When I was young I spent a fair amount time living with my grandparents in Litchfield, Illinois - in the 1940s/50s until we started flying TWA. I even remember taking the train from the Litchfield station a few times to St. Louis and beyond and back to Litchfield at least once from California.
I would like to add an Illinois Central and Wabash train to my collection of 0 gauge equipment but I'm having a hard time with true scale models. When I look at what is available for Illinois Central I can find some Lionel F3 diesels in brown with the orange stripe. I don't know when they came into service or if I rode steam locos when we traveled. But what I can't find are correct passenger cars to go with these diesel engines. I have searched 100s of Pinterest photos and cannot find any F3 with a consist of the heavyweight Madison cars that have the raised center roof section on top of the cars, I can only find photos of the smooth top aluminum cars. In addition to that, Lionel seems to have missed the correct paint scheme on IC cars because they have the orange paint stripe arranged across at window level on the cars instead of lower on the cars where it should match the F3 engine stripes.
And, when I look at teh Wabash equipment available I run into the same problem. I'm thinking I can pull a passenger consist with a Pacific 4-6-2 and be scale but...I dunno. Searching 100s of Pinterest photos, I do not find any Wabash cars of the heavyweight variety with the raised center roof section, only smooth type aluminum cars. Not a photo anywhere of the raised roof types and that seems to be all that Lionel supplies despite it does not match the true examples.
Does anyone here know the history of any of this? Did Lionel miss the real thing?
Jim, you might have to move towards Williams Trains, who produced a nice set of Bluebird Budd cars (circa 1950), for your Wabash varnish. On the IC side, look for MTH and K-Line offerings. Lionel did put out "baby Madison" cars, with the clerestory type roofs.
Also, you may want to check out Wabash RR Historical, and IC Blackhawk Historical Society websites.
Happy hunting.
You can try looking on trainz.com for a start, it's a large on-line marketplace for model trains.
Another thing would be hitting any train shows in your area and keeping your fingers crossed. Show schedules can be found on railserve.com and on the "Railfan and Railroad" website under "Timetable." Both are accurate.
You may find that the hunt is part of the fun!
Aboard!
Same me, different spelling!
I have a large OGauge IC collection. Are you looking for something specific?
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.
Get the Classic Toy Trains newsletter delivered to your inbox twice a month