In researching the history of rail lines that will make up my c.1950s model railroad company, I’ve gotten curious about what they looked like when they first began operations - some were chartered and operating in the 1830s and 1840s. And so that has me wondering, are there any model railroads set in the antebellum era of the United States. I know there are some Civil War era modelers, but what about earlier? Are all those DeWitt Clinton sets Bachmann sold just sitting on shelves or in closets, or are they turning a revenue wheel on an 1830s era model railroad?
There are probably a couple of dozen active model railroaders modeling pre-Civil War. I suspect most of them live in the East, since there was so little railroad activity west of the Mississippi until after the Civil War. The Civil_War_RRs and EarlyRail Yahoo Groups are where most folks interested in 19th Century railroading seem to congregate on-line. The newly formed Civil War RR SIG will have a display at the NMRA convention at Atlanta in 2013.
Challenges in modeling the era abound. The tiny size of locomotives and rolling stock makes HO scale not as feasible for accurate modeling - O scale is easier to model/scratchbuild in. O gauge track at a scale 5ft is right on for many railroads of the era. Conventional track with wood cross ties and spiked rolled steel rails was not the norm until the 1860s and later. Determining paint colors is another challenge due to lack of color photography and/or eye witnesses. Lots of detective work and guessing based on prevailing practices is key to plausible modeling.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it’s always 1900…
And link-and-pin couplers.
Ed
Someone with the Model Railroader CD-Rom collection might be able to verify this, but IIRC the July 1976 MR had a cover story on a layout modelling the B&O in the 1830’s or 40’s.
Yes, a 12 page article