Hi all, This is my first post on here, been a subcriber to the MR Mag and Video plus for a while and have built my own N scale freelance layout and have enjoyed building it and running trains, I am now wanting to move on to my next layout, which I plan to do as Prototypical as possible through Montana in the 1970's.
Why 1970? it was a great year for me and also it was the Burlington Northern Merge, so I figure I can run a few different road names and they wont look out of place, I saw one photo one wikipedia with 4 engines, BN lead, then a Northern Pacific, S,P&S and a C,B&Q heading out of a yard in 1971. This caught my eye and my interest, I also like the landscape of Montana and surrounding states, reminds me of my Home in NZ. I'm thinking of the line from Billings to Butte or even Missoula and picking up Spring Creek Mine along the way. BN moved mostly Coal through this area but what else was found on this Railroad in the early 1970's? There are a lot of sidings when looking on google maps but this is 2017 not 1970, I have had a good look through the "FRIENDS OF THE BURLINGTON NORTHERN RAILROAD" and they have some nice raod layout info, what I'm missing is the small industries I could also have so it would make the opperations more realiastic. Did BN cart logs or timber through the area? sorry for more than one question, might be easier if I lived there but the internet is all I have, thansk in advance.
BN through Montana wasn't much of a coal hauler in the early '70's. From numbers I've got, coal through Montana would have been less than 5% of tonnage for the period of the late '60's (immediately preceding BN). It started ticking up in about 1975. This is based on information from Dorin and Del Grosso's "Burlington Northern Railroad: Coal Hauler and Coal Country Trackside Guide".
BN most definitely hauled wood east, in various forms. They also hauled produce east (apples from Wenatchee, potatoes from Idaho......). Westbound, there was a good bit of grain. It was around the early '70's that unit trains of grain were just starting.
If you want to learn about BN, start buying books. I've got 25 on BN, and a whole bunch more on the predecessor roads. Join the BN Yahoo group. FOBN has sold disks of their back issues. I would recommend getting those.
Regarding locomotives on BN that retained their old paint schemes: BN was pretty agressive about painting (not like BNSF). I would say "most" of their locomotives were painted green by 1973. The big exceptions were locos they were planning on dumping. There were still a few in 1975, but not much longer. They would have been F units and Alco RS's, typically.
Ed
Thank for the Info Ed
I have taken your advise and brought a book "Northwest Passage: Twenty-Five Years of the Burlington Northern in the Pacific Northwest"
I looked for the one you mentioned but could not get it here, but will see what I can learn from this book and if needed I will try get your one from the US.
Interesting about the Coal volumes, maybe I move my time to @ 1975, but then there would be less of the other road names on the rail.
Lets see what the book tells me.
Thanks again
On the last point, BN was fairly quick to repaint engines (although not as quick as say C&NW's 1960 takeover of M-St.L which IIRC saw all engines repainted by the end of 1961), but not so much with cars. I have pics of big sky blue GN boxcars, still in original paint with GN reporting marks, in service in 1990-1991. NP cars were very common in the 1980's.
The latest ORER I have is July 2005.
It still shows the following:
62 cars lettered CB&Q (mostly 3483 hoppers--Exactrail still has some in stock!)
60 cars lettered CS (mostly gons and hoppers)
4 cars lettered FW&D (covered hoppers: 4650 and 4700)
160 cars lettered GN (mostly gons and woodchips)
225 cars lettered NP (mostly woodchip)
The final SP&S car (a flat) made it to the end of BN, but not to 2005.
And there were various Frisco and Santa Fe cars, too.
Interesting information. I used to stick with mainly green BN and avoid buying CB&Q, NP and GN freight cars because I had the notion that by the 1980's they were rare. I was modeling late 80's thru early 1990's D&RGW a neighbor to the south, but have backated to 1970's through early 1980's and indeed, it seems there were quite a few GN, NP, and CB&Q freight cars were roaming around during that time frame.
