PCM is coming out with a GN 4-8-4…eventually, it’s been “taking pre-orders” for a couple of years now.
BLI’s USRA heavy 2-8-2 is available in GN lettering. GN owned I think 8 or 10 of them, they didn’t particularly like them (no Belpaire firebox etc.) but kept them into the 1950’s mostly working in Duluth-Superior and the Mesabi Range, with occassionally sidetrips to Mpls-St.Paul.
For diesels, GN Alco’s tended to stay in the west. They had a pretty interesting mix of GM and Baldwin diesels in the 1950’s.
FWIW subsidiary Lake Superior Terminal RR (co-owned with several other Duluth-Superior roads) used non-Belpaire 0-6-0 and 0-8-0’s in GN paint, and had NW-2 diesels which wore a version of the GN green and orange w/yellow striping until the early 1980’s.
Unfortunately, build dates aren’t always reliable, since a freight car could be built in say 1940 but be wearing a paint scheme applied to it at a rebuild 20 years later. If you can track down Walther’s old PLD 1-4 books (Prototype Lettering Diagrams) on ebay or at a RR flea market, I think you’ll find that helpful. They’re basically the Walther’s decal catalogues starting with PLD 1 from 1942 and going to about 1970 IIRC. A few other companies like Clover House are good about having dates with their decal sets in catalogues.
In 1950 woodsided cars, especially reefers, would still be common. Some would be old single sheathed (with outside bracing) and double sheathed cars from the 1910’s-20’s, but some would be woodsided cars built during WW2…since steel was rationed, they built some cars with steel ends, roofs and underbody, but wood sides. GN had some of these up to the BN merger.
GN was so big it would carry cars from just about anybody, but remember the RR ran from the west coast to Minneapolis / St.Paul, where it connected with it’s CB&Q subsidiary who ran to Chicago, so really any RR that served Chicago could have a car on a GN train. Of course it depends on where you’re modelling. Here in MN you would see the local roads (Soo, Burlington, CGW, M-StL, etc.) on the GN. You might see NP and Milwaukee cars, but since they had their own lines going to the west c
Good info I’ll copy, your post and the other suggestion for future reference. I visualise a small town on the western sloop of the rockys with a small railyard and a two bay engine shop which is what I have up to this point, about 1950. I did not start out to be this proto even, but what the heck I like the goat and I might as well have a theme.
I have a layout on hold which is based on the Great Northern line serving BC, mainly Nelson and Grand Forks areas in the early 1900’s. Another area served by GN was just out south of Princeton in the Hedley area. The GN was the main competition to the Kettle Valley (CPR) line.
This would allow me to run the early 2-6-6-2’s that Great Northern was the first to use in quantity.
And they shared the line from Princeton to Hope as it was deemed too tough to build 2 separate lines. So you get the neat double spouted water tank at Brookmere, one spout for CP, the other for GN. GN only ran one train on that joint line and sold their rights to the CPR in the 40’s.
For what it’s worth, GN built into Northern California as part of the WP/GN/SP&S “High Line” in the 1930’s–built to offer competition for the parallel SP Shasta Route into the northwest. I have some video footage of GN 2-8-8-0 and 2-6-8-0 locos working around Bieber, CA in the 1940’s, and though unsubstantiated, I have heard rumors of several GN ‘run-throughs’ as far south as Sacramento and Stockton, in central California. GN had originally hoped to run a Spokane/Oakland section of their “Empire Builder”, however the necessary passenger traffic never materialized. Today, the BNSF Stockton CA/Spokane-Portland “Highline” offers UP some relatively serious competition for northwest bound freight.
But a GN 2-8-8-0 slugging through Sacramento? Now THAT would have been a sight to see, back then!
There is a picture of GN 101, a EMD SW8 (rebuilt from a NW1 in 1953), in J. W. Shrine’s GN Color Pictorial Vol 2 book that is in the simplified green and orange. Photo taken May 31, 1968 at Minneapolis.
Lee, having been delivered in 1951, both the SW8s would have worn the original GN orange and green paint scheme with the yellow (dulux gold) striping. In '51, they would have been lettered in extended Railroad Roman lettering. As the 50s wore on, the units would have received the newer ‘Empire Builder’ lettering, with no other change of paint. In the early to mid 60s, both were repainted into the simplified orange and green scheme (without yellow striping) and no lower body orange. Neither of the SW8s were repainted into GN’s post 1967 Big Sky Blue scheme. Forgot about that NW1, the 101 that got rebuilt into an SW8m, but it’s paint would have paralleled the sequence of the 98 and 99. It didn’t get BS Blue either. Hope this helps.
I have bought several books trying to get color information with some success. although one GN book I thought would help turned out to be in black and white, bummer. I’m not going to buy alot of new equipment right now but I would like to have a direction to take, color equipmet Etc. we are running trains(my grandkids an I) even though I’m less than 2/3rds done with the layout. I tell anyone that asks, it’s not the completion that counts, it’s the journey that’s the goal.
