I am getting ready to purchase rolling stock for my new layout. I want to make sure that the rolling stock is appropriate to the time period that I am modeling.
Does anyone know of any reference guides, charts, etc that could be used to help select the correct rolling stock?
I do see that some HO manufactures are starting to indicate time periods when the rolling stock was actually in service. I think this is a great resource, however, not all Manufacturers are on board with this yet.
Westerfield has railroad equipment (rolling stock) registers on CDs. The registers don’t show when particular cars were built, but the lists are “as of dates”. I have their 1950 and 1955 registers. (I model the early 1950s.) If the models show the car nos. correctly, you can check to see if the car is listed in a particular register.
Probably the best single reference on or offline is the NEB&W’s freight car database:
It’s a pay site, but for $7 a month, you’ll end up with more information than you need! The site is organized by car type (short wood box, early steel box, 40’ wood reefer, etc), and is choch full of prototype roster data, equipment diagrams, and hundreds of pictures (in context, making dating the cars easy). More importantly, since the NEB&W is an active model RR club, they’ve got a huge database on virtually every HO scale freight car ever made, whether it’s close to anything prototype, and if it’s a candidate for kitbashing into something more prototypical.