I have changed my track plan 12 times starting with a circle and have changed the eras repeatedly also. My question would be what type of F unit was most popular between railroads at that time. Also, the same for a steamer (it would have to run on 18" radius track). Oh ya can sombody give me a good website or book about the transtition era. thanks
bnsf6733
The best website for transition-era freight car stuff (photos, history, general rosters, etc) is the NEB&W website: http://railroad.union.rpi.edu
As for the rest of the railroading scene, you’ll have to narrow it down to a specific road or two. You basically asked, “What exactly did “people” wear between 1940-1960?” Have you dug around in the Fallen Flags website? It’s a great general information site, with bajillions of photos, operating manuals, and links to road-specific sites: www.rr-fallenflags.org
Just by sales figures, the most popular F unit was the F7, and the most popular steamer was the 2-8-0. But that really doesn’t tell you a whole lot, considering some roads only ran F3s, and consolidations were built (roughly) from 1860 to 1960, with lots of roster shuffling and retirements making the “real” number of 2-8-0s virtually impossible to figure out.
The most popular F unit was the 1500 HP F-7, which was manufactured from 2/49 to 12/53. 2261 A units and 1420 B units were produced for US railroads.
As far as steamers and 18" curves go, I’d limit myself to something like the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 and/or 2-10-0 as the upper limit on size. While most 4-6-2’s and 2-8-2’s will take 18" curves, they’re long enough to start looking out of places on such sharp curves. Besides, the 2 loco’s mentioned are superb runners.
You can also use 2-6-0’s, 4-6-0’s and, of course, 0-6-0 switchers as far as steamers go. Bachmann Spectrum makes a nice 4-6-0, IHC has a 2-6-0 and Lifelike’s Proto 2000 series has a superb USRA 0-6-0.
Andre
I’m modeling sante fe
Then check the detail job Ted York did on the Bachmann Spectrum engine to make it look more like a Santa Fe 2507 class 2-8-0: http://www.atsfrr.com/resources/2507%20Cl/Index.htm.
Note also that when Santa Fe took over the Kansas City Mexico and Orient that it also got 2 classes of 2-10-0’s: “Russian” decapods and some Baldwin built jobs with larger drivers. While Santa Fe didn’t really use the 'Russians", there’s no reason why you can’t add some Santa Fe specific details and say they lasted until the end of steam.
Bachmann produced both the 2-8-0 and the 2-10-0 with Santa Fe lettering in HO.
Andre
Santa Fe had just about every F unit made, both for passenger and freight, and were one of the first (if not THE first) to start running the FTs. For research into what SF ran and when, you can’t beat the ATSF All-Time Diesel Roster site at http://rosters.gcrossett.com/atsf/ . It lists all the locomotives, when they entered service, the color scheme, any renumbering and/or repainting, and even when the loco was retired (or wrecked as the case may be). Pretty comprehensive site – I’ve used it extensively in my recent purchases of new locos to be sure they didn’t enter service after my cut-off date of 1954.
Scroll down to the bottom of the main page to find a link to a page that organizes the roster by model instead of by number.
Not many relatively inexpensive ATSF prototype Steam engines available. Roundhouse used to make several. The IHC 2-6-0 is an SP M-4. Unfortunately it probably is not a good starting point as SP used a LOT of Moguls and had something like 3 Prairies and the Santa Fe used a LOT of Prairies and very few Moguls. Luckily ATSF used (as noted) all kinds of F’s except FPs, available from several sources. Also GP’s and SD’s which are available in both Zebra Stripe and Blue and Gold, so you could use just about any first gen diesel. Steam tended to be large steam.
SF didn’t start painting their non-hood unit diesels in the blue & yellow scheme until sometime in 1960, so any transition era diesels other than the F-units were in variations of the zebra stripe scheme. There’s bunches of them out there; Atlas and Bachmann Spectrum have GP7s and GP9s; Atlas has some really nice FM H16-44 locos with built-in decoders if you’re using or thinking of using DCC; Atlas also has S2 switchers in zebra stripe, and Stewart has two Baldwin switchers from that era. Some of these are hard to find in dealers, but most pop up on eBay almost continuously – I’ve gotten all my new locos from eBay in the last couple of months (and sold some blue & yellow locos I’m no longer using there to help finance the new ones [:D]),