The 70s

Heh, plenty of 1970s corporate rock (Kansas, ELO, BTO, Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles), 60s survivors (Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane/Starship) and bands which would eventually revive rock (ZZ Top, Van Halen, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Clash, Bruce…yeah, you get the idea) on the radio nowadays…
Anyway, back to October/November 1976, me still a pre-teen kinda new to Model Railroader magazine, came across an article about how to paint and decal this new fangled railroad - ConRail (considering the lead time for articles back then, I guess the decals came out the minute ConRail took over in April 1976) - I don’t have the article, but I do remember the block letter CR (Penn Central style, I guess); alas I don’t recall if the can-opener ConRail logo was available or not. It still took a while (years, in fact) for me to realize that I had just lived through the death of well known and centuries old railroads like the Reading, LV, CNJ, EL (well… I guess the Erie and the Delaware & Lackawanna had disappered in the 1960s, but still).
At this late date, I see that beginning in 1974 or so money from the states and the Feds started going into fixing up the most critical trackage of the soon-to-be Conrail 6 (for example, there are several pictures of rehabiliation of CNJ trackage during 1975 in the book ‘The Trail of the Blue Comet’), so probably if you want the maximum amount of decay, despair, lack of maintainence, and gloom you should pick the 1972 (post Hurricane Agnes, of course) -1973 era on a major Northeast road.

Orsonroy, I looked up your profile. If you were in Rockford in the 70s you saw a much different railroad world than I did. I was born in the 40s in St. Louis which probably looked as grim as you describe. However, I spent the bulk of the 70s in St. Joseph, MO which is about 50 miles NW of Kansas City. BN always looked good and freshly shopped, MoPac was usually sharp, Santa Fe ALWAYS, UP was dirty, but obviously prosperous. Rock Island was a mess and would soon come to an end (1980 bankruptcy ended the Rock). I spent the 1980s along a BN branch in western Kansas.
Even the ancient SD9s looked good most of the time. I guess they weathered the fleet before entering Illinois.
I was enjoying life in the 70s and that may have colored how I saw the railroads, but all my pictures of BN from the mid 70s show nice clean locomotives.

" “Roof walks” (correctly called running boards) were illegal in interchange after 1977. The flashing beacons on top of loco cabs became common. A few roads (SP and D&RG) used other “safety” devices like oscillating lights on the front end of locomotives. "
I was thinking of pointing out that roofwalks remained in NON IINTERCHANGE traffic as long as the owning roads had a use for them / hadn’t got round to changing them. Thanks for the date!

Same applied to 40’ cars… anyone got an end of interchange date for them please?

Did high level brake wheels get banned at the same time?

Why don’t tank cars come under the 40’ rule?

Is there any broad guideline for what locos got yellow beacons on the cab roof?

Do “Mars Lights” count as “oscilating lights” or were they something different?

As I mentioned earlier, railroads of the south tended to “comply slowly” to changes and even rules. Even after the 1977 ban, some roof walks or “running boards” could still be seen on SCL cars, however, brakemen were not allowed up there. I’'ve heard of ladders to the roof being cut short to curtail the temptation to climb up. Around 1980, the 40ft. boxcar fleet shrunk to almost nothing. There was a big batch of them stored in a yard near my home, some still had their roofwalks as they were shuttled to a larger yard where the blow torches were waiting.

I didn’t see anymore running boards or 40ft boxcars after 1981.

Anybody got the answer to:

Ballast on an Appalachain branchline? Cinders? Rock?

Signal arrangement? (see drawings)

Thanks,
soumodeler

I don’t know about the Southern, but it will depend on how much traffic the branch sees, one train a day ,three a week, or a couple a day. I’de say it would be safe to use stone ballast, but add some weeds mixed in and maybe some cinders to and weather your ties more to give the look of a less maintained branch line

PS, don’t forget “southern rock” the alman bros,marshall tucker band,charlie daniels etc, disco and leisure suits didn’t make it to the end of the decade.

The 1970’s was the last full decade for cabooses on most mainline freight trains. The caboose was phased out beginning around 1985, now replaced by end of train devices and computers. Also many freight cars with 1970’s paint schemes still exist today in 2005, including many with current reporting marks such as CSXT and the modern NS. Many former Southern Railway boxcars originally painted in the 1970’s are still common and still have the original Southern reporting marks and numbers.

I am not aware of any rule banning 40 foot cars from interchange. 40’ boxcars were phased out because 50’ boxcars could carry more stuff, as far as I know. There were some large tank cars manufactured in the 60s and 70s. Some of them were later banned for safety reasons (don’t want THAT many gallons of that stuff to explode!).

The high brake wheels and ladders to the roof all started to come off in the mid 60s. Various govenment agencies became very safety oriented in that era and began to make and enforce rules which led to these changes. I remember watching a commercial railfan video at a model train club meeting about 1990. The video in the program had been shot along the Union Pacific in 1970. There were plenty of 40 foot boxcars in evidence, but not one of them (in that tape) had their running boards still in place. An article in the now defunct Kalmbach magazine “Trains Illustrated” several years ago featured the then recent grain harvest in the Pacific Norrthwest and showed a
“grain train” made up of all 40 foot boxcars pressed into service because no more covered hoppers were available. To top it off the power was a lash up of A & B F units. Except for the missing “roofwalks” and yellow beacons on top the locomotives (and the BN on the locomotives) it looked like the 1950s revisited.

