a couple of modeling ideas

[jguess733]

I was surfing around on the interntet yesterday on the fallen flags website www.rr-fallenflags.org checking out pictures of the Rock Island, and I saw a picture of a bunch of old F units sitting on a siding in Fort Worth just rusting away. Even though I model the steam era, I finally found the calling for my ancient 4-4-0. I'm going to heavily weather it and place it on a weed covered siding next to my roundhouse. Even for modern day modelers this could make an interesting scene. Just buy a couple of inexpensive dummy units and place them on some obscure siding in your yard.

Last night at work I also came up with the idea of building a fire fighting train. I'm not too sure if there is a particular prototype for it, but since my railroad has to travel through some very remote and heavily timbered terrain to make it to it's interchange with the Southern Pacific, a fire fighting train has the possibility to have a need for existience on my railroad. I plan on using an old tender to haul the water (I thought about using a 10,000 gallon tank car, but I think a tender coupled between two boxcars would look kind of unique). There will be a box car for a tool car full of shovels, picks, axes, sand, spare fire hoses, and such. Another boxcar with an air compressor to keep the tender pressurized, along with a fixed nozzel mounted on top that can rotate left and right, and up and down. And an old passenger car to carry my mini fire fighters. I'll paint the whole thing fire engine red, and use gold lettering. And I think I might just have a very unique and realitivly inexpense addition to my railroad.

Does anyone else have any idea like these that they have used on their railroads?

[tatans]

Fire trains were very common, as most logging equipment was made at the logging site, fire trains were made from old tank cars, old flat cars, box cars cut in half,etc, etc. There are still available older fire train kits, and there may be new ones also---A great book for information is "Logging By Rail" by R.D.Turner. Check out fire trains on the internet also.

[jguess733]

here are the pictures of those RI F units in storage

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ri/ri-funit-abp.jpg
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ri/ri-funit-bbp.jpg

[egmurphy]

One of the most unique sets of fire cars I've seen was scratch built by a guy named John Moore, who works in N scale. You can see these cars in one of his sub-albums on Rail Images.

The link is:
http://www.railimages.com/gallery/album16?page=2

The photos start on the bottom two rows of this page (2) and continue on page 3. The narrative, if you were interested, can be found on the Trainboard forum. Do a search on 'firecars' and search in the N scale forum for posts by John Moore.

He's got some other incredible scratch built stuff in this same album. You need to click on the thumbnail shots to blow them up to see the detail. It's hard to believe he's working in N.

It's worth a look even if what you have in mind is different or in another scale.

Regards

Ed

[AntonioFP45]

Jguess,

That's a C o o l idea on the firefighting train!

Just one suggestion. Consider using a "Troop Train" car or a early heavyweight combine and convert it to a "Bunk/Kitchen Car" for firefighting crews that might be in it for a long, major blaze. If you're modeling around or just after WWII, a troop car would fit right in as there was a big surplus of these. Railroads often took retired troop cars that were in good shape and converted them for these types of uses, including maintenance of way. I saw quite a few running around the SCL during the 70s as M.O.W cars.

Cheers!

[Jetrock]

If you model the steam era, the "J.W. Bowker" switcher was also a firefighting engine: a special pump above the boiler could be fitted to a hose from a tank car to shoot water hundreds of feet (powerfully enough to knock over small buildings if one wasn't careful!)


As mentioned in an earlier thread, it is easy to find models of the Bowker. An IHC "old-time" tank car or two, a bunk car, and a flat car with some hoses and ladders would be a great way to set up an early fire train!

[twhite]

And instead of letting that little 4-4-0 rust away on weedy track (which I think is a really neat idea) you could also convert it to a 'movie train', in case Hollywood ever visits your neck of the woods for location filming. I did that with my 1880's 2-8-0 just so I could have an excuse to run it from time to time. You also might check out the book DONNER PASS by John Signor--it's got some very good photos of the Espee fire train that was used on the line during the time of the snowsheds.
Tom

[Anonymous]

Roundhouse models offered fire train rolling stock in one of its 3-in-1 kits. I'll have to take some pictures of the ones I built several years ago. It consisted of a 40' tank car, A fire tower car made from part of a box car, and another tank car with it's middle covered with the remains of the box car. It was a very enjoyable modeling experience.

[Anonymous]

For jguess733: You have a pretty good idea as far as a fire fighting train goes. You might check out Joe Fugates Siskiyou Line as the S.P. , according to Joe, used 40' tank cars to douse the right of way over a certain stretch of that line. The tank cars were coupled in behind the head end power and after the run were set out for use going back the other way. He models that particular function on his layout and it's interesting to see how it was done on the prototype. Not exactly a fire fighting train, as such, but related closely none the less.