If my layout ever gets running, it will be set in the 80s. I remember very little about the 80s railroads (I was married [:D]… HAPPILY…)and mainly chose it because of the equipment the locos i first bought. So I have a few questions:
NJ International Crossing Gates come in four styles: black and white and red and white bar, and b&w and r&w “A”. What would be the right kind to get, for NW or ATSF ?
Signals: what kind would be used by CNW Other than cab signals and ATSF in town / industrial in this era?
Music, films, posters… does anyone do good billboards or fly posters for the 80s? Was this about the start of grafitti on everything?
Graffiti- on my trip to New York City in 1973, most of the subway cars had graffiti on them. I thought of them as “circus trains” they were so “colorful”. I don’t know about mainline freight.
Thats one big Dog! If you combined the weight of all three of our Kids (dogs) you would get about 112 lbs. They love to lay around the floor under the layout when I am working on the railroad. So I not only have a duckunder I have several mobile stepovers. But it keeps me young and they are great company…
Music: country; Alabama,Reba,Kenny Rogers,Dolly,WIllie, rock; Police,Aerosmith,Dire Straits,ZZ Top Madonna Pretenders, those big hair bands,Poison.Ratt, Bon Jovi. Movies: those brat pack films,SixteenCandles,Breakfast Club,etc, John Candy,Chevy Chase,Steve Martin movies,StarWars? that one I’m not sure of. The end of the caboose, a travesty for all railfans.Walthers catalog has billboards for the eighties,I 'm not sure of the maker. Frontwheel drive cars became the norm then also.
Bxcarmike, I think you nailed 'em all except for Star Wars. We saw the original Star Wars movie at a drive in back in the late 70s. I think some of the others (Empire Strikes Back, etc.)came along in the 80s.
Amtrak Got rid of their last SDP40fs in 1981 (sad for me). The F40PH was king. The Auto Train was pulled by GE P30CHs.
Amtrak finished rebuilding the “Heritage Fleet” cars.
—The SD40-2 became the most popular six axle diesel for Class 1 railroads.
—More mainlines were being single tracked.
—The new era of the intermodal. Gunderson cars made their appearance.
—The age of the Mega-mergers also began.
—SD50 and GE’s Dash 8s made their debut.
----40ft. Boxcars in mainline services finally bowed out 1981-82.
----Conrail, the railroad that had been laughed as “Penn Central in Blue Pajamas” did a major turnaround and became respected. Railfans coined her “Big Blue”.
----Unfortunately, trainwrecks escalated as intermodal & unit train traffic soared to record levels.
----We bid farewell to the Milwuakee Road.
----We said hello to the Wisoncisn Central.
----Steam excursions were running around the U.S, including the UP844, Chessie 614, and Nickel Plate 765.
----We said hello to CSX
----We said hello to Norfolk Southern
We bid farewell to the caboose, the manned train order station, the manned interlocking tower, paper orders. Farewell to first and second generation motive power in mainline use. Farewell to the WP,MP,RI and so many others.
Fairwell to the ancient SP wooden beet gondolas and eventually the beet trains themself. Farewell to fricton bearing trucks. Fairwell to the semaphore signal, the wigwag crossing signal except for a few isolated cases, now zeously sought out by railfans…The merger that wasn’t SP+SF…the merger that was Rio Grande + SP.
The 80s imprinted mixed memories for me… watching the death and rebirth of the American railroad, not always for the better.
Dave, you’re right on the mark but I have to disagree in one area. There was plenty of 2nd generation and some 1st generation power still running on the mainlines, at least here on the east coast U.S.
CSX had GP30s, GP38-2s, GP40s and dash 2s, and plenty of U-Boats still slugging away. Geep 7s and 9s that were rebuilt into GP16s were crawling everywhere. Burlington Northern E units were still hauling commuter trains out of Chicago.
On the west coast I remember reading in TRAINS back then that Burlington Northern and SP still had SD9s in mainline and yard service. SD45s, with their fuel hungry 20 cylinder diesels, were still leading intermodals on various roads, including Santa Fe and BN.
One thing we bid farewell to in the Northeast during the early 1980s was lots of lines and trackage - Conrail was in it’s bezerker mode (getting rid of many lines which would have been very useful 10 years later), and other railroads were following close by. This was a period when American industry was really contracting down (as opposed to now, when American industry is really contracting down [:(!] ), and quite frankly by the mid-80s I wondered if there would be freight railroading (besides intermodal) of any volume in the next decade (the answer - in our area, not really - they prefer to truck in the stuff from intermodal yards in frickin’ Pennsylvania to New York). It was the rise of the shortline and regional railroads, which quite frankly I feel was the only thing to really save carload and small lot railroading. Also remember very few new freight cars of any type were built in the early to mid-1980s (and no boxcars or refrigerator cars till the mid-1990s!). However, with the intermodal boom of the mid-1980s, there was a ru***o rebuild freight cars into container and trailer platforms, leading to some funky designs not seens since the early 1960s…
Note that commuter rail was also picking up somewhat with new equipment coming on line (although many olders systems had new-design equipment from the initial period of government grants of the late 1960s/early 1970s).
Oh yes, remember ConRail got out of the commuter business in the mid-1980s, giving us Metro-North among other systems…
Careful, chutton01, I live in ‘frickin’ Pennsylvania [:D]. Near a couple of those intermodal yards to boot. Would you believe NS actually destroyed a concrete modern coaling tower to put in an intermodal yard? Some people have no respect.
Amtrak did take one action that hurt the freight business. After buying the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak deliberately raised the rates it charged Conrail to a very high amount, to force freight trains off those tracks. It was a success that winded up biting Amtrak in its “seat of wisdom”.