Early 1900 Models

[rtstasiak]

Paul Dolkos' article in Jan MR was great, and here's a few more ideas. Turn of the century modellers have a number of great starting points including locos and MOW cars from IHC that can be tweaked into respectability with new couplers, trucks, tenders, detail parts, and paint. Besides all of the Roundhouse period stuff, Athearn 40 foot boxcars can be cut down and refitted as "1900 HyCubes" or used as the armature for 40' gons. Composite twin hoppers can be cut in width and height, detailed, retrucked and backdated.

The small stature of locomotives and rolling stock really improve the appearance of trains on curves and stretch operating possibilities as well. The venerable Atlas turntable, used by the late Irv Schultz, can be the PC workhorse at a terminal. Frustrated steel industry fans are overjoyed to find that blast furnaces of the era are quite small and are often semi-enclosed making modelling a little more practical. Cranes, barges, and boats are smaller and simpler as well. Grain elevators were tall boxes with chutes and peaked roofs.

The major drawback that I see in this era is the lack of variety in street vehicles, animal teams and wagons. You need a lot of critters and carriages in your towns and factories to make it all work, Perhaps someone else has an idea here.

[orsonroy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by rtstasiak

Paul Dolkos' article in Jan MR was great, and here's a few more ideas. Turn of the century modellers have a number of great starting points including locos and MOW cars from IHC that can be tweaked into respectability with new couplers, trucks, tenders, detail parts, and paint.

I fully agree, and wondered why IHC's stuff wasn't mentioned in the article. In addition, Bachmann and Mantua used to make cars that serve as great kitbashing bait for older cars.

QUOTE:
Besides all of the Roundhouse period stuff, Athearn 40 foot boxcars can be cut down and refitted as "1900 HyCubes" or used as the armature for 40' gons.

Now this I completely DISagree with. Athearn makes two "old" boxcars: the wood-sided car with Dreadnaught ends, and the single sheathed car with Dreadnaught ends. At best, the first car is a post-1925 car and the single sheathed car is a WWII car. If you're modeling any time before WWI, stay away from ALL single sheathed cars, and stay away from anything made by Athearn in general, because they're too tall (a 1900 hi-cube would have a 9' inside height, and the Athearn cars are 10')

QUOTE:
(Athearn) Composite twin hoppers can be cut in width and height, detailed, retrucked and backdated.

NO! Conposite twins, except for a VERY few exceptions, are a World War TWO prototype! Don't think that wood=old for hoppers! In general, most pre-1915 model railroads really shouldn't have hoppers anywhere on their layouts anyhow, since most coal and mineral loads were carried in wood-side gondolas. There were some wood-sided hoppers early on, but by 1900 railroads that made their money by hauling coal (Pennsy & others) soon realized that steel-sided cars (like the Accurail USRA twin) were cheaper to buy, since they lasted MUCH longer than wood cars. If you want to model 1900, and MUST have "real" hoppers, buy a bunch of Accurail twins and Bowser GLa twins. Athearn doesn't make a twin hopper that's older than the 1930s.

QUOTE:
The major drawback that I see in this era is the lack of variety in street vehicles, animal teams and wagons. You need a lot of critters and carriages in your towns and factories to make it all work, Perhaps someone else has an idea here.

By and large, you won't need any "carriages" on a model railroad. Carriage is NOT the same as car; a carriage is a much fancier conveyance than a wagon (4-wheel freight), cart (2-wheel freight or passenger), cab (2-wheel commercial passenger), or buggy (4-wheel light non-commercial passenger). Between Jordan, Preiser, and Musket Miniatures, you'll have all the horse drawn equipment you'll ever need. Keep in mind that the Preiser stuff will usually have to be kitbashed into something American, since the Euros had strange tastes in decoration and painting on their vehicles, as well as different shapes to the sideboards. They also didn't have the wood available to make strong and thin-spoked wheels.

[dehusman]

Actually if you take an Athearn gondola, cut the sides down so they are 1 ft high inside, cut off the fishbelly and make it about 11 side stakes long so it fits on an MDC 36' old time boxcar under frame (no truss rods) and use MDC fox trucks, you get a 1905-1906 Pressed Steel Car Co. steel gondola.

