I am curious, whenever you are looking to add to your collection how do you decide on what type of cars. Is it by road name or certain maker. Personally I am drawn to ones (especially boxcars) that are more artistic and endorse products. Examples would be Domino Sugar, Pillsbury, Kelloggs. What are your thoughts?[C=:-)]
Oh boy, will the responses vary on this one. But I will bite and take a swing at it. Here is my list that I think covers most model railroaders when chooseing rolling stock…most of the the time. I think if we could hear the minds of the regular modeler while walking through the store, might go something like this (regardless of maker or price)
Reason … Logic
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Era. I need cars for a good train. Everything starts here…
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Favorite Road name. Need more cars for operations
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Regional Name. Help with vairtey. Besides, they had a really cool paint scheme .
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“Hmm… I all ready have enough _______ cars. I need _____ for my ______ industry” Yeah! That’s it… Now I need 4 more! Oh goodie, they have a whole set.
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“Man, I have enough of these. But heck, they’re cool. I will get another” Always good to have extra…just in case
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“That guy at the club had that car, sure is neat looking. Always did like that road. I can tie it in some how. A roamer! Yeah, that’ll work.” Why not, got to keep up with guys
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"Wow, how cool. Wrong era, wrong road, wrong region, wrong industry… But hey, it sure is sharp. Some day, I will build a layout and I can use this! Heck with it, its cool!
Which at this point, process recycles back to Step 1.
As I have mention from time to time I collect per diem era short line boxcars as well as any private road name…I also have all 3 Jack Frost PS2 2893 covered hoppers from Athearn.I have several Pillsbury as well.
And yes I have BN,BNSF,UTLX,GATX,NS,Southern etc,etc cars as well.
Early on after collecting 6 MoPac Eagel box cars (blue and grey) I left
the hobby for a long time. After getting back into it I started adding
cars based both on the era I was modeling and the indusrtries I
had-many left over from previous layouts. Bob[swg]
My primary criteria for freight car possession are:
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consistent with time period modeled
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if modeling a class 1 railroad, having nearly one-half of the rolling stock in that name
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car types and quantities adequate to serve modeled industries as well as any “bridge traffic”
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the vast majority of rolling stock consists (beyond the home road’s) of those from the major railroads as well as those connecting with the modeled railroad
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privately-owned rolling stock (tank cars, reefers, etc.) appropriate for the geographical area modeled
Mark
If you are modeling around 1950, see page 11 of Anthony Thompson’s Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Volume 1 (Signature Press) containing several bar charts showing the car-type distribution (sans privately-owned cars) for US railroads nationally as well as five selected railroads. For example, the national car fleet consisted of 36% box cars while the Southern Pacific was 57% box cars; 23% were hopper cars nationally, while the Pennsylvania Railroad was 34% hoppers and the SP only 3%. Home-car fleets reflected industries served.
Mark
choochoobuff,
Good question to ask. I would have to say that my selection of rolling stock is very similar to the first part of John’s list above:
- Time frame - First and foremost, it HAS to fit my era (early 40s). If it doesn’t fit my era, I don’t buy it and I don’t run it. (That includes locomotives.)
- Variety of names - I make sure that I have a few of my road name - i.e. the New York Central. But, I also like to have a fair amount of other road names because the NYC would be transporting them west to east from Chicago to the east coast.
- Variety of types - So far, my rolling stock roster is moderate (~35-40 cars) but I have a fair mix of boxcars, hoppers, gondolas, tankers, reefers, and cabooses, plus a couple of stock cars and a flat car. That makes for an interesting variety in what I can run. Even the boxcars have variety: wood, wood end, metal, etc. (choochoo, you probably like seeing a pull of boxcars as much as I enjoy seeing a drag of hoppers full of coal.)
- Limitation of lengths - Since I have mostly 22" radius curves and a few 18" curves on my layout, I keep my rolling stock 40’ and under so that it both looks and runs better. I do have a couple of Walthers gondolas that are 46’ long, only because there isn’t very many on the market at present that are shorter. (Side note: I just saw recently at an LHS that Athearn had a 40’ gondola. And Accurail is supposed to be coming out with a 41’ gon later this year. Woohoo! [:)][tup])
- Manufacturers - There are three main manufacturers that I tend to gravitate to when it comes to rolling stock:
- Accurail - My favorite for wood and wood end box cars. Their hoppers are good, too. The undercarriage detailing is a bit spart
My modeling has three foci, mutually exclusive:
- Prototype - As my signature indicates, my modeling is very time-frame specific. One result is that I deliberately set out to acquire 1/700th of the Japan National Railway’s fleet of freight equipment as of September, 1964. In large part, I succeeded (major classes are properly represented, one-offs are not.) My JNR passenger roster accurately represents the rolling stock to be found on the Chu-o Nishi Hon Sen’s contemporary trains. Locomotives are an eclectic mix, but I have deliberately avoided types that would not have been at home on the steep grades of the Upper Kiso Valley. The fact that the JNR was a government-owned monopoly (no longer true) eliminates the problem of, “Is this road name appropriate?”
