After some hard discussions about modeling my fictional railroad the G.N.O. (Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio Railway) that I wanted to set in the 1950s.
My problem is that the paint scheme changes in 1954. I was wondering what’s easier to model pre '54 or post '54?
Wait, the fictional paint scheme on your railroad changes in 1954? Can’t you set the change in livery later or earlier?
Any, big changes in the rail industry really started showing up in the 1960s, at least in terms of freight service (and passenger service too). In the 1950s, well you have the steam to diesel transition, usually (NOTE usually) completed by the mid-late 1950s. Do you want mostly steam, or mostly diesel?
Most smaller cities and towns would look more or less the same during the 1950s, the suburbs would be a different story. Many smaller cities had ended street car service even by the late 1940s, so that’s not a big determinant. Intermodal would become more common by the late 1950s if you like modeling that. Not sure if the International Style architecture (think mirrored glass box office buildings like the Sears/Willis Building, or 100s of Midtown Manhattan building like the Seagram Building) really hit the US outside the big cities by the mid-1950s, but you could have one or more of the new Textile mills which moved south from New England starting pre-war modeled in that style.
CMW and Sylvan has you covered with automobiles of the period either way; as for figures, I dunno - if only Woodland Scenices molded their figures’ faces better…
The paint scheme changes in 1954, WONDERFULL. Model 1956 and you can have both schemes. Motive power and rolling stock would only be repainted as necessary, not a month after being acquired in the old colours.
Dave
Apparently paint shop can’t copy my pictures. I was going to show you guys the difference between the two.
The first paint scheme is all blue with a yellow broad stripe in the middle and inside is a small red pin stripe. The trucks and roof are painted black. Large white company name on the bottom by porthole to porthole.
The second paint scheme is covered in medium gray and silver trucks. The yellow broad stripe is replaced with dark blue. There is two yellow stripes between the gray and blue paint to break the colors.
The paint scheme changed because of realism instead of looking toylike and to add a new passenger service.
That link is dead on my Browser.
Does anyone know how to install an image by using paint shop?
My first try adding an image this site or any site by that matter.
What’s the difference if I model it earlier?
I do got MR books Modeling the '50s -The Glory Years of Rail-
As the architect of this fictional railroad why is it that you are unable to just go ahead & make that decision at the next board meeting of the, G NC & O.
Be tough, staunch & unyielding - make a command descion, just like the old railroad barons of the past. It will be fun!
Dusty
First, you have to open and account with somethig like Photobucket or Utube, and load your photos there. Then you paste a link from there into your post here. This forum does not allow uploading photos directly. Most people here seem to use Photobucket.
Why do I get the feeling he’d lose the argument.
Steve S
In the mid 50s, the RRs began to get really colorful on their paint schemes, particularly for the PS boxcars. Before that, RR brown (or red) was for boxcars and some hoppers, black was for hoppers and gondolas, and sometimes silver or black for tankcars. Of course you had orange/yellow for reefers as the general scheme. Of course there were exceptions - lots of them.
The thing is, its your RR, and I would pick the year that allows you to do “whatever” and feel good about it.
Depending on how may pieces of rolling stock your RR is supposed to own, it could take take years to have all obsolete paint schemes repainted. A railroad would not repaint a car or lococmotive until a scheduled trip to the shop. So having both old and new schemes would not be out of line.
For instance, on my freelanced Bunker Hill & Eastern they are updating the paint on boxcars. The boxcar red one of the original scheme with Roman lettering; the 3 blue ones are a newer scheme still with Roman lettering, and the one with the white door is an “experimental” update with Gothic lettering and a “noodle” BHE logo.
Besides, it’s your railroad, and you can freelance it any way you want!! [;)]
angelob6660, look at it this way - what do you want to see on your layout?
This is why I listed a few things in my first post above that sort of set the date on a layout in the 1950s, like more diesels vs more steam, intermodal, the style of vehicles, etc. The big thing in terms of freight service is that larger trucks were making a significant dent in the railroads business by the late 1950s, particularly regarding LCL - this would affect your modeling of peddler freights. I believe Air passenger travel finally exceeded rail passenger travel in the US by the late 1950s too, and the rise of private automobile ownship certainly bit into local passenger train frequency.
However, the changes, as big as they, were pale in comparison to the next decade - railroading in 1960 was different in many ways from 1970 (not to mention later decades).
Pick a year, or group of years (time-shifting is allowed to some degree: it may be June 1952 one operating session, and August 1957 another - just remove the anachronistic vehicles and rolling stock for the earlier session). Were you born in 1955? Was your Dad born in 1955? Was anyone born in 1955? Don’t go crazy, unless you are entering a modeling contest (in which case, yes, you need to go crazy).