So now the challenge for me is to add a prototypical mix of GN, NP and CB&Q freight cars - AND, hopefully find models which are fairly close to the prototype (and avoid most of the fantasy models). If anyone has done some vetting and has a list of CB&Q, NP and GN freight cars that are available on HO plastic and close matches to the prototype, please do share it.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
7j43k The latest ORER I have is July 2005. It still shows the following: 62 cars lettered CB&Q (mostly 3483 hoppers--Exactrail still has some in stock!)
Those were on sale all December too, but it will probably be another year before ExactRail puts them back on sale, but you never know. I added 15 of the D&RGW 3483 hoppers to 7 of the same type I already have so have 22 of their 24 numbers. The regular price is $38.95 but were $32.95 while on sale. They are lovely very detailed hoppers although there is one detail I believe most of the 3483 hoppers need added - that would be the angle iron stock on the upper side sills, which I believe the GN & CB&Q, and successor BN all had "as delivered".
riogrande5761 Interesting information. I used to stick with mainly green BN and avoid buying CB&Q, NP and GN freight cars because I had the notion that by the 1980's they were rare. I was modeling late 80's thru early 1990's D&RGW a neighbor to the south, but have backated to 1970's through early 1980's and indeed, it seems there were quite a few GN, NP, and CB&Q freight cars were roaming around during that time frame. So now the challenge for me is to add a prototypical mix of GN, NP and CB&Q freight cars - AND, hopefully find models which are fairly close to the prototype (and avoid most of the fantasy models). If anyone has done some vetting and has a list of CB&Q, NP and GN freight cars that are available on HO plastic and close matches to the prototype, please do share it.
I think all of Exactrail and Tangent would be correct. Moloco will soon come out with some Western Fruit insulated boxes. Intermountain and Red Caboose both made/make some modern mechanical reefers. Etc. etc.
Missing are 50' modern boxcars, I would say. Fox Valley does this one, which is pretty close:
What kind of cars do you need?
Thanks for all the info so far
I have been researching the internet while i wait for my book to arrive, now that is harder than you might think.
But I have decided to move south slightly into powder River and run my layout from Great Falls to Billings Montana, south through to Sheridan Wyoming. My main Yard will be at Billings. My coal mine will be the Decker Mine, just north of Sheridan in southeast Montana, Built in 1971 and shipped its first trainload of coal the following year so I will Model 1972.this should give me a range of Freight including: Coal, Wheat, Stock, Timber.
Industries will be: Coal Mine, Grain silo's next to a Farm, A sawmill recieving Logs by truck and rail and sending out Timber, chip etc. Stock movement both to other locations and to a meat proceccing plant, which will give me Reefers on the line.
There will be a bit of Freelance to my layout but I hope to emulate the time and place BN operated in the region.
any advise on locations for these industries on the section of track I have mentioned would be great.
Thanks again for all the advise so far.
One of my client's, Western Sugar Cooperative, has a large rail served Sugar Beet refinery in Billings. Great modeling and traffic potential.
Not sure if beets were still inbound by rail as late as 1972, but you could probably use modeler's license to avoid trucking them if not.
Other definate rail loads include coal for the steam boilers, limestone for on-site lime generators, tank cars for sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide, covered hoppers for soda ash, boxcar for packaging materials, and flat cars for equipment.
Outbound loads would be covered (food grade) hoppers for bulk sugar, boxcars for bagged sugar, covered hoppers for pressed pulp (animal feed), and gondolas or hopper cars for PCC (precipitated calcium carbonate for agricultural use).
I believe that the Billings Plant is a Steffen process that includes molasses desugaring, so the plant would also see inbound tank car loads of molasses from other non-Steffen process refineries.
Ray
These were commonly used to transport sugar beets:
Looks to me like the Decker mine is/was on the old Burlington Route.
Exactrail still has a few of their 3483 hoppers left:
https://exactrail.com/collections/bethlehem-3483-hopper
I'd seriously consider getting some for coal hauling.