- Freelance within Japanese design parameters of the target time frame - the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo is a short line that interchanges with the JNR but is privately owned. As such, it has rolling stock and locomotives that, “Could have, might have, but never did,” exist at that place in time and space. A few are time displaced, one is space-displaced (the prototype was still operating, on a different island) and the rest are fanciful flights of imagineering (seven-axle articulated coal hoppers, anyone?)
- Heritage - a (very) few US prototype locomotives (almost all 4-8-4’s) and a couple of AAR standard 40-foot box cars with club heralds and reporting marks, leftovers from my years-ago days of operating on club railroads.
There is also a motley collection of rolling stock and motive power which will either be kitbashed into something I can use (for example, 3 consolidations that will be transmogrified into JNR 9600-class when I get the time and feel the need,) or be given to my grandson when he reaches the stage of development required for successful operation of an HO layout. Much of this category was acquired at yard sales by my sister, then transf
As others have said, I start with the era I’m modelling, then it’s a basic matter of variety…
Road names aren’t really that important to me as much as the color and type of rolling stock is.
I like having a nice mix of stock cars, box cars, ice reefers, flat cars, tank cars, open hoppers, covered hoppers, gondolas and what ever else catches my eye - most of which are basic box car brown with a few yellow, red, black and green cars thrown in here and there.
Tracklayer
I’m modelling the mid-1960’s, but I’m also acquiring engines, rolling stock and automobiles to time-shift my layout back to the 1930’s. My fleet now is for the 1960’s, although I do have a number of beer reefers that wouldn’t have been in interchange service that late. To me, the minor details of big-brother rules against colorful “billboard” reefers is something I can free-lance out of existence when needed.
My recent acquisitions have been for the earlier time frame. I’ve been interested in the detail level available on some new models now. The Intermountain Pfauldler milk cars come to mind, as do the Walthers Mather box car kits.
Despite my penchant for beer reefers, I prefer subdued colors that don’t call attention to themselves, like rust-colored Pennsy boxcars and hoppers.
To echo what others have stated:
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Era (60’s)
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Home Road (CB&Q)
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Interchange roads, other roads that interchanged with the Q in Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver, and St Louis
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Some roamers from other areas of the coutry that bring specialized products
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Types are based on industries served
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Now I am concentrating on very specific cars not in mass production and are clearly signiture cars for the Q.
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And yes, the occasional "cool car: gets bought, as long as it the right era.
Rick Keil
My Criteria, one of which havent been touched upon yet:
- Can it run on my tight curves? (18" and 22" radius)
This limits me to a lot of 40’ cars which leads me to avoid modeling modern equipment because there is more available for earlier eras 40’s 50’s 60’s that will run on my layout.
- Can the car serve an industry for my railroad?
I am not going to buy a reefer to spot at the paper mill on my layout. You just can’t do that.
- Price. I am on a tight budget as of late and Blue box kits on ebay have been my car of choice because of the price. I bought a few Branchline kits, but the blue box cars are a little cheaper.
For years my purchasing was rather unplanned, except that I knew I could always use more ore cars, modelling a free-lance MN iron ore railroad!! In general, I’ve gotten (either pre-lettered or decorated myself) cars that I’ve seen in the past, or cars from railroads in my area, so I have a fair number of Great Northern and Northern Pacific cars for example. I’ve also gotten cars that I liked the paintscheme, or they reminded me of something or someone or just looked interesting.
Recently I’ve been thinking more about adding cars that would really be on my railroad. For example, my St.Paul Route’s southernmost terminal is Minneapolis-St.Paul, so it’s logical that it’s trains heading north would have quite a few cars from the railroads whose northernmost terminal was the Twin Cities, like Minneapolis & St.Louis, Rock Island and Chicago Great Western. Similarly, since my railroad (thru a Canadian subsidiary) reached Port Arthur - Ft. William Ontario, there would probably be a fair number of CN or CP cars on the mainline freights.
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do i like the way it looks
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does it look like it would “mesh well” with my locos
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do i like the way it looks
