I am modeling in N scal and was wonderinf what percentage of the cars on my layout should be from the railroad I am modeling and what percentage shoul dbe passing through.
It depends the type of operation you have, if you have a lot of coal, ore or rock operations you will have more home road cars than if you have an auto plant or chemical plant based layout.
Normally somewhere around 33% home road cars is about right, could be down to 25%, could be up around 50%.
1/3 home, 1/3 direct connections, 1/3 rest of the country.
Dave H.
Thats right about where I am now 33%. I am modeling a section of Taunton MA that was on the old colony, New Haven Line in the early 60’s. It was mostly factories and had a large power plant that used coal.
Ya it depends on what type of railroad it is. A transfer railroad or belt line railroad that primarily moves cars from one railroad’s yard to another would have very few cars of it’s own in a typical train.
Unfortunately, you are trying to make a fixed number out of a moving target.
As noted above, the type of operations you model will influence how many home-road cars you have. If you model a Belt Line - as I do - you may have no home-road cars at all ! Then again, with modeler’s license you could create a special-purpose car for a given customer and tag it for your Line (in small print) with the customer’s logo (billboard-style) on the side.
If you model narrow-gauge (outside the eventual Denver & Rio Grande system), you could have almost no foreign-road cars.
A few cars will fit in no matter where or when you model - a PRR boxcar and an ATSF reefer (out of each 100 cars total) will indicate that your rail customers are getting equipment from a Northeast supplier, and the employees want to eat fresh fruit/vegetables. This was universal practice.
Hi!
As others indicated, your question has a lot of possible answers. Let me add my ten cents…
The home road could realistically be 25 to 40%, with adjoining roads making up the next 25 to 40%, and other roads making up the total. The other roads would typically include boxcars and perhaps some stock, flats, and gons. They would be less likely to include hoppers (open type) or other cars that normally stay in the area of the owner RR. Oh, don’t forget the private owner cars (i.e. tankcars, reefers, etc.) as they certainly can take up a big percentage of the total number of cars.
Of course we all admire other road’s cars and want them “no matter what”, and I have fought this battle for 55 years or so. Actually, I have come to the conclusion that as long as the cars are of the same time period, and are based upon a prototype, then feel free to use it. After all, its your railroad and who can tell you otherwise?
Ha, be careful or you will end up like me… Owner of 450 freight and 40 passenger cars and my layout only holds (nicely) 100 cars!
Mobilman44
The best way to look at this is not from a strictly percentage basis. Figuring out what is being ‘imported’ and what is being shipped out will give you a much more reasonable mix.
Your power plant will receive coal in hoppers. If it burns bituminous they will probably have PRR reporting marks. Anthracite would arrive in the originating road’s hoppers (in the transition era and before you would have seen anthracite being delivered to the local domestic fuel dealer also.)
Your food distributor will get spuds from Maine in MEC or BAR reefers, California produce in PFE reefers, breakfast food in Michigan Central or NYC box cars, meat in Swift or Hormel reefers…
Outgoing loads will be shipped in NH cars when possible, or in foreign road cars moving in the appropriate direction.
Since the New Haven was a comparatively small regional, you probably wouldn’t have too many inbound loads from NH points of origin, and NH wasn’t noted for mining activity, so most NH cars would probably be boxes and other general service cars. A lot of inbound loads will arrive in PRR and NYC cars, simply because they were the dominant originators for New England consumers. They will also be the most likely to be ‘captured’ for off-line loads.
Of course, there will always be occasional ‘oddball’ cars, and a lot of traffic that originates somewhere and passes through Taunton on its way to somewhere (several somewheres) else. That is where the equation gets confusing (what kind of reefers did the coastal fishermen ship their catch in?)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with almost 100% home road cars, thanks to JNR’s governmental monopoly)
It also depends on the era you are modeling and the source of your incoming trains. For example if you are modeling 1957 you are going to have a lot of cars from railroads that don’t exist today and far fewer C&O or N&W cars than you would have CSX and NS cars today. Secondly if your train is originating in Canada (newsprint for example) it will be loaded with CN and CP cars dedicated to newsprint service. If it is a persihable train out of Florida it is going to have different reefers than one from the Imperial Valley in Cailfornia. If it is a coal train they usually have blocks of cars from the same railroad. I don’t kow why but you rarely see hoppers individually. They are nearly always in blocks from the same railroad.
Back before, during and shortly after WWII you might see an individual hopper car in a local freight or switching run - a single load of anthracite for Ferguson’s Fuels or Kelly’s Coal and Oil. If it was Blue Coal (a popular brand) the load (and leakage areas around the doors) would be pastel blue. (Sorry, I don’t know which of the NE Pennsylvania lines originated Blue Coal. The local coal dealer of my youth received it in barges.)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)