Hey guys in doing research for next years project. A N scale Pennsylvania RR based layout I was wondering what other RRs cars were commenly hauled by the Pennsy in the late 50s?? Thanks in advance Tim.
Tim…I’m not a PRR guy but I do know the ATSF, WP & SP routinely hauled freight from every corner of the country. I suspect the PRR could make the same claim.
I think you’ll be safe with any RR cars from that era. Obviously, RRs in close proximately to the PRR would have more cars present but the larger cities served by PRR would bring in goods from all over North America.
Mac
It depends. If you are modeling a specific area than the mix of cars is going to be dependent on traffic. For example if you were modeling an area between Potomac yard and points north it would be heavy on ACL, SCL, Southern, N&W, etc. If you were modeling the area around Altoona you would see a lot of Berwyn and Cambria and Indiana hoppers. Refrigerator cars were primarily FGEX on the Chicago and ST. Louis lines. It is safe to say you would see cars from every major road at any given time but you need to weight them for the area of your railroad and the section of the PRR main line in that area…
PRR ran solid reefer trains out of Chicago made up of mostly PFE and Santa Fe but w/ a mix of everybody else’s thrown in. In the middle 50s the Sandusky branch from Columbus to (where else?) Sandusky, being seasonal (due to lake boats being frozen out of service in the winter) was one of the last bastions of steam and for one or two seasons leased Santa Fe 2-10-4s were used. You could see trains of 100% N&W hoppers or L&N (via Louisville)hoppers w/ a PRR cabin car pulled by double headed Santa Fe and PRR 2-10-4s
trainfreek92, I would hesitate to haul any South Penn Railroad cars in any Pennsylvania Railroad manifest unless I was prepared to get a good healthy poke in the nose!!!
Any railroad can expect to haul ant freight car from any railroad in North America, that’s from Mexico to Canada of course.
However, typically cars from the same region will typically be seen on the average freight train of a particular region.
Of course, cars from the larger railroads will be seen more often. In the North East, for example cars from the CNR and CPR, whose cars show up on almost every freight train in North America, will also be noticable as well as American roads.
You could run any railroad in N America on the PRR in the 1950’s.
Dave H.
Any road will do…but you NEED New Haven equipment on any PRR layout…
As others have said, you can pretty much run any other RR’s equipment on the PRR. In the 1950s, it seemed as if every PRR mixed freight had an obligatory Wabash boxcar…
If you want a representative roster, though, go easy on the western roads. Only the big ones like AT&SF, SP, UP, WP, NP, and GN would have been likely to have enough cars on the PRR for you to consider for a condensed roster (not including the PFE reefer blocks, of course). Railroads in the vicinity of the PRR in the 1950s or that connected with it are good candidates for multiple samples, such as (but not limited to):
NYNH&H, NYC, DL&W, ERIE, LV, L&HR, LNE, CNJ, RDG, N&W, NKP, P&LW, WABASH, C&EI, CRI&P, B&O, C&O, EJ&E, SOU, SAL, ACL, RF&P, MONON, M&StL, and many, many others. Don’t feel you need one from each, but this should give you a start.
BTW, ditto to the Berwind-White hopper cars; you can get them in N scale from Bowser.
these are the first symptoms of the boxcar-collecting virus…
regards,
rik
fka dothinker
Guys,The PRR was into the long haul as were the other railroads…While just a humble brakeman on the PRR then PC I can assure you there was lots of Western cars from the UP,WP,SF,SSW,SP,GN,SP&S,CB&Q etc.One of my favorite trains was a solid reefer train of PFE,FGX,UP and SF reefers…This was a “hot” train that ran from the West coast to the East coast markets on a very fast schedule that would rival passenger train schedules…
Any railroad that interchanged cars would most likely eventually have had one on the Pennsy. But not all roads interchanged cars in the 50’s - some that didn’t would be narrow gauge lines such as the East Broad Top (although they did have a set up to run standard gauge cars on their line by swapping trucks); lines whose cars no longer met the requirements for interchange such as the Maryland & Pennsylvania RR; or lines that didn’t have cars of their own, many shortlines.