I think the “guideline” on yellow beacons was pretty much if a particular railroad (BN for example) was buying beacons they slapped them on top of every unit that came through the shops. The SP and D&RG units I referred to had a light arr

I can’t believe nobody mentioned the Chessie System and its paint scheme! It was one of the best, or perhaps worst, paint schemes ever. I really miss seeing it on the rails. Fortunately, there are many Chessie System models out there and the Chessie System is alive and well on my model railroad. Love it or hate it, the Chessie paint scheme fit the era and it wasn’t dull. MRC still uses a Chessie System deisel on some of its packaging. Don’t forget the kitten with plenty of personality!

Does anybody make a 40’ boxcar without the running boards, or will I have to take off some of them on mine? I don’t like the thought of ripping something off of a Kadee boxcar!

soumodeler

There are some kits out there that give you the option of adding or not adding the running board during assembly. Brand names escape me at the moment and I am at the office, not at home, so I can’t check. You can pull the running board on the old Athearn Blue Box line, use the tabs on the underside to fill the holes in the roof, sand it smooth and paint it and you have a nice version of a “modernized” 40 foot (or 50 foot for that matter) box car. If you can’t match the paint, then paint it aluminum and weather it. A lot of box car roofs were “metal” colored.

Enjoy!

The photos in that article were taken on both the ex-NP Central Washington Branch and the ex-GN Mansfield Branch. The reason they continued to use 40’ boxcars was that the trackage on portions of those branches was too old and fragile to bear the weight of 100 ton grain hoppers. Thus the 50-ton boxcars remained in service until the tracks were either removed or rebuilt.

The F’s were mainstays on the CW line during the late 70’s, but the lashup would often include an elderly GP-7 to run cars on the spur between Davenport, WA and Eleanor - again because the relative light weight of the geep was less likely to damage the tracks.

I grew up in that area, but just a little too late to catch the F-unit action. Today, the Palouse River & Coulee City RR GP-30’s and 35’s that run on the CW and nearby P&L lines still put on a pretty good show.

Tom

BTW: Forgot to mention.

Earlier this year on t.v, one of the cable channels was running the classic 1970s “NBC Mystery Movies” series. I greatly enjoyed watching these police detective flicks as a kid. (Columbo, McMIllan & Wife, Hec Ramsey, and of course everybody’s favorite cowboy: McCloud.)

I saw a “McCloud” episode. (Marshall McCloud is a New Mexico detective stationed in New York City—he always manages to get in trouble, give his boss a migraine, but get the bad guys in the end).

During a fight scene at a river dock, there were a number of freight cars present, including several 50ft. Boxcars. I noticed that they had Running Boards that were clearly visible and intact! I can’t remember the road names, but I think one was in the Rio Grande scheme.

I’m not sure but based on most of the automobiles in the move, this episode was circa 1973-75. There were loads and loads of GMC Fishbowl buses in the “electric blue” paint scheme.

I always enjoy watching old tv movies and looking for any trains and buses in them.

I believe Branchline Trains, blueprint cars have solid roofs,you have to drill through the bottom if you want to add roofwalks, Intermountain , Accurail and Red Caboose, I think have small holes easy to fill. Intermountain kits had both high and low ladders and you could put brake wheel high or low. Accurail and Athearn have cast on ladders and brakewheel apparatus. Don’t forget a lot of cars and locos had ACI labels on them, they started showing up in '69.

Like a lot of you, I was a teenager in the 70s, and thought I rememebered the decade well until I started trying to build a model railroad set in the seventies! One thing I do remember is reading a letter to the editor of MR, in which the author was poking fun at modellers of the future modelling the “picturesque” (read “decayed and run down”) roads of the seventies. Yeah, he’s right, I thought, that would be pretty lame. Ain’t nostalgia wonderful?

I model the Canadian scene, and from your replies and my general recollections of the time, I wonder if things were a little different north of the border. Canadian roads in those days were generally ten years or so behind the American roads in adopting new developments (although some innovations, like wide cabs, moved from north to south). In the mid seventies, 40’ boxcars, roof walks, station agents, and train orders were all part of the everyday scene. Grain moved not in covered hoppers, but in boxcars (the Government of Canada covered hoppers were just coming on the scene). Generally, too, things were better-maintained than I remember seeing in pictures of American roads (at least the eastern ones) in Trains magazine.

I wonder how accurate my recollections are? Any other Canadian fans/modellers out there care to share their memories?

Thanks,

Me, Disco? PLEEEEEEZE.

I had to get rid of my pet rock. It bit me… ([:p])

Tracklayer

Good Goobly,

I enjoyed disco. In fact, back then when I was only 5ft. 9 inches tall, I dropped from a hefty 190 pounds to a slim and wiry 155 pounds from skating up a sweat at the rink to the disco music, which was very easy to dance to.

I used to wonder what in the world was it with all of the anti-disco crowds since no one was trying to shove disco down their throats, but they had their “Disco Sucks” shrits and posters. Yet, I didn’t see any “Kiss Sucks” or “Black Sabbath Rots” shirts worn by disco fans, even though me and other kids I knew disliked the lyrics from those bands. A friend of mine summed it up as cultural bias, since disco’s roots were from Latin and Soul rythyms.

But, time moved on, got along with people, and I still enjoyed trains.

I LOVE ROLLER SKATING! Disco music, organ music, and then other songs with good beats. LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT![:D]