Picture a frieght train in the 40's or 50's for a major railroad, say PRR for example. I assume it is safe to say that the train would have a higher percentage of PRR freight cars, but is there a ballpark estimate on mixture of other road names? I guess a lot would depend on the job and type of freight, but if I had a train that was mostly PRR cars (50%?) with the remaining a mix of other road names, would this be reasonable? I am modeling PRR in this era and starting to build my freight car fleet, and I'm unsure what proportion of other road names to buy.
Thanks
I'd say 50% is fair, it would depend on what area of the Pennsy you're modeling. Any North American roads will work, but you may have more eastern roads than western ones in your fleet. I'd say almost all coal trains would be more Pennsy cars.
Thanks, it will be mostly Pittsburgh and east. So to name a few I would guess B&O, C&O, N&W, Wabash, P&LE, IC, and NYC; and maybe a little Reading and Lehigh Valley?
Even though PRR is eastern, you would still see PFE and MDT reefers loaded with California produce. Also SP and UP boxcars loaded with, 'Made in Japan,' items from West Coast ports.
Other things remembered from East Coast supermarket shopping in the early '50s:
All would probably have arrived on PRR rails, but in originating road cars.
As for my own modeling, most of my freight cars don't even carry a road name. When you're a national monopoly, you don't have to tell the world who you are.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
don't forget western roads also, it's not uncommon for Santa Fe, UP,SP, GN , any road to have cars routing through the Pennsy.
A while back Railroad Model Craftsman did a series of articles called Essential freight cars. It was a very good and valuable resource for us modelers of that era. Fifty to seventy percent of a mixed freight would be home road cars. And we also should not forget about the older wood sheathed cars of an earlier era. Picture a train of forty foot cars with a few 32 foot truss rod cars mixed in also. We would also have long strings of drag freights with the same equipment of home road cars and blocks of seasonal cars. Reefers would have been blocked into trains and divided at near delivery points so a way freight would only have a couple to deliver or pick up. You can pretty much rule out any billboard cars as they were outlawed by then. Into the Fifties there would be a slow influx of fifty foot freight cars and also the sharp decline of older 30 footers. During the war years every conceivable freight car was in service to support the war effort. I have seen photos of queen post truss rod cars in ammunition service that otherwise would have been either scrapped or in mow by then.
As another PRR modeler of the early forties we must not forget the thousands of private owner cars also. Berwind, Hooker, Westmoreland, and others would have as big a presence as NYC or Erie.
The best us modelers can do is match what type of rolling stock to the industries we model on our pikes. There would be no need to have a long string of stock cars if there was no place to support them but a few in a mixed train would be believable if there were a small cattle pen somewhere on the rail road.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
Excellent post Pete, thank you.
Rules of thumb I have seen run in the 50-25-25 or 33-33-33 range, home road, direct connections, everybody else.
Bulk trains (coal/ore/aggregates) would be mostly PRR cars. Open top cars would tend to be mostly PRR and close connections.
It would depend on the route and the trains. Paper and lumber products would be in Canadian and New England road cars. Auto parts in midwestern road cars.
Reefers might be anyplace. An E-W line would be PFE-SFRD-ART while a N-S route might be more MDT-FGE.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
For a PRR train 50% might not be unrealistic. Pennsy was a huge railroad with many online customers and many freight cars of their own. Smaller railroads would be doing more carrying of other railroad's cars. On the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern it was a rare treat to see one of their own cars being pulled up or down the highline.
In general of course, the cars of railroads that connect with the PRR would be common, then cars from the same part of the world (northeastern US) would be the next most common, then finally farther away roads...though as noted, reefer blocks from the west or Florida wouldn't be unusual at times.
To add to what has been offered so far, the PRR and B&O had large fleets of 50 automobile box cars that both delivered autos to the Mid Atlantic and took autos from the GM plant in Baltimore to places all over the country.
