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You also need to know which train you are trying to model. Scheduled trains usually had a distinct car mix and would make them easily distinguished. A couple of examples that I know. The NE87/NE84 pair that ran on the RDG/LV/D&H/B&M was a southeastern to New England (thus the NE) train. It was always very heavy with CP, CN, CV, BAR, MEC, and SOU box cars. It also had quite a number of clay and bleach tank cars for the paper mills. The other example is The Bethlehem Star which the Reading ran from Rutherford to Bethlehem and back. It was completely consigned to Bethlehem Steel and the train consisited almost entirely of gondolas from RDG, LV, CNJ, PRR, and the Bethlehem Steel Roads. It also had a number of RDG covered hoppers (for the flux) and quite a number of B&O and WM open hoppers (for metallergical coal). Both trains could not be mistaken for any other. There are lots of other examples, like RDG trains coming off of the Wilmington & Norhern Branch were full of chemical tank cars. Reading trains coming from the Newberry interchanges would have lots of NYC and EL cars. Certain Pennsy hotshots into Philly would frequently have one or more of the 87 foot long cattle cars, while others would never have a cattle car. If you want to accurately model trains you need to get some train order sheets, or conductor's lists so you can see what mix of cars and roadnames were common on the trains you want to model.
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