Years ago I had read in an issue of MR that there is a ratio of equipment that your prototype owned Vs what you should have on your layout. (I hope that made sense to everyone). I have searched and searched, and cannot find it. Now, I am doing Roanoke to Norfolk in HO scale, 1956-58 time era. I know I need Y’s and A’s like there is no tomorrow, but how many do I really need? How many coal hoppers should I have, box cars, ect… Hence why I am looking for the formula. With the BLI Y6’s on sale as retailers try to dump them, I am wanting to gobble some up while I can, but do not want to have to many. I hope this makes sense.
Yeah, I remmeber at least one of those articles. Maybe I can search later or someone else has a cite?
Essentially, yes, each RR had a certain mix of rolling stock to meet its customers’ needs. In the case of the N&W, that would means LOTS of coal hoppers and many few boxcars as a percentage of the total fleet.
So how do you find this info for the N&W or any other road for that matter? Find a copy of the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) that is close to the year you model. It lists all the revenue cars owned by each railroad, gives vital statistics, and list the number of each in service. From this info you can calculate total cars owned and the percentage of each class of the total in order to arrive at a formula you can use with a layout’s limited number of cars.
I seem to rember reading an online article on this topic too but can’t find it (laptop battery is running low). It might have been focused on the PRR, check the back issues of The Keystone Modeler (TKM), but the advice should work for any railroad. For some reason, I have a 30% ratio in my head (90 car prototypical trains are represented by 30 car model trains). For now, I’d say get as many as can run on your layout, if you only have 3 staging tracks, there is no need to have 12 locos. Of course it’s nice to rotate rolling stock and locos if you can afford it. (if you have too many, keep me in mind; Christmas is coming and I’ve been a really good boy! LOL)
I think the real issue here is what are you actually modeling and how many trains are you running and how long is the longest.
For example Roanoke to Norfolk mainline suggests 2 coal trains - 1 with loads. 1 with empties. Next how long are the trains. If you can only run 15 car trains, then 30 hoppers is what you need. Recycle the trains through your schedule and add a few for local train deliveries along the line (based on what you’re actually modeling) and you’re done. Doesn’t really matter what some formula says.
OTOH if you’re modeling the Norfolk yards used for loading coal onto ships you’re going to need a lot of hoppers to fill the yard. How many will depend on how much of the yard you can actually model. Again a formula answer probably won’t work.
What I am trying to say is that what you need is based on what your trackplan will actually support. Couple that with the traffic you are planning on running.
Gidday, just been having a peruse through the Model Railroader 75 year collection and have found the following…
Oct 1981, Bill Cowling, A balanced freight car fleet, he does have a percentage ratio, But, and to quote, " Research helped, but I also had to rely on logic and my memory to establish the ratio of cars from one line to those of another."
Sept 1979, Btuce Chubb discusses how he established Motive Power and Rolling Stock on the Sunset ValleyRR.
July 1979*,* Jim Hediger, Clinchfields Rolling Stock.
June 1977, Rick Tipton, Developing the freight car fleet. This last one is more on generalities of what can be run in what time frame.
All well worth a read in my opinion, if you have access to them, but there is no magic bullet. as already mentioned here and in this previous thread…
Guys, I would be cautious about such articles since the 50s was still in the hay day of railroads.
Remember before the mega mergers and Interstate highways railroad was the best mode of transporting goods from the East to the West and vis versa.
CRR,N&W,Southern L&N would interchange complete coal trains bound for the lakes and steel mills.Solid reefer trains from the West was interchange as was grain and ore trains.
A lot of the so called “experts” fails miserably in that area of knowledge.
I suspect many may not know Y6Bs was used on mine runs and for heavy yard and hump switching
Back in 2003, The N&W Historical Society’ magazine THE ARROW had info on modeling N&W coal traffic. It discussed the N&W’s fleet of coal hoppers, the numbers and percentage of the total fleet represented by each class, plus info on building the scale models. I believe part 1 was in the March/April, 2003 issue; part 2 in May/June; and part 3 in July/August. That should take care of the N&W coal cars. You might want to add a few more hoppers from connecting roads or from PRR, which had financial ties to N&W as well as physical interchanges.
For N&W general freight cars, I’d check the Official Railroad Equipment Register for your target year. The NMRA has published reprints, so they might be a good place to start.
