Trying to find a complete list of rock islands freight car roster, all i have found is this site, which is very good btw. But is missing some of the later freight cars numbers.
http://www.railgoat.railfan.net/other_cars/ri_cars/ri_number/index.htm
Using it and the rock island freight car book and some photes on the web i have a more up to date list but still is missing a lot.
Modeling on the cheap
What you need is a copy of the Official Railway Equipment Register, better known as the ORER, for the appropriate year. Old issues can sometimes be found at RR swap meets, eBay, etc.
Tom
I would strongly suggest getting the Morning Sun books "Rock Island Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment" by Hile, Hilcox and Miller. I have the Morning Sun Books "Rio Grande Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment and it has been an invaluable asset to my modeling. The RI version would be a worthy investment if you are particularly interested in that RR.
As an aside, I recently purchased the Rock Island Vert-a-pac HO autorack offered by ExactRail; they still have a few left in stock.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Also, to get pictures of some of the rolling stock and locomotives you can go onto the Fallen Flags website or the Railroad Picture Archives website. those sites will also give you ideas on weathering and detailing of your equipment. just do a search of these websites. I've found them to be of great value on my rolling equipment projects.
I have the rock island book, it helped some, this site had a lot of info also.
http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/displayrailway.pl?o=ri
Still have to look at this site for some info
http://rrpicturearchives.net/locoList.aspx?id=CRIP
Also need to look through the CNW final freight car roster book also.
Sadly the rock island historial site went out of business.
I have pictures of these 563161,562905,533887,533192 not sure where i got them but cant find any info on the whole series numbers for them.
Perhaps the Rock Island Color Guide (Morning Sun Books) is not as comprehensive as the Rio Grande version. The Rio Grande color guide has pretty much every class of freight car and a few paint variations too. I can't afford a color guide for every other RR of course, so I do make use of the following two websites to vet models against prototypes:
-www.railcarphotos.com
-www.rr-fallenflags.org
The morning sun guides are handy resources for any railroad, but non of them are remotely "comprehensive" covering *everything* for a particular railroad, although the coverage is typically pretty representative.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
cv_acr The morning sun guides are handy resources for any railroad, but non of them are remotely "comprehensive" covering *everything* for a particular railroad, although the coverage is typically pretty representative.
Maybe it depends on the Railroad but I have been following the D&RGW Standard Gauge since the mid-1980's and so far Jim Eagers Color Guide seems fairly comprehensive in terms of the passenger cars and freight cars during the post steam era - which is all I care about. I haven't found any classes that are missing from the book so far but I'm not omiscient so I can't say for certain how full the coverage is, but so far I haven't come across photo's of prototypes that are not covered. The D&RGW is a small enough RR it may be easier to get near full coverage.
I did like the RG Color guide and used it to vet my models when I first got it; natually I found lots of foobies and most of them were sold off in the years following my purchase of that book. I have a few stand-in models because there haven't been accurate models produced yet for some.
fourtI have pictures of these 563161,562905,533887,533192
I can not find these numbers either listed or shown in the Final Roster book.
fourtI have pictures of these 563161,562905,533887,533192 not sure where i got them but cant find any info on the whole series numbers for them.
http://www.craigwalker.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=ROCK&cid=2
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Will have to look at that link when i get home. Have not had a chance to look at the cnw book yet. Saturday will be gone all day. Been working on the list for about 2 weeks now. Going to see if there is a email link on the site that had a bunch of the roster numbers. Thnaks for all the info.
Since the better quality models these days are expensive, I do like to try to check them against photo's before buying although occasionally I have still bought on impulse like many do. A few manufacturers do a lot of research and sell mostly models which are painted for RR's that actually had those freight cars, like Tangent and Moloco especially. But at their price, can only afford one or two every so often.
I do not know how late you want to go but here is a source for a CD with a number of years up to 1975 of ORERs . You can search by year and and then get a look of every page of that ORER. I have one and find it helpful.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/EQUIPMENT-REGISTER-COLLECTION-1899-1975-on-DVDs-/370427049951?hash=item563f2c37df:g:ucYAAOSwQItTzpB0
Ron High
Might have to go that route on buying an oper. Found in one of my rock island books part 3 of 4 on covered hoppers. Have to bump that list with the orginal one. Sadly i dont have the other 3 parts, go figure. Looked on ebay and could not find any of them for sale.
One thing i have noticed between all the differnt site/books etc there are some differnt numbers starting and stopping in some of the series numbers.
Working on the list tonight i found some series numbers, and what they where before they got painted not listed anywhere else, not sure where i got that info as i cant find it again. Which is a bummer.