Steam Era Freight Manufacturers

[Anonymous]

Hi Gang,

Can you all tell me which manufacturers make nice freight cars for Steam Era locos?

What size tankers, boxes, cattle, hoppers etc were used in Steam Era between 1920-1960?

Thanks for your replies,
Trevor

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TrevorG

Hi Gang,

Can you all tell me which manufacturers make nice freight cars for Steam Era locos?

What size tankers, boxes, cattle, hoppers etc were used in Steam Era between 1920-1960?

Thanks for your replies,
Trevor

Accurail makes a nice 40 ft wood ends box car (4100 series) and a wood side twin hopper (2704), Athearn a 40ft wood box (5233), Roundhouse a 36 ft. old time wood stock (cattle) car (1-207) , and to end the train properly for the steam era, Roundhouse a wood caboose (1-108). The numbers are from my collection of equipment on my steam era Grizzly Northern.

[jrbernier]

Accurail has very nice 40' wood freight cars. P2K has some excellent 8K/10K gallon capacity tank cars, and Branchline and Red Caboose have some good steam era freight cars.
Basically stay away from modern freight cars with no roof walks. I assume you are looking at the 1940's and maybe the eary 50's as a cutoff point. Modern grain hoppers, and tank car over 11K/14K gallon capacity, coil steel cars, and auto racks would not be seen behind steam in the 40's. Of course BNSF/CSX/etc would not be running steam engines in revenue service ona regular basis.

Jim Bernier

[orsonroy]

Accurail, Bowser, Red Caboose, Intermountain, Branchline, Rib Car Sides, Tichy, Westerfield, Funaro & Carmelengo and Sunshine all make great transitional era freight cars. Some will mention Athearn and Roundhouse, but their product lines are almost bottom of the barrel in terms of accuracy and finesse of detail.

Between 1920 and 1960, tank cars were between 4000-11,000 gallons (8000 & 10,000 being the most common), boxcars were between 36 to 50 feet long (depending on the decade) and either wood, composite or all steel, stock cars were between 32 and 40 feet long (36 being the most common), hoppers were usually steel twins, and gondolas were generally all steel or composite 40 to 65 footers.

If you're looking to build a mostly-accurate fleet of freight cars for the transitional era, I strongly recommend joining the NEB&W's website:

http://railroad.union.rpi.edu

For a whopping $5 a month, you'll have access to the single best general reference on freight car history and design, either on or off the internet. Chock full 'O prototype history and photos, the website first shows you what the real railroads had, organized by car type and date. The site then goes into a list of basically every HO scale freight car model ever built, what they were decorated for, and how accurate the models are. The site even suggests quick & easy modifications to cars to make them more accurate, or what roads had cars similar to the models, that the models have never been decorated for! While the website is nowhere near a complete listing of every car from every railroad in the USA and Canada (you'd be amazed at how many different cars there were!), it's comprehensive enough that you'll get an accurate picture of the freight car roster, and will be able to make educated purchases.

Hope this helps!

[tstage]

Trevor,

Welcome to the forum!

I will concur with some of the names already given. I've been very pleased with the Accurail 40' series hoppers and boxcars - in particular, the wood or wood end box cars. (I sure wi***hey'd get around to making some tankers and gondolas. Hhhhhhhhhh. )

Proto 2000 tankers and boxcar are excellent. However, if you get either of their regular or "Time Saver" kits, be prepared to spend a little bit of time putting them together. P2K kits are known for having a googob of parts. (Personally, I don't mind. The details on their rolling stock are fabulous and worth the extra effort in my book.) Tichy falls into this category, as well.

Athearn is pretty good, as well as Walters. You can get either of them in kits or ready to run (RTR).

I have one Roundhouse caboose that I put together from a kit. The detail is nice but the directions left much to be desired. I'm also not as keen on their paint jobs. They're just a bit too shiny for my taste. Roundhouse is known for their selection of older and hard to find "steam-era" rolling stock. The only manufacturer that I could find, who had a NYC caboose in kit form, was Roundhouse.

As far as size is concerned, you'll want to mainly stick with 40' rolling stock and 10,000 gal. and under tankers. You can also use 50' rolling stock but I personally don't think it looks good unless you will have a layout that will have curves with radii 24" or larger.

I am modeling the early 40's. When I go shopping for rolling stock at one of my local hobby stores (LHS's), I have no qualms of opening up a kit to take a look at the BLT date on the side of a boxcar or hopper to make sure that I am keeping within the era that I'm building.