GM built cars in Baltimore from 1935 to 2005 - over 12 million of them in 70 years.
Sheldon
And, to offer some more insite into the traffic in that era and region, Baltimore and Phily were both major manufacturing centers. Some of the famous brands/Companies include - GM (as noted in my last post), Noxzema, Domino Sugar, Lehigh Portland Cement, Western Electric (right next door to GM), Life Like Products (yes the model train company, but they mainly made styrofoam coolers), Bethlehem Steel, Timex, Black & Decker, Sweetheart Cup, Eskay Meats (yes cattle/hogs in stock cars), Westinghouse, Bendix, Esso (now known as Exxon), Amoco, Hess (all three had terminals and/or refineries in Baltimore), Allied Chemical (they made the chrome for those Chevy bumpers), Dupont (in nearby Delaware), Purdue Chicken, and the list goes on.
Just think of all the differnent rail traffic.
IIRC, PRR had a friendly relationship with Santa Fe. I would imagine that for cars originating on ATSF going to PRR's service area, PRR would be the preferred routing. (And vice-versa.)
Dan
Utley26 Picture a frieght train in the 40's or 50's for a major railroad, say PRR for example. I assume it is safe to say that the train would have a higher percentage of PRR freight cars, but is there a ballpark estimate on mixture of other road names? I guess a lot would depend on the job and type of freight, but if I had a train that was mostly PRR cars (50%?) with the remaining a mix of other road names, would this be reasonable? I am modeling PRR in this era and starting to build my freight car fleet, and I'm unsure what proportion of other road names to buy. Thanks
Ballpark figure?
Nobody knows, nobody will EVER know.
There are too many variables that go into this sort of figure to make it of any use even if you COULD find a "real" number. What kind of train are we talking about? Reefer blocks? (0% PRR) Coal drag? (95% PRR) General merchandise freight? (30%-40%) WHERE are we talking about? The Pennsy's mainline out of St Louis, or out of Williamsport, or out of Toledo?
Don't worry about the hard numbers, unless you're prepared for some culture shock. Did you know that at one time the NYC had more boxcars than the Pennsy? Ready for more NYC than PRR on your layout? Or how baout the #3 and #4 railroads in the "region": the CN and CP. The Milwaukee Road at certain times had the #7 largest freight car fleet: how many of their cars do you have?
So long as there are "more" Pennsy cars in any general merchandise freight than any other single RR, the overall "look" should be good. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot of point in thinking too hard about numbers like these!
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
orsonroy Ballpark figure? Nobody knows, nobody will EVER know. There are too many variables that go into this sort of figure to make it of any use even if you COULD find a "real" number. What kind of train are we talking about? Reefer blocks? (0% PRR) Coal drag? (95% PRR) General merchandise freight? (30%-40%) WHERE are we talking about? The Pennsy's mainline out of St Louis, or out of Williamsport, or out of Toledo? Don't worry about the hard numbers, unless you're prepared for some culture shock. Did you know that at one time the NYC had more boxcars than the Pennsy? Ready for more NYC than PRR on your layout? Or how baout the #3 and #4 railroads in the "region": the CN and CP. The Milwaukee Road at certain times had the #7 largest freight car fleet: how many of their cars do you have? So long as there are "more" Pennsy cars in any general merchandise freight than any other single RR, the overall "look" should be good. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot of point in thinking too hard about numbers like these!
Relax. Several others answered my question and gave me the info I was looking for; I just wanted a general sense of the different proportions.
loco1sa said (quote) " The best us modelers can do is match what type of rolling stock to the industries we model on our pikes. There would be no need to have a long string of stock cars if there was no place to support them."
I don't see that the rolling stock we run needs to be limited to industries we model on our pikes...but then I am a staging nut.
On my old layout- which modeled the GREEN trackage, I needed cars for logs and lumber, cresote treated poles and piling, and pulpwood, and for peanut butter, as shown by modeled industries.
