Is it okay to mix SP stock with UP stock and vise versa back in the steam era ?.
Thanks
Tracklayer
Well I’m not sure, you know there was the take over back in the 90’s but before that I don’t know how close they worked together. I use them both together and I model the 50’s 60’s and 70’s… So, I do use them together and feel good about it. There is always one thing you can fall back on, It’s your railroad.
The SP and UP combined operations when Harriman was in charge of the SP, but the government stepped in and made them break their ties sometime in the 1930’s. I believe they still had trackage rights and run-through agreements on each other’s systems up until their eventual merger, so their rolling stock would have been intermixed with that of several other roads.
Boxcars can be mixed in any strange combination you can think of: Youngstown & Southern boxes heading up Donner pass, or Southern boxcars sitting at a grain elevator in upstate Michigan. Boxcars were the general containers of the day, and went EVERYWHERE, sometimes not seeing their home rails for years. So yes, you can have SP and UP boxes running together on the same rails.
sure you can…I remember seeing on occasion UP equipment on SP tracks that went thru San Antonio when i was young…chuck
Interchange was common then. There was some equipment that they could not interchange, but for the most part you will be okay operating that way.
ANY stock listed in Interchange service could run on any road in the contiguous States from something like the 1890s, certainly the 1900s. The much later Railbox “Any Load - Any Road” was really only something of a slogan. Except for stock listed (and usually stencilled) to a dedicated service everyone wanted to maximise the traffic time/miles carrying load and minimise the empty / non-paying time (in fact an empty car COSTS… fuel and wear and tear, maybe track time getting to its next load.
So first off you can run ANY road’s cars.
BUT you want to think through what would be suitable.
Neighbouring roads will tend to show up quite often as all general use cars. This may be singles, clusters or large blocks.
Distant roads will show up occassionally… BUT, may run a specific block of cars for a one off load, a regular block of cars… such as Reefers for a specific traffic… or a bunch of cars working round some circuit where their appearance in your area is one leg (loaded or empty) of an efficient circuit of several loads.
In the steam era coal hoppers (and ore cars) would tend to remain on home road much more. The nature of the traffic and distances coal was carried TENDED to keep them at home… except run throughs… but these would tend to be end-on connections of non-competing roads or allies. Competitors tended to cross each other by the shortest route (in general).
Livestock made very specific routes between production and market. This would need research. Photos would help you a lot. Cattle trains tended to be long to slaughter points. Might be shorter between market and graziers. Cattle had very strict handling requirements.
Meat, including chilled and frozen meat would tend to be between cities. Chicago was the BIG one… don’t know the others??? These ran FAST (especially when iced rather than mech reefers). Tended to be in company blocks… but you might get UP and SP cars combined in one train… probably in blocks rathe