Flawed reasoning

Your thesis seems to be that that you have to model the 1920’s to get operation.  So I guess you don’t think Lance Mindheim’s layouts, for example, offer much operational potential?

There are some decent points, but mixed in with a LOT of 1920’s sales pitch.

We agree, kind of

The MRH Staff agrees that there's some great modern railroading ops too, witness the blue side note by Jeff Shultz referencing more modern ops. Jim's a bit myopic here -- you can find plenty of very interesting modern local and switching ops if you're willing to just look around a little. 

That said, we're fine to let Jim use his column as his own bully pulpit for what modeling he's most passionate about, and let the comments fall where they may once readers start responding.

We hesitate to call Jim's position "flawed" however -- rather it's more deliberate blinders to focus his modeling. If you don't happen to like that kind of modeling focus, then fine -- eat the meat of what does work for you and spit out the bones that don't work for you.

modern versus older industry

I understand both points. However, if you consider Lance Mindheim's Downtown spur, notice the number of industries in his plan and description that are no longer rail served. Even in a "modern" industrial park built by FEC in the 70s a lot of the customers are no longer rail served. 

Times change. I think what Jim was saying is that for the most part, there were more rail served industries in a town than today. Also, smaller businesses, industries, etc were rail served. Not to mention that most towns even in the 50s still had a freight station, team track or combination depot.

It’s hard to argue against the basic point.

It would be pointless to argue against Jim’s point that the earlier period you model the more basic operation there is, unless you’re modeling 1845 or similar.  The modern era has operations too, of course, but it’s a small fraction of what it used to be as regards industrial switching. I could site the trackage behind the house where I grew up. In a half mile stretch I can count off 18 industries having rail service in the 1950’s/60’s. Today there are three in the same place.  Downtown used to have freight houses, warehouses, a printing plant, produce terminals (2), flour mills, grain elevators, factories, team tracks, etc. today 90% of that trackage is gone along with most of what they served. There used to be massive interchange and a couple Terminal railroads, and most of that is gone. Passenger trains, along with mail and express service, added enormous operational variety. All but one Amtrak train are gone, though on the other hand commuter service is now operating, a rare plus for modern railroading.

RMC had an article about Columbus, WI a few years ago. That’s the town where buses made connections with Hiawathas for Madison. Back in the 60’s it was double track through there and the town had several rail served industries. Today it has a single track and no industries for the railroad, though Amtrak still stops there. 

Everybody has their preferences. Some like the 1800’s, others the 1920’s or 50’s or 2000’s. But each offers vastly different operating potential.

Barry P

Ops in any time period

If you want a lot of switching, you can get it in any time period you want, as long as you choose appropriate locations.  Including present day 20-teens.  (But possibly excluding 1845.)

If you want to model a specific location, and also have switching, then of course you may be more limited with regards to era.

The era by itself doesn't affect switching potential so much as the combination of era and location.  (I say switching potential because there are obviously aspects of operation like TT&TO vs. Form D, etc. that are affected by era.)

This is where your modelling

This is where your modelling style can make a difference.

I like modern equipment, but the industrial area I model doesn't generate a tremendous amount of traffic.  In fact many of the tracks have been removed. So I use the traffic pattern from the early 70's with modern equipment.  

Prototypical? Well, it's in the eye of the beholder.  Someone more concerned with accuracy will say the equipment is wrong for the traffic pattern. Or the traffic pattern is wrong for the era.  But, I get the best of both for my preferences.  I can easily look past the differences.

I wouldn't criticize the person looking for more accuracy. That attention to detail is what makes them happy.  

gs 

Ken, As you would expect, I

Ken,

As you would expect, I don't see my reasoning as flawed in any way. It is much easier to model servicing a town in a way that provides lots of car spotting and picking up in the early times that it is in contemporary times. I cannot name a town in the contemporary that would call for switching a dozen or more different customers by one local train. 

That said, Joe is correct in that there are short lines and industrial parks in today's railroading that call for such switching. I will not deny that. But to "me" this is not the same thing. Can it be fun? You betcha. switching an industrial park with hand-me-down power can be a lot of fun. I strongly recommend it for those who must have contemporary power and freight cars.

