Historic Railroad Modeling 1850-1920

[Anonymous]

Is someone modeling historic railroads of about 1850-1880 and/or 1880-1920?
Are there books or articles about these time-windows out there?
I couldn't find anything on the web, and the selection of locomotives, other rolling material, and structures are very poor.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Rob

Sorry, forgot to mention that I'd like to do it in N.

[Anonymous]

you may want to re-post you question to the Prototype forum, they are a bit more up on that sort of thing.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=13

[hminky]

I model the 1870's and the biggest problem is finding industry pictures. There are mostly pictures of the rolling stock or distant pictures of towns and industry.

There are several good books authored by John White on early railroads. Go to Amazon.com and search "John H. White railroad". He has books on freight cars, passenger cars, and early locomotives.

I use OO/HO to model the 1870's. Most of the model equipement sold as old time in HO is OO scale (4mm/ft vs 3.5mm/ft) running on HO track.



Oversize HO old time equipment with OO scale figures

I explain this at:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/1879/why/

Thank you if you visit
Harold

[Texas Zepher]

QUOTE: Originally posted by RobWa
Is someone modeling historic railroads of about 1850-1880 and/or 1880-1920?
Are there books or articles about these time-windows out there?

Just rambling at first, I would think that 1850-1880 makes sense as an era in railroading. While 1880-1920 has major changes beginning to end. I've always considered 1905-1925 the Classic Steam era.

Anyway most information about the early period can be found in books about the specific railroads. Almost every "history of xxx RR" book has pictures of their early equipment and stations. The only book I can think of about the time period is called "Passage to Union" and is concerned with the social-economic impact of the railroads. Not so much the equipment and railroads themselves.

[wjstix]

https://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/001/713wpcxu.asp

[Nieuweboer]

Way back in 1954 Fawcett Publications published a soft cover book called Pioneer Railroads (I bought mine in 1957). It's an excellent source of information on 19th century railroading ion the USA with lots of pictures.
I occasionally see a copy at MR shows in my country so it should be available in the US.
Good luck. Hans

[orsonroy]

You might want to join the early period RR modeling forums on Yahoo Groups:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/1914to1940RRing/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EarlyRail/

There isn't anything on the web? Where have you been looking??? There are more websites out there for early American history than for model railroads, that's for sure! Start doing Google searches for any sort of word combinations that might make any sort of sence for period photos and railroading, and you'll come up with thousands of hits. My pre-194 America photo database is up to three 700 Meg discs, and I'm very choosy about what I'm downloading.

[Anonymous]

Gee Rob, you've been reading my mail!!

I model a fictional anthracite road circa 1910 in HO, and have collected an embarrassingly large library on the various real world lines that transported the hard coal. These provide a wealth of information on the look and feel of the era.

The definitive book is The American Railroad Freight Car by John H. White, Jr. There is more information in this book than you will ever possibly absorb.

Just a thought on scale. [2c] Historic Railroading Modeling means small lokies, short cars and small trains - all which play to N Scale's weaknesses rather than its strengths. HO would be easier to operate and there is certainly far more equipment available for early RR eras in the 1:87th arena.

One of my "someday" projects is to build a small layout depicting Pre-Civil War Railroading, but in my opinion, HO will be too small for that... so I'm thinking at least O, possibly G Scale.

[Cthetrains]

Rob..you might want to try the forums on Trainboard.com...I've found a lot of helpful people, with a LOT of information there..

not to say these guys aren't helpful or freindly..ALL railfans are great people..and I spend my time on 4 different forums...