You have a wide range of merchandise to choose from in the time frame that you mentioned. Boy, once you hit the 50's and 60's, your choices increase exponentially.

Trevor, hope this has been a help for you. Keep us posted...

Tom

[Anonymous]

I have had excellent experience with P2K freight cars. The are detailed pretty nicely and run incredibly smooth and easy.

[jrbarney]

Trevor,
Although they're not "shake-the-box" assembly, once you have done some more research you may want to look at La Belle Woodworking's offerings. Their URL is:
http://www.labellemodels.com
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

[Anonymous]

Trevor,

Which level of detail do you want??? You might change your mind over time on this stuff. When I got back into the hobby, I didn't care about grab irons and other details, now almost all of my stock has separately applied grabs and have a higher level of detail.

Some of the kit manufacturers listed in this thread might be a bit disappointing if you are not up to drilling out grabs, cutting and sanding resin parts etc...

I would categorize them something like this:

Shake the box: molded on grabs, big stirups and oversize rivets, some details omitted, easy to build...
Athearn, Round house, Accurail is a little better as is Branchline Yardmaster series, Proto 1000, most Walthers.

Mid-line craftsman kits: These usually have much better detail. Seperately applied grab irons, underbody brake details, finely cast parts, correct sized stirups etc. These kits can take a while to build, but look and run very well.
Proto 2000, Red Caboose, Intermountain, Branchline Blueprint series,

Hard core craftsman kits. These kits often require a lot more from the modeler. They are often unpainted, can require you to bend your own grab irons, drill out holes for grabs, paint and apply decals and generally use the modeler's sixth sense to make things fit and to solve minor problems during assembly. These kits can be very frustrating to the novice but often can produce the greatest sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when done. They are often produced in small runs and offer some pretty obscure prototypes that can't be found anywhere else.
Westerfield, Funaro and Camerlengo, Ameican Model Builders, Tichy, Grandt Line, Labelle, Rio Grande Models, Sunshine etc...

I'm sure I am leaving some stuff out. Hope this helps

Guy

[Anonymous]

Beside the kits the guys have mentioned above, there is also the R-T-R stuff. Atlas has a line they call Steam Era and what I saw looked pretty nice. Remember the steam era ran from about 1830 to 1960. You drill down what your stop time and place is for your operation and folks can tell you more of what to look for. The suggestion on build date is a good one for not having rolling stock after your cutoff. You can probably give most rolling stock a 40 year life but even today there is oddball stuff in various museums because it managed to live longer than that in some out of the way place. Branch line and small industry (think logging) often had stuff that was no longer legal for interchange and after a fashion was made illegal for that industry as well.

[CNJ831]

While all the preceeding posts offer good advice on whose product to select for appropriate vintage rolling stock, the biggest obstacle - and as far as I can see which has gone unmentioned so far - is the fact that while these cars built dates may be appropriate to the steam or transition-era, very few carry the proper paint schemes for the 1940's or earlier. A great many, if not most, represent repainted cars later than the mid 1950's...some distinctly later. To accurately model a given early era it is absolutely necessary to refer to photos of that vintage to be sure what you are purchasing honestly represents what you are looking for. Perhaps some day the manufacturers will label boxes to indicate what particular years a model is correct for...but I wouldn't hold my breath!

CNJ831

[tstage]

CNJ831,

Your point is well taken. But remember - Trevor is probably new to all this so let's don't put too many restrictions on him right off the bat.

Trevor, CNJ831 does bring up a point that I neglected to mention in my post. If yiou are concerned about keeping your rolling stock in the era of your layout: When you're checking for the BLT date on your rolling stock, be sure to check to see if there is also a NEW date printed on the side. NEW on newer cars signifys the fabrication date of the car. For instance:

NEW 11-76
However, on older cars, if BLT and NEW are both present on the SAME car, the NEW date signifys when the car was last painted.

BLT 06-33

NEW 08-68
Unlike my sample above, the BLT and NEW dates are not necessarily painted above or below one another. You may have to hunt around a bit for it.

Trevor, hope this isn't getting too left field for you...

Tom

[Anonymous]

Many thanks to all of you for your input and opinions on rolling stock for the steam era.

As guessed by some I am new to this wonderful hobby, but I'm not intimidated by any of the higher level ideas or modelling. I've been modelling scenery and miniatures for years for my other hobby (Warrhammer...maybe you've heard of it). So the complexity of a particular kit or build times are nothing new to me.

I do want to keep my layout firmly planted in the a steam era, 1920-1940ish...

I will check the links you suggested as well.

Thanks again...
Trevor