Enjoy
Paul
Certainly the Ma&Pa received interchange cars, but their own cars (many of which still rode on the ICC-banned archbar trucks) didn’t seem to wander off its twisted, rusty, and weedy rail. That is, of course, until the late 1970s, when the Ma & Pa began cranking out the 50’ steel boxcars by the hundreds. I saw them come through my central Long Island town on freights in the early 80s.
Most of the EBT standard-gauge-on-narrow-gauge-truck cars I’ve seen in pictures happened to be PRR. Is that simply because so many PRR cars were available on home rails (the EBT connected with the PRR’s 4-track Middle Division) or was it that the EBT had an agreement with the PRR allowing the EBT to “disassemble” (i.e., switch out the trucks on) some of its cars? I don’t know. But it seems PRR gondolas and X29 boxcar rebuilds seemed most common in this unusual interchange service.
Foreign Locomotives were not all that rare on the the PRR. I recall seeing a picture in one of my PRR books showing a Union Pacific (pardon my trademark infringement) DD35 running behind PRR diesels in a run-through experiment… So in would not be mimprobale to run other "borrowed " locomotives.
I can see I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean to imply that the Ma&Pa didn’t receive cars, only that their own cars weren’t interchanged with other roads.
Of course, as you point out, during the “great boxcar shortage” of the 70’s the Ma&Pa and many other small railroads produced or bought many many boxcars. I have heard that the Virginia Central had so many boxcars and so little track that they wouldn’t all fit if they all came home at the same time.
Enjoy
Paul
[quote user=“IRONROOSTER”]
I can see I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean to imply that the Ma&Pa didn’t receive cars, only that their own cars weren’t interchanged with other roads.
Of course, as you point out, during the “great boxcar shortage” of the 70’s the Ma&Pa and many other small railroads produced or bought many many boxcars. I have heard that the Virginia Central had so many boxcars and so little track that they wouldn’t all fit if they all came home at the same time.
Enjo
Thanxs for the info guys. I will not be building tell next fall but just wanted the info. Dave-your layout inspired me to build a PRR layout and I thanxs you for that. I hope you dont mind but I modified your track plan for my use. Of course it wont be the exact same thing but i like it so… Thanks for the track plan. lol Tim
How about a Pennsylvania Railroad TrucTrain?
The Pennsy was a 1950s pioneer in national piggy-back service, and just like a Broadway Limited passenger train, you can easily justify Pennsy’s TrucTrain as a dedicated intermodal consist in your staging yards.
Pennsy had five different levels of service and/or tarrifs with other railroads, and the Pennsulvania was a co-founder of Trailer Train (TTX) in November 1955 with a 25% ownership share.
As to n scale models, you’ll find reasonably-priced Atlas TrucTrain flatcars with two trailers on eBay from time to time, and other road names. Keystone Crossings also has some suggestions below.
Quick thought: Don’t forget to make your n scale tunnel & bridge clearances high enough to allow for TrucTrain service, and; it is Pennsy-prototypical to mix in a sometimes flatcar with only one trailer, or no trailers loaded at all as we used to see first-hand.
Keystone Crossings’ TrucTrain comprehensive webpage…
http://kc.pennsyrr.com/freightops/tructrain_overview.ws4d
Here are TrucTrain-related abbreviations you’ll see…
COFC = container on flat car
TOFC = trailer on freight car
LCL = less than car load
AFC = (a type of mechanical hitch)
PRR Railfan (Rob’s PRR page) also has detailed TrucTrain resources…
http://prr.railfan.net/freight/classpage.html?class=F39
PRR Railfan’s “PRR Freight Connections” page is where you can do a town name or railroad name search in your browser and find the railroads and where they interchanged with the Pennsylvania.
North East Rails has two nice TrucTrain photos circa 1956 & 1962…
first intermodal photo
And one other thought for those not modeling the Pennsy. If you model the 50’s you model the PRR. They owned 10% of the cars in interchange service and you need to include PRR cars in nearly all your trains.