For meat shipment, Red Caboose makes the R-70-15 reefers and Intermountain makes the R-70-20.
Top of my list would likely be these R-70-15's from the NPRHA:
http://store.nprha.org/ho-scale-np-57-foot-mechanical-reefer-cars/
Thanks Ray
This gives me a few more Ideas and track planning options for Industries in Billings, which is where most of the industries will be, 1/4 of the layout will be centered around Billings.
I will start another Topic on my trck build once I have finished with my research.
I live in Billings. Billings has 3 oil refineries which all would have operated in the 70's. At that time Pierce meat packing would have been running and don't forget fertilizer And feed mills. There are also a pretty good number of warehouses with now abandoned rail sidings that would have likely been used then.
PaulNZ But I have decided to move south slightly into powder River and run my layout from Great Falls to Billings Montana, south through to Sheridan Wyoming. My main Yard will be at Billings. My coal mine will be the Decker Mine, just north of Sheridan in southeast Montana, Built in 1971 and shipped its first trainload of coal the following year so I will Model 1972.this should give me a range of Freight including: Coal, Wheat, Stock, Timber.
A couple of points...
The Great Northern line to Great Falls split off from the NP main about 12 miles west of Billings at Mossmain. The Burlington line to Sheridan split off the NP main about 24 miles east of Billings at Huntley (Chet Huntley was part of that Huntley family). The Burlingto also had a line to Denver leaving south from Laurel, with the first fe miles on the NP's Rocky Fork & Cooke City branch to Red Lodge.
Most of the coal in the very early 1970's was coming from Colstrip. One was the Western Energy mine on the NP's original mine, using a couple of shovels and a 1923 dragline from the NP era. The other was the Peabody mine about 4 miles away using much newer equpiment. I know both of these mines were active in 1971 as I visited both in the summer of 1971. Traffic was usually sent east from Forsyth - saw lots of coal trains going through Miles City in '71, almost always pulled by U28C's in BN colors.
There were a few coal trains moving in 1969, so one go through Miles City being pulled by NP F units.
- Erik
P.S. My dad was born and raised in Miles City and I have three cousins living in Billings and a couple still living in Miles City.
7j43k I think all of Exactrail and Tangent would be correct.
I think all of Exactrail and Tangent would be correct.
Yes, the ExactRail 3483 quads are excellent, although IIRC, they need to have angle iron stock added to the top chord to most accurately match many of the prototypes, including much of the D&RGW 16xxx series hoppers.
ExactRail made the model without the angle iron stock because they felt it made it easier to model more versions since it would be harder to remove (sand off) the angle iron stock rather than it is to add it, say from Everygreen styrene stock. They are beautifully detailed coal cars. I have a total of 28 now.
I have a few UP Tangent quads too, extremely accurate, although Tangent has admitted painting their quads as fantasy models for some road names that never had them because of customer demand. I can't recall which - maybe IC?
Moloco will soon come out with some Western Fruit insulated boxes. Intermountain and Red Caboose both made/make some modern mechanical reefers. Etc. etc.
I love the Moloco box cars - they are excellent and dead-on matches to some freight cars I need for 1970's. They aren't cheap but I consider them must haves - have 7 or 8 so far and looking forward to the 10 and 12' door FGE cars and the SP/SSW RBL's coming this year sometime. Ouch, thats gonna hurt my wallet bad.
I really like the Intermountain and Red Caboose reefers - have about 15 of those but all in PFE versions, I could use a few NP/GN etc.
Missing are 50' modern boxcars, I would say. Fox Valley does this one, which is pretty close: What kind of cars do you need? Ed
That Fox Valley is on my shopping list - hard to fit everything into the budget but chipping away at the list.
I wonder if the Wheels of Time SP/SSW bulkheads were part of the at area - expect lumber was a good part of the traffic.
