I’m mainly into passenger modeling, but also like to mess a little bit with freight. I only have two freight consists, one UP boxcars and another is NYC open and covered hoppers. I really like the Pennsylvania steam locos for their distinctive red roofs and headlight placement. So will it be realistic for me to pull NYC freight consist with a Pennsylvania steamer. I model mid 50s. Thanks.
TB,
Just a suggestion. You might ask this in the Prototype information for the modeler forum instead.
Tom
Since railroads interchange freight cars, having NYC freight cars in a train pulled by the Pennsy would be okay. If they were all NYC, that would be unusual. Add in some other freight cars from other roads and you’re good.
I know railroads occasionally loaned/leased locomotives, but I don’t know if the NYC and PRR did. But of course you could always say they did. After all having fun is the whole point of a hobby.
Enjoy
Paul
Many modelers think that a freight train on a railroad will pull all the same type of car or all the same railroad’s cars. There are times that happens but they are normally special cases. For normal freight trains it is more likely that the cars will appear more random than the same. With a major railroad, pretty much any car from any railroad could end up in a train on the major railroad. I see cars of coal from the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern (an ex-RDG/LV shortline in Pennsylvania) on the UP headed for the western US all the time.
The exceptions are trains that are dedicated to one commodity, such a coal, grain, ore auto parts or intermodal. Those type trains might have all the cars of the same general type or same road name.
More likely you will end up with a more typical train by writing all you car intitials and numbers down on slips of paper, putting them in a bag, mixing them up and then randomly drawing “cars” from the bag.
About the only plausible way I can think of woud be traffc generated on the NYC. The PRR would probably have returned NYC hoppers empty. So full.from NYC and empty going back.
The N&W handed PRR complete coal train bound for Sandusky so, PRR would haul solid N&W coal trains…Complete coal trains bound for Lake ports or Northern steel mills,power plants etc would be interchanged since roads like Southern,L&N,Clinchfield didn’t have access to these areas.
So,would PRR handle complete NYC train probably if the coal was heading for a destination on the PRR…
As long as both the locomotive and the caboose are PRR, what’s between them is pretty much luck of the draw.
If the hoppers and open tops are moving away from the NYC connection, they would probably be loads. Then the same cars would retrace the same route empty. The exception would be if the local agent wherever a gon or flat was unloaded had an immediate need for that type of car for an outgoing load - which might just as easily be traveling in a completely different directon. Of course, since it’s your model railroad, you are the one to determine which of the dozens of PRR-NYC interchange points those cars are moving toward or away from.
One final comment. Even timetable-scheduled freight trains in the transition era would very seldom have the same makeup from one day to the next. Old 97 might have a cut of PFE reefers today and not see another reefer for a month. You should make arrangements to vary your freight consists - including mixing some of those UP cars with the NYC, or vice-versa. And, if you’re going to run PRR power you should have a generous serving of PRR cars - Pennsy owned about 10% of the US freight car fleet at the time you’ve chosen to model.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
So much information guys, I really appreciate it. Sorry if I posted in the wrong forum but I hang here and in DCC 90% of the time.
Thanks for the tip about matching caboose and the loco to be of the same road-name and about mixing UP and NYC (and PRR) cars in batches. Fun 