But I also needed cars for traffic going THROUGH the modeled scene to and from places not modeled... Texaco, Gulf and Magnolia tankcars from Lost River, paper from the Lost River paper mill going to the paper products plant in Santa Vaca, etc.
LOTS of et cetera.
Utley26 Thanks, it will be mostly Pittsburgh and east. So to name a few I would guess B&O, C&O, N&W, Wabash, P&LE, IC, and NYC; and maybe a little Reading and Lehigh Valley?
Let start with the facts..In the 50s the Interstates was being built and railroads still moved the nations freight so,50/50 is about right with Western and Southern roads thrown into the mix.
Then you would have solid trains of PFE,Santa Fe and FGX reefers heading toward the Eastern market..On the PRR Sandusky Line you would see solid trains of N&W hoppers bound for Lake Erie,You would see solid hopper trains heading for steel mills in Gary,Chicago,etc lettered Clinchfield,Southern,L&N,N&W etc.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
The ratio can vary wildly. However, particular trains may be entirely home or foreign cars. For example, the SP sugar beet trains consisted of home cars. Also, a train could be all empty foreign cars being sent "home." Until the end of the "box car period," most foreign cars were typically box cars.
markpierce The ratio can vary wildly. However, particular trains may be entirely home or foreign cars. For example, the SP sugar beet trains consisted of home cars. Also, a train could be all empty foreign cars being sent "home." Until the end of the "box car period," most foreign cars were typically box cars.
Mark,The boxcar period hasn't ended there are still unknown thousands of boxcars roaming the rails.
Here's the thing boxcars today are larger and carry more freight then their older counterparts.Go trackside and you will still see lots of foreign boxcars
Hi!
Can't believe I just saw this posting, for the subject is a favorite of mine.
As mentioned earlier, there have been studies on the road name composition and while there is no absolute answer, there are some guidelines that seem reasonable.
My time frame of interest coincides with your question - namely the '40s - '50s. I model the ATSF and also the IC, and was around during that timeframe to actually see the consists.
For the generic freight train of that era, a good guideline (not rule!) is the 50 percent home road, 25 percent connecting lines, and 25 percent foreign roads.
But for specialty trains, like IC coal hauls or ATSF refrigerated service, etc., then you are approaching 100 percent home roads. I sure to remember those long IC coal trains with the "same" two bay hoppers going by, one after the other - all Illinois Central. It got boring, but that was the way it was.
For awhile I collected hoppers from every road in existance during those years. Some were pretty nice, but it finally hit me that a train of those mixed roads would we a sheer fantasy. I ended up selling most of them, keeping only the ATSF and IC and a few others that I just couldn't part with.
Anyway, while the urge to collect all those pretty paint schemes is strong, remember that if you care about realism (and you surely don't have to), make certain that the collection makes sense.
Sounds easy, I know first hand it is not.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
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Let's put this myth to bed.
IC could line haul complete L&N or Southern coal train to (say) a steel mill in Chicago or to a Lake Michigan port.
Those Santa Fe reefers could be produce train for Louisville,Ky hauled by the IC.
So,we know there are solid blocks of foreign road cars being line hauled to a destination on the IC.
Of course the above applies to any railroad.
Brakie,
I sure can't argue your point, but I spent a lot of time watching IC trains coming up from southern Illinois that were IC cars. I never saw a solid train of other road cars being hauled by the IC. Of course you say they did, and you also pointed out they were solid blocks (not mixes of different roads).
The ATSF trains I watched were pretty much the same situation, pulling blocks of home road cars. Again, they could have pulled FEC cars for all I know, but I never saw them.
In any case, for the OP's question, you would want the majority of your cars to be the home road. That of course isn't a rivit counter's rule, but certainly a worthy guideline.
By the way, my watch points for the IC trains was Anna Illinois, and Joliet Illinois. For the ATSF it was Joliet.