BN's 1973 "Portrait of a Railroad" film might help you with the "look" of the railroad back then....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzRIVVcV4rQ
The concept of a "unit train" was still pretty new in 1970. NP ran some unit train operations in the 1960's, but it didn't really become common until the 1970's-80's for coal (and taconite). Just to clarify, a unit train is a train that stays together in a unit - 3 engines and 75 empty cars go to a coal mine and go through a loop track to be loaded with coal. The entire train then runs to a power plant, and the 75 cars are unloaded (say through a rotary dumper), again running through a loop. The empty train then goes back to the mine for more coal. There's no switching involved.
You might see a train with all the same type of cars, like a train with 60 reefers going from L.A. to Chicago, but it's not a unit train as it's not the same cars in the same order going back and forth as a unit. The cars are split up and go to different final destinations, and new empty cars are assembled into a train on the way back.
For power, BN ran F-units into the early 1980's, often former NP units that had been run together as A-B-B-A sets since the 1950's. Some GN passenger diesels went to Amtrak and continued to be used (in GN colors) for several years on the Empire Builder or other Amtrak trains.
More on rolling stock:
Cabeese!
Railway Classics still have a few ex-CB&Q BN painted brass cabeese. See website. In particular, they show the classic NE-12 in BN green. I've got one. Very nice, though the coupler height needs correction.
That same caboose (the NE-12) is also available in plastic from Bachmann:
It will take a LOT OF WORK to bring it anywhere near the brass one. Bewarned!
A slamdunk choice will be this:
The Atlas not-wide vision "International" caboose.
It is very close to GN X51-95 (to BN 10226-10260) and NP 1100-1149 (to NP 10100-10149 to BN 10261-10310). Not EXACTLY. But really close. Should you get serious, I can send you the "fixes". Anyway, Atlas has made these in pretty much all their paint schemes. Except patched. Which would be fun to do. Right now, they show they're bringing in this scheme in a couple of numbers:
The various NP/GN/CB&Q cabeese have been brought in in brass. A high cupola NP one would be nice, if you found one.
I would also recommend getting the Atlas wide vision cabeese. They aren't accurate for BN etc but no one's gonna complain bitterly.
More rolling stock:
Intermountain has some terrific models of NP twin hoppers. I doubt they'd be used for big-time coal transport. But they're nice.
Exactrail has some nice NP flats. Good for lumber loads. Not as good as bulkheads, though. Tangent did GN ones, but they're gone for now. They were the longies. Hopefully, one of them will do the "regular" length classic GN/NP/Q bulkheads and we can all buy lots.
I wish someone were doing a really good BN (and previous) woodchip car. But they ain't. The Walthers should be available. It's good enough until.......
Not of use to you, but I will say that there are/have been two good woodchips: the SP&S Caswell conversion by Intermountain and the SP Exactrail Gunderson.
You might make up your own woodchip from the Red Caboose NP gons (reserve now!). They are sorta close to being correct. Sorta. The extensions should be easy. You should consider renumbering them someday. Half a dozen would look right nice!
Red Caboose also makes a 40' double door box lettered for NP. Again, sorta correct. Well, not really. But kind of nice, anyway.
Rapido is going to do an NP woody that should be nice. None made it to BN in revenue service. But I'll bet there were a few around in MOW. More fun, there.
Hi, the Caboose is something I have not looked into yet so thanks for the intro, I will run these as they were prototypical of the era
I have also been looking at the wood chip cars and flat beds that were around at the time, I have watched some really good videos on utube lately which has helped, one was a grain promotional movie filmed in 1973, it shows a full train being loaded at a farm with 4 big silo's, just what I want to do
Thanks for all the tips, really helpfull
Thanks
Srwill2 I live in Billings. Billings has 3 oil refineries which all would have operated in the 70's. At that time Pierce meat packing would have been running and don't forget fertilizer And feed mills. There are also a pretty good number of warehouses with now abandoned rail sidings that would have likely been used then.
