Home road rolling stock.

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I model Northern Pacific in the Transition Era. I just obtained the Book “The Northern Pacific of McGee and Nixon” at a great price from Historic Rail. Though the book mostly shows steam and early diesel power from the late 30s to the mid 1950s what I see following the power is almost all N.P. rolling stock in the freight train photos. Although I am only reading the book for the first time and skim the photos as I’ m going through, I have to say that I have yet to see any rolling stock from other roads!

Since I grew up following N.P.'s line from the Twin Cities to Staples during 100s of trips up north to my folks cabin during this transition period, this isn’t what I can remember! I think I can recall seeing freight cars from B&O, C&O, G.N, S.P. and A.T.& S.F. and many other lines. This makes me wonder about what I think I remember and what I am actually seeing in photos.

Like most other modelers, my collection of freight cars is pretty eclectic. If I were to find that I should have far more N.P. rolling stock, I think I’m fine with this eclectic mixture as I enjoy collecting fright cars and won’t change anything. Still the above has peaked my interest!

2

I’m assuming the editors of the book had many pictures to choose from when assembling the book. They probably just made sure to use as many all Northern Pacific shots as possible.

Just a guess.

3

It could be a nice selection of what were publicity photos. These were often staged in the old days and tended to feature the home road – since that’s who was paying for the pics.

4

To carry that even farther, the N&W’s front office once decreed that steam locos would not be generating smoke in any company photograph (!) Having seen (and heard) 44 drivers’ worth of N&W power on one train attacking the Blue Ridge I know just how realistic THAT was.

A long time ago I got a package from the Association of American Railroads, containing a series of photos of heavy steam locos lettered AMERICAN RAILROADS. Anyone with one functional eyeball could see the unmistakeable signs of actual ownership - position light signals, crossed handrail braces in front of big inverted - Y cylinder exhaust plumbing from those huge front cylinders… The absolute killer was the signage on the Bassett Furniture Company buildings. N&W all the way. (And the locos weren’t throwing smoke, either.)

OTOH, I have a couple of wall shelves full of publications replete with photos of my prototype. There MIGHT be a foreign car in about ten percent of the photos - and most of them were EMU on separate ROW. There weren’t even any clearly visible marks of ownership. When you were a government-owned monopoly like the Japan National Railways of 1964, you didn’t really have to tell anybody who you were.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

5

Keep in mind, it may just be that the cars you’d normally see at the front of the train would tend to be “home road” cars.

IIRC in the one of the captions in the book, one of the photographers (who of course were both NP employees so knew what they were talking about) pointed out that the picuter showed several NP gondola cars right behind the engine. He pointed out that NP mainline freights in Montana and North Dakota heading east usually had several gondola cars of coal behind the engine, bringing Rosebud coal east to be used by NP steam engines.

Blocks of stock cars, if not in a solid train of cars, often would be right behind the engine, so they could be switched out quickly when they had to stop for the required rest and feeding of the animals. These stock cars would normally be NP cars, since the cattle would be going from online loading spots to packing plants or feedlots also on the NP.

Generally way freights are “blocked” so the first cars to be dropped off would be the cars right behind the engine. Since these cars would often be going from one NP shipper to another, I suspect the NP would use their own cars whenever possible.

6

The NP Historical Asociation has files with ‘wheel report’ listings in 1969 at Jamestown. As an example on 7/17/69 train E600 had 80 cars ( 58 loads, 22 empty); it was 66% NP cars (49 NP, 5 NPM reefers). The foreign cars were mostly box cars, with two cars each from: near connections such as CB&Q, C&NW, GTW, SOO plus two each from TTX and REA, while all the rest were singletons (NKP, AT&SF, PRR, LN, SP, IC, NW, CO, UP, SAL).

I don’t recall the source, but I remember reading that in the transition era 85% of the open top cars were home road cars west of the Mississippi, while back east only 35% of the open top cars were home road.

Another data point (from a long forgotten source) about ‘perishable loads’ in 1947 of the 57 reefers at some point on the NP: 18 (31%) were PFE, while only 12 (21%) were NP, 7 (12%) Northern Refrigerator lines, 5 (8%) ART, 4 (7%) Santa Fe, and Merchants Dispatch, Fruit Growers express and Armour with 3 each (5%), plus some singletons. However, if I recall, photos of the ‘Fruit manifest’ show predomonantly NP cars.

Similarly, pictures of stock cars on the head end and ‘stock extras’ typically show predomonantly NP stock cars.

It is not suprising that NP was predominantly home road cars because its territory was predominantly a ‘producing’ region for out-bound grain, cattle, lumber, fruit, coal, copper, aluminum, etc. with a low population density, so not much ‘consumption’ requiring in-bound shipments from foreign railroads.

Grinnell Jones

7

Warren McGee pointed out (at an NPRHA convention a few years ago IIRC) that, in his opinion, BN made a mistake in selling off the NP mainline in Montana to the new Montana Rail Link RR. He noted that the NP line had a huge number of online customers, mostly situations where the car went from one NP served business to another NP served business so never left NP tracks.

8

Thank you all!

9

I’ve often heard that it is generally reasonable to assume a 50/50 split of rolling stock ie 50% home road.

Obviously, if you are modeling a classic “bridge” route like perhaps the Delaware & Hudson, or the Western Pacific, the percentage of foreign road cars might be higher, but 50/50 is the “rule of thumb” I’ve often heard.

For publicity reasons some roads (like for example Santa Fe) often placed new or recently shopped, clean freight cars–even entire blocks of cars–at the head end of their trains–but this is true of the more image conscious roads and not necessarily a general rule.

On eastern roads particularly during the late steam era the eastbound headend cars may have tended to be a higher percentage of priority traffic including reefers and/or stock cars.

For myself on my home layout, if I start exceeding 50% home road cars, especially if they are brightly colored Santa Fe reefers and bright Indian Red boxcars, it becomes visually “too much of a good thing”.

My 2c.

John