If you take the Varney/Lifelike (not p2k) twin hopper and remove the safety appliances and replace the trucks with archbars you get a pressed steel hopper from the 190-1910 era. shave off the side stakes and replace tham with alternating channels and angles and you get a Standard Steel Car Co. hopper.

Get the even more el-cheapo knock-off of the varney twin (Industrial s?) and throw away everything but the floor and you can make a half-way acceptable hopper bottom gondola with strip and scribed styrene and Grandt line gondola side stakes.

Jordan makes TOC vehicles (buggies, wagons, etc.). They are very nicely done.

Dave H.

[dehusman]

One exception to orsonroy's comments. The PRR lines west had thousands of true wood hoppers (class GG). One still exists at the RR Museum of PA. in Strasburg. They were so successful that early steel cars were patterned off of that design. PRR Lines east and and Anthracite roads favored hopper bottom Gons.

Dave H.

[orsonroy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dehusman

One exception to orsonroy's comments. The PRR lines west had thousands of true wood hoppers (class GG). One still exists at the RR Museum of PA. in Strasburg. They were so successful that early steel cars were patterned off of that design. PRR Lines east and and Anthracite roads favored hopper bottom Gons.

Dave H.

Actually, the Pennsy classified the GG cars as self-clearing gons, not hoppers (at least according to their freight car diagram books), so I suppose we should call them drop-bottom gondolas, of which there were tens of thousands running around all over the country before WWI. But the GG's were an oddity, and shouldn't really count at all. Yes, the Pennsy had "thousands" of them, but the Pennsy had thousands of almost every car they ever built! I couldn't find a tally of how many GG's were built, but I did find an interesting roster comparison for 1917:

Class GG: built 1895; 1584 left in 1917.
Class GL: built 1898; 20006 left in 1917.
Class GLa: built 1904; 30365 left in 1917.
Class H21: built 1910; 13723 left in 1917.
Class H21a: built 1912; 19462 left in 1917.
Class H22: built 1916; 4499 left in 1917.

So in 1917, the Pennsy had at least 89,639 hopper cars, with the GG's making up just over .017% of the fleet. Turn it back to 1900, and the GL's still outnumber any number of GG's built by at least 4:1. And while the early GL's were patterned after the GG's, most hoppers around the planet were based on the Pennsy's GLa, which is a modification of the GL.

My whole point here is that unless someone wants to model the Pennsy circa 1897, you need to carry coal in either wood-sided gondolas (mostly solid bottom, some drop-bottom, one or two self-clearing) or boxcars. If you want to model a typical railroad circa 1910, you need STEEL twin hoppers. All wood or composite-side hoppers need not apply.

[IRONROOSTER]

This is a good era for scratch/parts building. Boxcars,reefers, flat cars, gondola, passenger cars were built of wood and were simpler than later steel versions - no rivets. There are plenty of parts available.
Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

Good topic. Here's some Pressed Steel Co. ore cars used in the Adirondack Mountains around 1919.

http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/rolling-stock/ore-cars/LC&M-ore-cars-builders.jpg

Westerfield makes them in HO but, alas, not in N Scale where they are (still) desperately needed on my layout. Looks like scratchbuild-time approaches.

Wayne

[rtstasiak]

Muddy Creek's Pressed Steel Co. ore cars look like parts of a steel hopper, or 2-bay covered hopper, sitting on a flatcar with hopper bottoms stuck inboard of the fishbelly. Can any heavy duty N-scalers recommend pieces parts?

Rich

Slices and dices rats and mices and plastic car bodies.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by rtstasiak

Muddy Creek's Pressed Steel Co. ore cars look like parts of a steel hopper, or 2-bay covered hopper, sitting on a flatcar with hopper bottoms stuck inboard of the fishbelly. Can any heavy duty N-scalers recommend pieces parts?

The RPI website (http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/images/photoarc/porthenry.asp ) describes those cars as "basically shorty versions of the GL fishbelly-side-sill hoppers (almost two decades after regular hoppers had switched to a USRA-type design with straight side sills)."

Wayne