For interchange cars, the detective work might be a bit more difficult. PRR had the largest freight car fleet in the nation, and NYC wasn’t far behind. B&O, which also interchanged directly, had a large fleet as well. I have seen breakdowns of the national postwar fleet published in some magazines. Those might be the articles cited by others, above. The book that will answer most of your questions about freight cars nationwide is THE POSTWAR FREIGHT CAR FLEET by Larry Kline and Ted Culotta, Published by The National Model Railroad Association, Inc., Chattanooga, TN, 2006.
Note that the distribution of freight cars ON THE N&W won’t be the same as the nationwide distribution. The closer the owning RR is to the N&W, the more likely a non-N&W car will appear on the N&W. Also, the larger the railroad’s fleet, the more likely it is that the road’s cars will appear. DM&IR had an awful lot of iron ore jennies; but they would be rare on the N&W, if they showed up at all.
Someone suggested looking at photos to see what cars appeared. That’s about the bst you can
You are actually asking a much more complicated question than you realize.
The number of engines depends on the number of trains.
The mix of cars depends on the industries you serve.
An ORER will tell you how many and what type of cars a railroad owned but NOT how many and what type of cars operated on the railroad and definitely NOT the number and type of cars operated on a specific route.
Classic example is at Ft Worth on the UP (former MP). If you were modeling the N-S route you would have lots of unit coal trains, no intermodal and some auto and manifest. If you were modeling the E-W route you would need lots of intermodal, no unit coal trains and some auto and manifest . Same railroad, same location, two completely different mixes of car types. Using ORER’s is especially inaccurate for the last 20 years or so since so many cars are now private. For example if you looked at the UP’s roster you wouldn’t realize that 1/5 of their business is chemical products since those commodities travel almost exclusively in private cars.
Your best bet is to look at pictures and see what type of trains were operated (coal, grain, mainfest, auto, etc).
You are modeling the N&W. Find out what coal cars the N&W owned in your era. Buy as many of those cars as will fit on your layout. Probably 95% of the coal cars will be N&W cars. Then you can use the stock formulas for 1950 era layouts for the other cars, 33% home road, 33% direct interchange roads and 33% other roads. The big eastern roads (PRR, NYC, B&O) will be over represented just because they had so many cars. There will be at least one NP car.
Since I am a prototype-specific modeler (though not N&W) here are a few points to ponder:
Most of the N&W 2-8-8-2s were NOT Y6bs, and the Y6b has distinctive spotting features that make it easy to differentiate from all the others. You might be clever to buy several of the sale locos, and then look for Y3/4/5/6a models elsewhere.
How many trains will you have hiding in storage with locos on the point? Coal trains will have Ys, but not necessarily Y6bs. (Remember the Koester constant for staging - you really need to be able to stage 2X + 1 trains, X being the number you thought you would need.) My own layout can store 16 freights, not counting four unit coal trains involved in an empties in/loads out scheme.
How many will simply be in the roundhouse area between runs? (If you model the pre-transition/transition era, don’t forget the, ‘Quonset hut on stilts,’ smoke abatement hoods over the ready tracks.)
The Y classes were N&W’s do-everything loco, from hump switcher to road power. In rugged country, a solid coal train would have two Ys on the point and one pushing.
Ys were also used on merchandise trains. I had a photo of a Y-something on local freight switching the Bassett furniture factory. (WWII propaganda photo. Airbrushing AMERICAN RAILROADS on the tender couldn’t hide the crossed handrails or that massive hunk of exhaust plumbing just behind the pilot deck.) I’m sure it wasn’t a Y6b - it had the ‘sidearm’ Worthington BL feedwater heater.
If I ever abandon the JNR (HIGHLY unlikely) N&W in 1952 would be my North American prototype of choice.
Chuck,I’ve seen Y6Bs(2100s) switching cars at PenNor yard in Columbus…1 2100 could pulled a 200 car loaded coal train from the N&W to the PRR… PRR doubled headed Js on those same 200 car coal trains from Columbus to Sandusky…Also PRR used a 0-8-0 and had to make three cuts in switching the empty hoppers back to the N&W.Pen-Nor was a shared yard and required two crews just to interchange the cars. This operation cease after N&W bought PRR’s Sandusky line.
PRR also used a H24-66 after the fires was dropped on the PRR in Columbus around 57/ early 58.