Hi all, I am in intensive planning stages & am modelling the railway I grew up watching in Marion, North Carolina, the Southern Railway.
I have a large yard planned, & have a nice fleet so far of purely Southern cars, BUT want some variety in the future, & was wondering, from how far away from home might a car be in my yard? For instance, would a yard in North Carolina, in say the 60’s & 70’s, have a car appear from Union Pacific? ATSF? I have a few Norfolk Southern (bought out by Southern in 70’s) & Maine cars, but want to know, from how far is unlikely or impossible?
Any site links/books to research railroad protocol most helpful too.
How much did major railways share lines for dispersement of rolling stock?
From what I have read and gathered from conversations on this forum you could have a car basically from anywhere in the country on any RR in the country including cars from Canada. I grew up in upstate NY near the St Lawrence river and we saw Canadian boxcars on the locals all the time. I have about 140 various pieces of rolling stock about 110 are from the NYC/NKP which I model and the rest are from all over. I don’t look for any particular visiting RR I just get what catches my eye because of color or design etc. My NYC/NKP is almost all Brown or Jade Green with a few Orange Reefers thrown in so when I see a nice bright colored RR car I add it to the lot. Hey its my RR
Terry[8D][:D]
Your timeframe is a factor because a lot of changes took place. For instance, CB&Q, NP and GN became Burlington Northern in 1970. Conrail formed in 1976.
Geographically, I would expect to see some Seaboard Coast Line cars (ACL and SAL cars until 1967), Norfolk Westerns, L&N, C&O was around as C&O until 1973, GM&O was around until around 1972, same for Illinois Central (then ICG). I’m sure I’m overlooking somebody obvious in that general region.
You could have a few cars from about anybody, especially the biggies like UP, ATSF, SP, D&RGW and an oddball from lesser-known out of region railroads.
Southernman what about the Clinchfield they ran and CSX still does run more trains than NS in Marion NC.Clinchcross was and still is my favoret to watch trains.
Here in mid Fla. on CSX tracks are Conrail, NYC and even RF&P.
Fla. Midland RR connects with CSX and moves CN cars and GATX tankers as well as bunch of others.
Flip
I too model Southern and Norfolk Southern , that being said , most of the southern research done by me is on the net. Try this link http://southern.railfan.net/ . Tom Daspit owns this web site , he also has a web site for heavy duty flatcars. I’ll have to find the URL for that one , listing many southern flats. Toms site has tons of info, far more than most other sites.
I have to agree with the others on where southern freight cars can end up, all over the nation,Mexico and Canada.
I’ll see if I can find more southern web-sites and list them.
Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}
Making HO scale steel by the ton!!!
Here on the KCS I see cars from all over the country with some even from Canada and Mexico. It’s your railroad. Don’t let somebody else tell you how to run it.
If you’re modeling a big yard and you’re doing a mainline type railroad it would be safe to use cars from any railroad you like. You may have more cars from connecting railroads and one from say, Soo Line or Western Pacific. Be sure to add lots of Fruit Growers Express cars though, they traveled up and down the east coast alot.
I’m not sure if you know this, but Southern and N&W merged in 1982. It took several years before all the engines were painted for NS, and some freight cars are still running around in their pre-merger paint schemes. Southern bought out the “Original” Norfolk Southern in the 70’s (I think), but then it was more of a shortline than anything. For the merger, the name was recycled for the new company.
Cars could and can be seen from far and wide, nowadays locomotives roam around a lot, too. I run about 50% Southern cars, and about 50% “foreign” roads. L&N, ATSF, UP, PRR are a few I have.
Unless your railroad is isolated from everyother railroad on the North American continent, I could honestly see freight cars & locos from CP,CN,UP, NS, CSX & BNSF with a host of smaller regionals on your tracks.
There are a lot of different railroads inbetween the Gulf of Mexico, Arctic ,Atlantic & Pacific Oceans.
The sky’s the limit when it comes to what you could have on your railroad
Rather than suggesting what you can run, I’m going to list some of the few road names you wouldn’t see:
Alaska RR - no physical connection.
East Broad Top - wrong gauge, and mostly out of service.
Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railway - wrong gauge.
Other than those, and a few similar (railways without connections or without interchange rolling stock, or running on a gauge other than 56 inches,) literally any North American car which could run on standard gauge track and was equipped with the required safety equipment could appear in your yard.
In the '70’s, the great move to intermodal containers had not yet wiped out most of the box car fleet. RBOX and modern cars owned by otherwise obscure short lines like the McCloud River were in general use and would certainly show up in a major yard.
I forget the exact percentage but Pennsylvania owned something like 10 or 15 per cent of the frt cars in the car register so you can’t go wrong w/ a bunch of PRR reporting marks. GN< NP and Milw shipped lumber all over the country. Santa Fe and PFE reefers were pretty ubiquitous. Basically, anything that appeals to you can be rationalized (after asking the questioner for the credentials that authorize him to require you to rationalize what you do on your RR)
25% - Connection Railroads(Regional/short lines the Southern directly connects with)
25% - Other roads and ‘private owner’ cars(UTLX tank cars, URTX reefers, etc)
This will get you a ‘flavor’ of a typical train consist, and still have that ‘Southern’ presence on the layout. That said, if your layout features a lot of industries that receive things from ‘foreign’ shippers that are ‘off line’ on another railroad, the ‘mix’ might be different. An example would be the large Swift meat packing plant on my layout. I have 22 private owner(SRLX) meat reefers that run on the layout, out of about 120 total cars. This is due to the fact that at least 3 cars of ‘swinging beef’ are shipped out of this industry in each switching cycle. Of about 40 boxcars on the layout, most are Milw Road cars(20), with another 8 C&NW, and another dozen other roads. I wanted to get the feel of a SW Wisconsin railroad in the 50’s…
You can expect cars from anywhere. Locomotives however may have been purchased/designed for the region they serve so don’t be surprised if certain lokies don’t venture off the line they served. Perhaps more rare these days because of the diesel, but still true. N&W had plenty of their own hoppers for their coal moves
but not all stayed on the line, they traveled.
Just figger out your operations, and enjoy!!
