I am just about ready to start decaling rolling stock on the Seneca Lake, Ontario, & Western RR and was wondering how prototype RRs actually code the numbers for their rolling stock? I am modeling a fictional Eastern Shortline set in 1925 if that is any help. I think I need to set up some kind of system similar to what was used on prototype Railroads of the time period.
Thanks in advance.
Well there was no real set pattern. Generally railroads gave each type of car it’s own number series - boxcars 1000’s, flatcars 2000’s, gondolas 3000’s etc. They might also try to make separations within that, so each class or subtype would have it’s own series. So maybe all the roads double door 50’ boxcars would be 1900-1999, and early woodside boxcars would be 1000-1099.
Depends on how big the road was too, a shortline might number it’s cars in the tens or hundreds, a big railroad like CN uses six digits!!
If your short line is typical of the 1920’s, it will probably number its comparatively few cars with three digit numbers in series, as described above. Unless it was home to a major industry that generated trainload shipments, it probably wouldn’t have owned many cars of its own.
On the Virginia and Truckee, the various freight cars were simply numbered sequentially. Over the eight decades of commercial life, only ore cars were numerous. Most freight moved in foreign-road cars (the outgoing cargo consisted of silver and people, moved in passenger trains, while the mines were working. Later an agricultural traffic developed, moved largely in SP cars.)
When a railroad received more loads than it shipped, the usual practice was to ‘capture’ a newly-emptied foreign-road car, have it loaded online, then send it on its way. This is how a New England road boxcar could end up in Seattle with a shipment of canned goods loaded in Omaha.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Thank you! That is what I thought happened but wanted to be sure before I started messing up a perfectly good decal job. You have both been very helpful!
And just for fun, I’ll throw this in. Some RRs would only use all odd or even numbers for a particular class of rolling stock. Not sure why but maybe so they could buy more cars in the smae class if needed and number them opposite of the earlier purchase and not intrude on another class’s numbering.
Rick
That’s a good point, I grew up next to the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern, they switched and interchanged 100’s of cars a week but had only a few of their own, I think all their freight cars had three digit numbers - their engines and cabooses all had 2-digit numbers, except they put a zero in front of cabooses like “015” as I recall.
Another sidelight, some railroads have kept the reporting marks for predescesor railroads alive to use for some cars. The Chicago and Northwestern in the 1980’s-1990’s bought new cars and lettered them with reporting marks MSTL (Minneapolis and St.Louis) CMO (Chicago Minneapolis St.Paul and Omaha) and CGW (Chicago Great Western), all railroads they had taken over in the past. UP continues to do this today, now that they have taken over the CNW. (Some people have claimed UP had cars lettered like this to show because it helped their licensing issues with model railroading, but CNW was doing it long before UP took them over.)
I’ve heard of some roads using odd numbers in a series for boxcars, and even numbers for gondolas. Maybe not exactly that, but different car type in the same number series, odd/even being the difference. I want to say Soo Line did it, but I’m not sure.
Well and then Soo Line had some equipment sub-lettered “WC” for Wisconsin Central, which was a longtime Soo subsidiary, and continued on paper after the 1961 M.St.P.&S.Ste.M. / DSS&A / WC merger, and kept different number series for each ‘railroad’. For example, a Soo GP-7 or GP-9 with a three digit number belonged to the Soo Line, but one with a four digit number were WC units. The only difference in paintscheme was if you knew where to look (on the short high hood if I recall rightly) you could see there was a small “WC” stencil.