Attention to detail

While the models in the article are all steam era, the topic applies to all eras of railroad history.  

Though the 1970s era Sudbury Division has far more home road equipment than a typical mainline railroad would, we still make an effort to try to make the foreign traffic which we do run look "right," and that involves in many cases obtaining signature cars for the foreign roads.  Examples of that include getting the red white and blue State of Maine BAR newsprint cars, the Southern Rwy waffle boxes, and Despatch Shops Penn Central cars, just to name a few.  Though we do have many more generic cars from foreign roads, the very specific models from these railroads raise the realism level for those familiar with their prototypes a great deal.

One of the challenges of modeling CP is that, like any Canadian railroad, it bought mostly from Canadian car manufacturers, and everything was done just a little bit differently up here.  From that standpoint, modeling almost any piece fo rolling stock requires kitbashes or scratchbuilding or waiting for an actual accurate model of a Canadian prototype to be released (which thankfully is increasingly commonplace these days.)  For practical purposes, almost our entire home road fleet is composed of "signature" cars.  That level of attention to detail isn't everybody's thing, but it really enhances the realism for those who can appreciate it. 

Thanks, Tony, for another fine piece!

Nice article

I sure wish someone would mass produce the D&RGW GS gons in styrene though. As close as I would ever come to being a prototype modeler rather than a freelancer  is if I could model  D&RGW coal ops in Utah!

Michael

Great article Tony!

Thanks for the review of many of my favorite freight cars...

modelling signature freight cars

An excellent article as is usual with Tony Thompsons articles as i model SP circa 1950 i found it very useful

regards Paul Doggett Great Britain