I never knew about the refineries, migfht have a look at my plans, dont want to clutter the layout though, I will have stock and reefers to look after the Beef Markets, and grain is a must :)
erikem PaulNZ But I have decided to move south slightly into powder River and run my layout from Great Falls to Billings Montana, south through to Sheridan Wyoming. My main Yard will be at Billings. My coal mine will be the Decker Mine, just north of Sheridan in southeast Montana, Built in 1971 and shipped its first trainload of coal the following year so I will Model 1972.this should give me a range of Freight including: Coal, Wheat, Stock, Timber. A couple of points... The Great Northern line to Great Falls split off from the NP main about 12 miles west of Billings at Mossmain. The Burlington line to Sheridan split off the NP main about 24 miles east of Billings at Huntley (Chet Huntley was part of that Huntley family). The Burlingto also had a line to Denver leaving south from Laurel, with the first fe miles on the NP's Rocky Fork & Cooke City branch to Red Lodge. Most of the coal in the very early 1970's was coming from Colstrip. One was the Western Energy mine on the NP's original mine, using a couple of shovels and a 1923 dragline from the NP era. The other was the Peabody mine about 4 miles away using much newer equpiment. I know both of these mines were active in 1971 as I visited both in the summer of 1971. Traffic was usually sent east from Forsyth - saw lots of coal trains going through Miles City in '71, almost always pulled by U28C's in BN colors. There were a few coal trains moving in 1969, so one go through Miles City being pulled by NP F units. - Erik P.S. My dad was born and raised in Miles City and I have three cousins living in Billings and a couple still living in Miles City.
Hi Erik, nice bit of info
I am looking at the tracks plans now and using the info on this site as it was correct from 1970.
I did look at Colstrip but I like the route from Decker to Boswell Energy in MN and also State Line Energy in IN, both these will take traffic off the layout East of Billings, Exact routes to be determined but I think they went through St Paul.
More research to do, thanks for all the tips
:)
A nice video of 1971 BN away out west.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZCFuV5188M
PaulNZ I did look at Colstrip but I like the route from Decker to Boswell Energy in MN and also State Line Energy in IN, both these will take traffic off the layout East of Billings, Exact routes to be determined but I think they went through St Paul.
Paul,
The loads from the Decker mine most likely took the old Burlington line to Huntley, 24 miles east of Billings, and then the NP main line east of there at least to Glendive. In between Sheridan and Hardin, the CB&Q line followed the Little (Big) Horn River and went past the site of Custer's Last Stand. The line east of Huntley follows the Yellowstone river to Glendive, where the NP main then departs almost de east to Bismarck, while a branch line continues along the Yellowstone to meet up with the GN near Sidney.
Even in 1969, Colstrip coal was being hauled in units trains and I do not recall seeing any coal hauled on the NP in 1971 hauled on anything but a unit train. IIRC, the track around Miles City got welded rail about 1973, remember feeling my grandmother's apartment shaking when the loaed trains went by on jointed rail - her apartment was just across the road from the NP mainline (and Milw interchange).
Hi Erik, again great info
I have done the route in google Maps (by car) and the Decker Mine to Boswell Energy in Cohasset MN is @ 12 Hrs so this will work nicley fro the layout, and the Decker Mine to State Line Energy in Lake County IN is @ 18 Hrs, again, this will be a good number for Operations, I plan on having two Unit trains, one for each trip, maybe even 2 per Route latter, they can pass each other at the edge of the layout at a crew change post. This will keep the Coal train operators busy for a while :)
routes below:
I realise they have a slight difference, just noticed but I will follow the route Erik has suggeted, it just works for me and my layout plan. As far as operations go, both these trains will go Via either Bismark or Fargo which will be "off Layout"
7j43k A nice video of 1971 BN away out west. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZCFuV5188M Ed
I think I've watched this at least a dozen times now but please post any others you may come across.