neglected, saplings could take off and before long you couldn’t cut the grass witha a rail mounted machine because the trees were in the way. then they started using machine mounted flails that rip the place to shreds and hurl bits all over the place.
Another TV dating feature… satelite dishes.
Agreed that vehicles and flags are quick scene-daters, but how about telephone booths? Clark Kent couldn’t hide in a modern phone enclosure to quick-change into his Superman duds! Exactly when did the old streetcorner outhouse disappear? For that matter, even the little plastic cabinets are becoming an endangered species, thanks to cell phones.
Of course, there is one ultimate way to establish the era. Build a cutaway factory on the layout’s benchwork edge and put a tearaway calendar on the office wall. (Thank you, John Armstrong!)
Chuck (who models a place where it’s always some specific day and time during September 1964)
Sadly Phone booths are an endangered species. Sometime around the mid to late 90s I noticed their disappearance. I think most of it was they are too expensive to maintain between hobos using them for a bathroom and busting them open to score some change along with people writing grafitti alover them. Plus like you said with the popularity of cell phones pay phones are a lot less common than ever before since not as many people are using them.
How about those newspaper vending boxes that I see in movies? I reckon you might even select the time of day between early and late editions… so long as your eyes are good enough to read the poster!
Would I be right in thinking that they have gone the same way as phone booths?
No-one mentioned the dreaded coke machines yet… but then -you could be anywhere on the planet with those things. [:(]
Gumball machines? Drinks vendors? Do Amtrak, Metra or others have ticket vending machines? Do you have “pay and display” parking as well as meters? When did clamping notices first appear?
I guess that there must be a site for hazchem signs… when did they change?
If this thread doesn’t drive us mad nothing will [%-)][banghead][(-D]
Pollution, particularly around terminals and industrial areas. I was astonished when I first read Charles Roberts’ West End to see that M&K Junction (the engine terminal at the base of the Cheat River Grade) looked like a big ash heap - trees defoliated, and soot absolutely everywhere.