I was asked a question last night about what are the top 25 railroads to model. It got me thinking about how the list has changed over the years. I wanted to see what people thought?
Well what is the criteria for being on the list. All the Class 1 railroads would come first. But what about some Class II’s. Is it based on era? Based upon what roads have models for Purchase?
I vote for Pan Am Railways!![(-D][swg]
I vote for BN, I’m sure that pennsylvania is #1 followed by many of the pre merger railways of the east coast.
Pennsy power all the way! Chuck in pre merger East Coast roads and some Western roads and we got our top 25.
Judging by what’s available, Pennsylvania, for sure; but, never understood why? I’m guessing if you live east of the Mississippi, the eastern roads will be your choice and if west, the western roads.
Need criteria!
Half of the 25 railroads are quite thoroughly documented with 30,000 pictures at North East Rails – And these are only the major Pennsylvania-centered railroads.
Based on what’s available I would say the list should include
Santa Fe
Union Pacific
PRR
B&O
Denver & Rio Grande
Maryland and Pennsylvania
Enjoy
Paul
I don’t know about exact criteria, but it’s some combination of prototype and modeling factors. Just being a Class 1 shouldn’t do it. Depending on era, there were many more than 25 Class 1s anyway.
And I’ll bet everyone can name several Class 1s that people just detest and consequently are modeled less than you might think because of sheer size. I won’t name names in order to protect the guilty and avoid starting a fight with some of their few fans…[;)][B)]
I will nominate a road that always punches well above its weight class and, as a number of people have observed over the years, seems to consistently sell out in runs of models faster than competitors. While it may be on the edge just on size or based its regional character, but I’d say the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad certainly deserves to make the Top 25 Most Popular Modeled Prototype Railroads. Add in all the Rio Grande narrowgaugers in every possible permutation of -n3 and that clinches the Rio Grande’s Top 25 status.
EDIT: One more idea for a criteria to make the Top 25. It must have a historical society devoted to it, as that is certainly one measure of the devotion of a RR’s fans.
Well, yes, most people tend to model what they know - but not always.
I have been in this hobby a long time and worked in several hobby shops - so I have “watched” what people buy.
Back in the day, even as the east coast mergers where beginning, the original big east coast Class I lines sold best here in the Mid Atlantic - B&O, C&O, PRR, NYC, N&W, etc.
Major western roads also always had a reasonable representation of modelers here in the east - ATSF, SP, UP, GN, NP.
In this region, Mid west roads seemed least modeled - not sure why?
People who live in the west sometimes seem to fail to realize the size and scope of systems like the PRR or the B&O. While they might not cover as much “area” from end to end as the big western roads, east coast roads prior to the 60’s had very dense webs of trackage to nearly every town or city in their “service area”.
And in the golden age of railroading, east coast roads were very busy, making them good modeling subjects. Several of my good friends model the PRR in the 40’s or 50’s. In those eras, on the PRR northeast corridor, a train passed any given spot about every 12 minutes - lot of action - what’s not to like about that?
The B&O was equally as busy and the Appalachian summit was a challenging obstacle, requiring great amounts of power to move coal and other goods east to steel mills and ports and west to other consumers.
Today, I don’t know what people model, or what would be most popular, I model the early 50’s and freelance with my ATLANTIC CENTRAL, which interchanges with the B&O, C&O and WM.
I find modern railroading rather boring, I’m more into the history side of the hobby.
And I am amazed at the lack of B&O prototypes among all this high detail, high accuracy RTR product. There has been some recent action in the B&O direction - wagon top box cars and caboose, Bachmann’s EM-1, but for
Pennsy, UP, B&O, SP, DRG&W, CB&Q, GN, Amtrak for sure, Erie, NYC, Southern, NS, CSX, C&O, ATSF, Conrail, Penn central, BN, NP, W&M, Pan AM, CP, CN, GT, and Soo lines.
My wife’s grandfather worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad for over 50 years. Starting out as a messenger and ending his career as the yardmaster in the Hagerstown, Maryland yard. He saw it all from small steam engiens to dieselization. The Pennsylvania Railroad designed and built most of their own locomotives and cars and they were some the best ever built. It is too bad that poor management and the Federal Government forced them into bankrupcy.
Well personally I mash it all together because I pretty much like just about everything railroady.
But I’ll go ahead and say it: If your going to model a “railroad” as in a complete railroad, then its going to have to be a small one!
The Trans Siberian Railroad is the most modeled on the planet, followed by a couple of other European Railroads.
