I’ve got my 5x10 HO layout making progress. I have a definite UP bent for several reasons and will tend to acquire such locos (so far, 100% since I have one), with a preferenceearly on for DCC sound decoder equipped, maybe later procuring some DC items and converting them (or having them converted). That will obviously limit what locos I can find.
It occured to me that a way to add non-UP locos might be to have dual named locos on the layout…UP where feasible and others re-lettered to a 2nd line that I and the grandkids get to name. Do (did) railways have overlap on their locos getting on the other guy’s trackage…leasing, etc? Any excuse might do. Of course, in the end we can do whatever we like as the 2nd railway would be fictional, but your thoughts would be appreciated and up to today I’ve leaned towards a pure Up approach, but that would preclude many interesting loco types as additions.
Lots of us do that very thing. In my case My railroad is called the Last Mountains & Eastern. It is a fictional railroad owned by the Western Pacific just as other operational railroads were, such as Sacramento Northern and Tidewater Southern were roads controlled by the WP.
So on my pike you would find locomotives from those roads as well as roads that pooled power with the Western pacific such as BN, D&RGW,. There was also an agreement at one point where adjacent roads ran on each others lines WP and SP. It was called paired track operation, this was started early on in 1917 at the start of the first World War. I believe they ran eastbound on the SP and westbound on the WP. This actually proved so successful that after the war in 1924 and in mutual interest to both parties it was reinstated as well as an agreement for joint rates and routes were signed by which WP was to bridge at least half of the SP traffic between Oregon and Ogden, Utah from Winnemuca, Nevada to Chico, California on the Sacramento Northern. So even though that isn’t my time frame it does give me a reason to run a U33-B in the bloody nose scheme on the LM&E., as well as some power in the LM&E in a patched form.
You just have to make your own story to suit what you want to run… Don’t get to hung up on facts, sometimes it takes a lot of the fun away. AND THAT IS WHY WE ARE DOING THIS> RIGHT?
Sounds like the advice a guy gave me on my old GTO…it’s your car, enjoy it and do what you want. Now the issue become what the grandkids & I can name our line…should be fun in itself.
Even in the steam era they did this. Prime example is in my book on the Reading T-1 Northerns. It mentions one going to Hagerstown MD on the WM. The normal interchange point between the WM and Reading was Lurgan, PA. Clearly they ran through on WM tracks to get to WM’s Hagerstown yard. And there was the Queen of the Valley passneger train, from Harrisburg through Reading to Allentown, often pulled b a CNJ locomotive. At Allentown it finally got to CNJ trackage.
Then there is 1956 and the PRR leasing some of the Reading T-1s due to a power shortage. So on lines all over the PRR system, including crossing the famous Rockville bridge, you could find a Reading loco.
There are more examples than you cna shake a stick at. Slightly more modern, I’ve seen a video of Cajon Pass with Conrail power in the mix.
A tangent, but the Reading comments bring back memories. In HS (NJ) I was the Jr member of a model rairoad club, the other members being what at the time seemed to me “old guys” (but certainly younger than me now). The electrical work at the club was speaheaded by a EE professor at NCE. He took me for a Saturday ride in his TR3 (you could reach out and touch the ground) and we chased a Reading steam loco on an “Iron Horse Ramble” excursion. Got 8mm film of the iron horse running over my windup film camera (film is long gone). Went to Phila with may Dad a later weekend with tickets for a Ramble excursion and it was pulled by a diesel due to dryness and fire concerns. Have to admit I cried, which I would do today if on an excursion ticket behind the UP steam locos and a diesel showed up. There’s no explaining fascination with trains, particularly steam locos, to folks not into it. Makes as much sense as playing golf.
Yes and yes. I model the WWII steam era, and railroads were always leasing power from other roads as the traffic patterns shifted from east to west. It wasn’t odd to find Santa Fe on the Pennsy (or vice versa), UP on SP, even Burlington locomotives in Southern California. Missabe’s big Yellowstones spent as much time on the Rio Grande, Northern Pacific and Great Northern as they did on their own home road.
So definitely use other road locomotives and don’t worry about prototype fidelity. The real railroads do it all the time.
First and foremost, its YOUR RR, and you can do what you want.
If you are a stickler for prototype practice, then I would only mix locos that existed in the same area and time frame. To me, having say a UP loco and a B&O or NYC loco alongside would look “wrong”, or having an old UP steamer and a modern diesel together would be “wrong” as well. NOTE, I’m not talking about the UP preserved steamers of today.
I model postwar Santa Fe in the generic midwest/Texas. But I have a love for the Illinois Central and run a long IC streamliner occasionally on the Santa Fe tracks. Now I don’t know if they ever shared the same trackage, but I do know they crossed each other at Joliet, Illinois, and possibly other places. Sooooo, I can justify it in my mind.
The ATSF steam engines were leased briefly due to traffic and not run throughs. Run throughs have become more common with standardization of radios and frequencies. Early run throughs often required home road engines to lead. Engines are also borrowed when needed and number.of hours exchanged when units become available. Trackage rights also allow foreign road power on select routes.
Trackage rights were extended to or leased to other rail lines all the time.
Here in Upstate NY, NS owns the trackage near my house. BUT Canadian Pacific and BNSF run on the tracks all the time.
Also, RRs may “borrow” or lease engines as needed from other rail lines. If they need extra motor power and a competing line had an engine handy, they might “borrow” it- somethime if they also dropped it off somewhere for the line that owned it- or leased it. SO you may see a BNSF loco in a NS consist going by here.
RRs do it all the time, so no need to worry.
We have a saying no matter what it is: “there’s a prototype for that”!