Also a good idea is to base your fleet on the type of freight your railroad hauled. For example a railroad that deals primarily in hauling coal probably wouldn’t own too many livestock cars so you probably should have maybe only one or two if any.
Others have mentioned a variety of possible reasons for an entire train to carry one road name - or even be made up of cars of a single design. Here’s one you probably never considered.
Almost all of the cars on my layout have no visible indication of ownership. No, I’m not running the Undecorated and Plywood Pacific. My paint jobs are prototypical. When the railroad is a government monopoly and everybody knows it, there’s no need to advertise that all the rolling stock belongs to the Japan National Railways.
Well, not quite all. About half the coal hoppers and a few other cars (not in interchange service) belong to the Tomikawa Valley Railway - and trains on the TTT are solid blocks of company-owned cars more often than not.
If you pick your prototype with care, it’s easy to arrange for all the cars to belong to one company.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Thanks Brakie. It is good news that solid boxcar trains are not gone yet. But are the cars on the autoparts trains you’re seeing just one road name or is it a variety of names?
I’m glad that those “Green Light” cars are still rolling around in service. Here in my neck of the woods, they and the RailBox cars were a dime-a-dozen 20 years back. Now I rarely ever see them.
Peace[8D]
AntonioFP45,Those 60 foot boxcars are lettered for NS CR (some with PRR),CSX(some with NYC) and some NW,Southern and few 50’ foot RBOX…
This morning I saw my first BNSF 50’ “swoosh” boxcar.[:P]
NO – in real life freight they are not all the same . It’s just some only want or collect a certain line and that’s all they buy . No one can tell you they are and have seen any actual train on the tracks . That’s what I used to love to do as a kid read all the different names on the cars . My grandfather lived very close to the freight yards and main tracks at Cumberland , Maryland and I’d run down everytime one would come down the tracks . Plus some were new looking and some old and battered . But I won’t age or batter my diecast cars for love or money … [angel]
Got caught by a CSX manefest this morning that had 22 Railbox cars in a row before there was a loaded flat, followed by more Railbox, then one NS box, then more Railbox. A few other car types sprinkled in at the front and rear.
There have been several articles, some recent, about the “proper” mix of roadnames for different eras.
It greatly varies but I would tend to go with a train having about 60% the same roadname and the rest others. On the other extreme, I don’t want my train to look like a Tyco train set, where each car was of a different roadname.
There’s lots of variations of course. At least in the past 25 years, most hopper and tank cars don’t generally fall under a railroad name but an industry (i.e. ADM covered hoppers, etc). And let’s not forget the abundance of TTX intermodal cars on the rails.
Of course if you do the modern era, the “same roadname” would mean pre-merger roads, like having SP, Rio Grande, MoPac and Cotton Belt cars on a UP train, or BN and ATSF cars on a BNSF train. I always take that into consideration.
And even if you do have “same roadname” consists, don’t forget that most railroads have multiple schemes for their rolling stock. A UP freight would have both armour yellow and boxcar red boxcars, carrying all their slogans from “We Can Handle It” to “We Deliver” to “Building America.”
I’ve seen it both ways. In 1964-66 I lived 100 ft. off the SF main line into Ft. Worth. I saw lots of SF box cars, but there were also others in there.
When I run my trains, I like to have 50% to 75% from the line of the engine and a mix of other roads.
For my grandkids I have a train of gondolas loaded with 2 or 3 dinosaures each.[:o)]
The only times that I have seen 50+ Boxcars of the same roadname being moved in a solid train since 1980 was either to be scrapped or to be sent to another railroad under new ownership.
New Covered Hopper, Center Partition Flat Cars, and new Intermodal Cars will move in unit trains from the builder to the owner-operator railroad over other railroads.
Andrew
Personally, I dont care if something on my layout is prototypical or not. If I feel that one of my geeps looks good with high cube boxcars, I run it that way when given half a chance.
The only solid block I ever encountered was a train of PFE reefers on the SP in northern Nevada in the mid-60s. It was impressive but it had struggled through snow and mud in Donner and it was pretty dirty.
About twenty years later after the WP acquisition I was on old US91 south of Roberts, Idaho - down near a place called Bassett(?) - when I stumbled onto a northbound with umpteen hundred and lebendy-leben UP boxes; UP used to put on a helper set in Idaho Falls balanced about three quarters of the way into the train and so-help-me those UP boxes extended almost all the way back to the helper units. Finally there was a short stretch of WP cars breaking the monotony of UP lettering.
This was too good to pass up so, much to the chagrin of my (then) wife, I zipped onto the Interstate at the Lewisville exit and raced north at 70 plus - this was still 55 mph time and about three miles south of Hamer the poor slob ahead of me, whom I had been gaining on for twenty-miles, got pulled over. Anyway I got into Hamer and set up for a long three quarters shot and here she came. Click!!! And then pulled against the end of the roll and all I could do was stand back and watch!!!
A good ninety percent of that train was UP and WP lettered cars and virtually all the non-UP cars were behind the helpers.
Don’t I remember a famous shot - it may have been a publicity photo as opposed to a railfan’s shot - of a
Brother Poteet
IIRC, the Pacemaker was a high speed, extra-tariff merchandise service, featuring the NYC’s first roller bearing cars. It operated that way (Pacemaker scheme boxes in dedicated service) for a while, then faded away. The Pacemaker scheme faded away more slowly as the cars were repainted. Some of them might even have been patched PC - but I can’t prove it.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - previously a NYC fan)
Look at the Tropicana juice train.