When doing the 50's,what are some things to do and not do?

[vsmith]

Wasnt everything in black and white?

It depends on where you lived, urban, suburban or rural. for the first two: paved roads, electric streetlights, etc would have been common. Rural USA still hadnt changed too much from the pre -war era.

New diesels would be shiny new, the pride of the RR, while steamers would be showing the end results of a hard life, most steam engines were really pushed during the war and were never really given adequate overhauls, just enough to keep them going until the shiny new diesels arrived.

I suggest two great books, "The Last Steam Railroad in America" and "Steam, Steel and Stars, The Last Steam Railroad in America" both by O. Wilson Link is an outstanding source, B&W pics but very very usefull for everyday living and RR's in the 50's on the Norfolk Western railroad.

[leighant]

I have found a lot of TRAFFIC and industry information for my 50s scene by going to public library and reading through the bound volumes of, of all things-- Business Week. Ads aimed at business owners about products for their businesses. I read through six years of the magazines. Lots of ideas for my specific industrial situation-- East Texas forests.

Can you imagine a prototypical way to use that Intermountain Staley tank car in a forest-related area??? Staley advertised that it made CUSTOM ENGINEERED STARCH to sell to paper mills to stiffen their corrugated cardboard for stonger boxes!!! Ever think of that?

On your courthouse square or on the school flagpole, don't forget to use a 48 star flag until Alaska and Hawaii came in at end of the 1950s.

For my superette out on the highway, the first semi-modern market (still locally owned) replacing the store on the courthouse square, I went to the supermarket ads from 1950s newspapers on microfilm at the public library to check prices. Tuna fish, 17 and a HALF cents a can. I hand lettered the kind of silk-screen printed posters they used to have on store windows, made them four times scale size and reduced them in a copier. (Before I had a graphics printer for computer.)

[leighant]

I am building a fleet of petrolem tankcars to represent the brands of gasoline and oil marketed in TEXAS in the 1950s. I already have
Conoco (didn't they merge with Chevron in 1990s?)
Gulf (became Chevron)
Magnolia (was Mobil nationally, merged w Exxon in 1990s)
Phillips 66
Shell
Sinclair (became ARCO)
Texaco



In some cases, mftrs came out with cars after I custom decalled them...

I am still lacking Humble (which was affiliated with Esso, became Enco, then Exxon). Have a shot of preserved Humble tankcar at Galveston RR Museum to model.

[tpatrick]

Billboards advertised cigarettes. Some of them had smoke generators to give the appearance that the cigarette was lighted. You could do that with a Seuthe smoke generator. To be accurate you would have to remember the brands of the time, but you can't go wrong with Camels, Lucky Strike or Chesterfield.