I have an article on the business of model railroads worldwide, that is full of world wide stats on the hobby. If I can find it I’ll post some exact numbers. Back in the days of the old Iron Curtain, the Trans Siberian Railroad was probably all that was available on the market in the old Soviet Union.[(-D]
Model railroading was, and still is very popular in eastern Europe.
Brent, with all due respect, since most model railroad manufacturers are privately held firms, who do not disclose sales info, we have no idea what road names or products sell the most.
Sheldon
My take, as an ex-statistician, is that the basic question is meaningless and that the answers, being 100% opinion with only a few glimmers of fact, are equally meaningless. I model what I model because it snaps MY cap, and i couldn’t care less what people I don’t know and will probably never meet do with their hobby time.
If MR were to send a free-return card to each subscriber asking that person’s choice of a railroad to model:
- Most of the cards would never be sent back.
- There would be no way to determine if the modeled railroad was a 1,000 square foot monster or one old Athearn BB loco in a box.
So, lacking a directive to the FBI to raid every known model railroader’s home and examine his modeling, a meaningful statistical base is unattainable. Even if that was done, it would ONLY cover North American practice. I, for one, am willing that Japan has more modelers than the United States, even with a smaller population. Then, how about the modelers in countries where the Euro is the local currency? Australia? New Zealand? All the rest of the land areas I haven’t named?
Then, too, how do you parse out NYC and PRR modelers into Penn Central, then Conrail, then back out to CSX/NS? Or do we pick a single day in history and say, “Only that which existed on (fillintheblank) will count?”
I quit. My head hurts.
At the time I model, there were only two railroads in my prototype area of interest. I model all five of them…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I know I’m being ethnocentric, but I kinda assumed we’re talking US, since the OP led off discussing Class 1 RRs, a category which I don’t believe has any application beyond the US since it’s defined by the AAR, IIRC.
Sorry I don’t see anything here that say’s U.S. only railroads. I always think globally on any topic of conversation, sometimes it drives my friends nut’s.
I thought Mexico and Canada also have Class 1 railroads.
I’ll bow out.[:)]
(Disclaimer: I’m just having fun with this, so don’t take any of this personally :))
Scenery? In the west, we have these things called mountains. No, not the Poconos or the Appalachians or any of those geologically ancient anthills.
Our mountains are not hundreds of feet tall, they’re thousands of feet tall. It took serious engineering to climb them or tunnel through them. That’s what made railroads mighty in the west. Tehachapi Loop. Cajon Pass. Moffat Tunnel. All in the west, baby.
You know the song “America The Beautiful” – Those purple-mountain majesties above the fruited plain? Yep, those are in the west.
Without the western railroads, you’d never eat Washington apples, California oranges or buy any cars or electronics from Asia. Heck, you wouldn’t even have any railroad models.
I’m a UP modeler, but I’d bet the most famous railroad in the entire US among the general population is the “Santa Fe.”. (They probably aren’t aware the ATSF isn’t around anymore, but I digress). Mention “train” (freight or passenger) to someone walking down the street and they’ll probably think of a Santa Fe F-unit in Warbonnet paint. It’s that iconic.
Wanna know what’s the main difference between railroads in the east and railroads in the west?
The east buil
Actually, the OP made no mention of Class 1 railroads (which limits it to the US) at all. This opens the discussion to railroads/railways world wide.
Were I to hazard a guess at the top 3, they would be.
- British railways in the form of British Rail, or the pre-Nationalization constituents GWR, LMS. LNER, Southern. being quite common with the GWR (and the Western Region of British Railways) perhaps having the edge. There are also modelers who model the scene prior to the 1923 Grouping. Don’t have any idea how much modeling of the British scene would encompass theprivatization of the last 20 years.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find that there are more British modelers of the US/Canadian scene than there are American and Canadian modelers of the British scene.Ironic, given the combined US and Canadian population is 355 million and the British population is 62 million. OTOH, the Brits do things like building 1:1 mainline steam locomotives from scratch.
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Japanese National Railways.
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German railways (i.e Deutsche Bahn, the postwar Deutsche Bundesbahn up to re-unification and the pre1945 Deutsche Reichsbahn Gesellschaft with some possibly modeling the post-war Deutsche Reichsbahn of German Democratic Republic (Rast Germany as well as the state railway
Back in the days, when the Iron curtain divided the world into good and bad, the only source of model trains in the Soviet Union was adaptions of German trains made by Piko in East Germany. IIRC, MR ran a feature on model railroading in Russia quite a few years back.