Remember that with railroad paint scheme changes, it isn’t like a switch is flipped and all at once everything appears in the new scheme. For one thing it can take surprisingly long times – years sometimes – for home road cars to get back to home road rails and paint shops. Even though standard car forwarding rules might suggest otherwise, cars got “confiscated” all the time.
A case in point are the C&NW freight cars and locomotives that had the “Route of the 400s” or “Route of the Streamliners” slogans in the early 1950s. That slogan was no longer used in advertising or on timetable by the early 1960s and of course there were no more 400s by the time of Amtrak. Those freight cars were still being seen in the 1970s and beyond, and even a locomotive or two in remote areas seems to have lasted into the early 1970s with that slogan if the photos I have seen are correctly dated. If a new paint scheme is introduced in 1954 then the choice is really yours how many cars in that scheme need to be seen on the layout.
Some railroads for public relations purposes were a bit more strict with passenger cars but again the whole fleet wouldn’t be repainted in a day or even a month. It took a while.
Dave Nelson
My rolling stock was going to be mostly 2 bay hoppers, and boxcars in GNOR markings. A lot of borrowed Southern, ACL, SAL, NW, and CG in gondolas, flatcars, tank cars, hoppers, and boxcars.
The motive power is a mix steam and diesel. I was more focused on the F3 and F7s then the steam because the diesels could be painted.
Talk about long lived, on the SP one of the few surviving F7’s on the roster retained black widow until retirement in 1973 and the last extant exmple of black widow was a lone GP9 that entered the GRIP progam in 1976 and emerged in the standard dark grey/scarlet.
There were a multitude of switchers of EMD, Alco, Baldwin, FM that survived into the sixties and beyond dressed in the many variations of tiger stripes and the expertimental halloween orange scheme that was replaced a decade earlier in some cases or never adopted as standard.
Dividing your operating years and paint schemes could provide some interesting motive power/rolling stock combinations and are completely prototypical.
Enjoy
Dave
My first thought was not the trains, but the automobiles. Few private cars were built during World War II, and the Korean War didn’t help anything, either. But, by the mid 1950s the American automobile industry was redefining the nation. And, you will find that that era is very well represented in HO scale, while the 40s had few new models, indicative of the prototype.
Autos, like everything else, have a finite lifetime and cars of many ages are represented in real life, starting with the present’ year’s models and going back. So, if you allow your railroad to be in 1957, you can have any automobile from 1957 on back, which gives you all those mid-50s Fords and Chevies that are well covered by producers in HO. On the other hand, if you go back to 1951, you’ll find your selections much more limited.
One thing I’ve learned by showing my layout to non-train friends is that few of them will complain about seeing steamers in the 1960s, but they’ll spot a 56 Chevrolet from across the room. Nothing sets the era of your railroad more than the automobiles.
I’m not sure what the original question was, and some of these answers seem to have added tothe confusion. The O.P says his railroad is freelance. That’s fine, and he can make his own decisions about paint schemes for the equipment of that railroad. However, there were a lot of prototype railroads that made significant changes in the liveries of their interchange cars around that time, and maybe that’s what he wants to knopw.
In the period between 1953 and 1955, PRR abandoned the old “ball keystone” logo that had graced its freight cars since the late 1920’s. Most PRR cars continued to be painted oxide red, but covered hoppers began to appear in gray and larger versions of the keystone appeared, some with a shadow effect. B&O cars still carried versions of the Capitol Dome logo, but lettering was changed to have a large B&O on most cars; NYC changed its lettering font from Roman to Gothic; Western Maryland stopped using its round herald and adopted Speed lettering; reading adopted larger lettering. All this repainting took a long time to be completed, so the late 1950’s was a period when you could see a wide variety of paint schemes on interchanged freight cars. Things tended to be much more uniform before about 1954.
In the 1960’s, more and more railroads began to adopt more colorful schemes such as NYC Jade Green, AC&Y yellow (1962), etc.
The schemes you choose to run on your owb railroad depend on how dedicated you are to following prototype practice, and that’s something nobody here can dictate to you.
Tom
In 1954 the G.N.O. ordered new freight cars of boxcars, reefers, and tank cars for their revenue service. They were delivered in 1956 with a GNO Freight logo and slogan.
The two real reason between 1954, diesel paint schemes and new freight cars.
MisterBeasley.
From a railroad modelers point of view my sleepy old town of the late 1940’s is hugely over populated with 1/87 scale auto’s & trucks. But I truly have a liking for old cars. I have over one hundred trucks, truck & trailers, cars, vans, buses & fire trucks from 1948 on back to the dawn of motoring with no duplicates. I’m even considering a horse & buckboard rig - I beleive I can get away with that in the semi-rural South.
If I get wind of a new casting of a model I don’t have yet, then I’m all over it like a fat chicken on a bicycle.
Dusty