West Coast road names

[Anonymous]

i was thinking of doing a layout in N scale based on a west coast theme, and was wondering what road names or rail roads would be seen on a west coast Coastal line...
I'm a beginner, so i dont know much about trains or anything, so all help is appreciated.

i live in the san diego area, so all the trains i see are amtrak, coaster, and santa fe and BNSF locomotives.

also this is going to be mainly a freight operation, as i dont have alot of room to add multiple train types. (which is also why im going to do it in N instead of HO.) i just got back from a trip up the coast to monterey and san Francisco, and was kind of inspired by the scenery up there, with all the canneries, farms and train depots along the highway.

[tjsmrinfo]

karl what era do you want to model? modern day? pre merger era 70's and 80's? 50's thru the 60's? steam? All these roads existed in the eras I mentioned.

Santa Fe
Union Pacific
Southern Pacific
Western Pacific
Northern Pacific
Great Northern
Seattle Portland & Spokane
Milwaukee Road
chicago, Burlington & Quincy

All these roads had their own passenger service into the 60's
70s
Burlington Northern- merger of Great Western, SP&S, Northern Pacific and CB&Q
Santa Fe
and all others mentioned above.

In todays RRing theres
Union Pacific- merged SP and SSW(cotton belt) Missouri Pacific D&RGW
BNSF-merger of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe
and all kinds of regional and shortline RRs

hope this helps

Tom

[tomikawaTT]

If memory serves, San Diego was pretty much Santa Fe country, with the San Diego and Arizona Eastern running inland, partly routed south of the Mexican border.

Since you are in the San Diego area, by all means visit the railroad museum building in Balboa Park. The people, and the books in their retail store, are a gold mine of local information. Also, the quality of the model work will knock your socks off!

Chuck (who models the other side of the Pacific)

[Jetrock]

A lot depends on where on the west coast you would like to model: Great Northern and Northern Pacific in Washington and Oregon, Southern Pacific in California and Oregon, Western Pacific, AT&SF and UP in California, not to mention all the varied short lines and regional railroads in the west...of which there are/were many. So if you can narrow down where on the west coast (roughly) you'd like to model, folks can be more specific.

In the modern day, it's pretty simple: Union Pacific, BNSF ("Santa Fe" or AT&SF is now part of BNSF) and Amtrak, plus a few assorted short lines and local/regional passenger trains. I'm not sure what the "coaster" is, I assume some commuter train?

[Anonymous]

Jetrock- yas the coaster is a commuter train

i was thinking about modeling in a modern day setting, and probably in the Bay area, around monterey, san fran, etc. not any specific area, but that general region, so could I be safe using say, ATSF and UP in that region?

[Anonymous]

oh yeah, and what are some good sites for buying n scale stuff, ive got some HO stuff i want to sell, i just dont have enough room to make an HO scale layout yet.

[tjsmrinfo]

theres lots of sites to get MR stuff in all scales. heres a few that i can think of

www.walthers.com
www.internettrains.com
www.discounttrainsonline.com
www.horizonhobby.com
www.ebay.com

also you can look in MR every month as theres usually 2 pages for N scale stuff plus other sites that are MR related such as structures, detail parts, scenery etc. most of the big name MR companies distribute through walthers, ecept for athearn, mdcroundhouse and a few others.

tom

[DanRaitz]

In northern California you will find both the BNSF and UP. BNSF is mostly in the San Joaquin Valley (ex: ATSF trackage), whereas UP is all over the place. As an side note, UP wasn't even a player north of the LA area until it's purchase of the WP in 1983. And then even more so with the purchase of the SP in 1996.

If you are looking at modeling the area south of the San Francisco Bay (Monterey, Salinas, Watsonville) then you've just became a UP modeler[:0][:0]

Dan

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

In the Bay Area, you would have ATSF/BNSF and SP/WP/UP as the Class 1's, Amtrak and Amtrak California for intercity passenger service and Caltrain and Altamont Commuter Express for suburban service.

[Jetrock]

Monterey and San Francisco are very different environments--Monterey is still pretty much a small resort town, while San Francisco is heavily urbanized. There is no Amtrak service to either city--Amtrak provides bus service from Emeryville to San Francisco. There is the Caltrain commuter train that goes down the west bay, and of course BART, streetcars, subways and cable cars...is there even any active freight trackage in San Francisco? Even Hunter's Point is being developed, the railroad stuff collected there is being shipped out to other museums.

Modeling the East Bay--say, Oakland, Alameda, Emeryville, Martinez--would provide lots of action, UP and BNSF freights, Amtrak long-haul and commuter (the Capitol Corridor commuter train from Sacramento to San Jose) going through all the time, lots of industrial trackage and heavy industrty, and the snakey stretches of track that runs right along the edge of the San Francisco Bay would be fun to model as well--dramatic scenery, heavy industry and photogenic curvey mainlines all in one spot!

[f14aplusfl]

Just a thought, you could always create your own freelance railroad too. Eric Brooman's Utah Belt would be the closest well known freelanced western railroad to the pacific region you intend to model. I mean you could do something <insert name> & Pacific, <insert name> Pacific, or something. But I digress.

You might just want to capture the feel of the region versus modelling what's actually there. So model what you saw!