But, . . . you will most likely need more layout to get the same amount of switching due to the  longer freight cars which are about twice as long as freight cars of early times.

So yes, I concede that you can do it in a contemporary setting, but I remain convinced that it is easier in an earlier setting.

Thanks for your opinion Ken. I respect and appreciate it.

Jim

. . . and Joe, I sure am

. . . and Joe, I sure am promoting modeling of the steam era! Somebody needs to!    LOL   

Jim   

I have been wondering how

I have been wondering how long I could push steam era modeling at the expense of modern railroad modeling before some of you would start pushing back. I understand what you and Joe have said here , but I am not convinced!

LOL   

Jim

I found that the late late

I found that the late late 60's to the the mid 90's have some very advanced operations. 

Jeff S, The NS (former

Jeff S,

The NS (former CCC&StL) line that ran south from Elkhart to Goshen and then down to just east of Indy has only one rail customer between Goshen and Warsaw today. Seventy years ago there were more than two dozen. Those MP15 and GP39 locos have no work to do on this line today. This is typical of most rail lines, that is if there are any tracks left today. Yes, there are exceptions.

Jim

It's not either or -- it's both

The main point Jim is it's not either or -- it's both.

You can find really fun modeling in just about any time period if you know where to look. For example, there's the modern Vermont Railway we modeled on our TOMA project for TMTV. Go about 17:20 in to learn about this modern rail line that's tailor-made for modelers.

Great article, you guys have

Great article, you guys have not converted me yet to the 1920s. I found it particularly enjoyable since contact with both Jim and Eric have helped me immensely with designing my layout, the design concept and information. No they did not help with track planning, however Jim's one town layout idea and a huge amount of information Eric sent me regarding Wheeling that he collected were tremendous.

I am now actually planning track for my layout. Incidentally it is free-lanced as I am taking some liberties with history. In fact the location is Wheeling, WV and Benwood WV. Two towns that butted up to each other,one on the North side of 48th street the other on the South side of the street. You might call it a one metropolitan area layout instead of one town.

I am providing that information just so I can share the following thoughts regarding time periods and locations. In Eric's layout he mentions the Wheeling freight Terminal and spotting 95 freight cars. His section of the prototype was about 2 blocks not counting the yard. It also only included one freight house, there were actually 3 served by three different railroads in easy walking distance of each other.

There were also several grocery wholesalers and other warehouses in the same general area. Did I mention the several steel mills as well and a large coal mine and several smaller ones. There were also 4 passenger stations, and they had several trains a day and a street car line.

Now this just covers things one can walk to in 15 minutes or less from the freight house that is a feature of Eric's Wheeling Terminal layout.

I grew up in Wheeling and later moved to Texas. Wheeling has lots of memories for me of watching trains and other things. I remember always wanting to have a model railroad of Wheeling since I was in grade school. For me the 1950s work well as a time period to model, in fact they are better as far as being manageable. See the late 1950s would mean the end of passenger trains and the trolleys, a huge plus in limiting the amount of rolling stock required, tracks over head wire etc.

This will still be a major layout and an easy basement filler or shed filler if one desires. By going to the era of diesels and the tail end of steam the traffic is much less but still plenty for a big layout. If I were to try and do this in the 1920s It could easily require double the rolling stock I have collected and four times the locomotives, not to mention all but two would need to be replaced as most of my steam engines are post 1930, most post 1940.

So as Jim says there was lots more switching in the 1920s and depending on the location there might have been too much.

This is a photo from the air in the 1920s of the area that contained the freight house Eric modeled. The photo can be zoomed and one can count lots of freight cars in this little area.

Here is a photo that has most of the area I wish to model, it covers roughly 10th street to 40th and allows for one to zoom in. In the area photographed there are 6 steel mills and more on each edge of the picture. The area in the previous photo is in the left section of this one.

See in nine miles of railroad I could easily build a basement filler and if I work hard I could get it to fit in an oversize garage. The 1920s in this setting would be overwhelming. The 1950s or 1960s work out much better for me. The 1990s are out as the tracks were pulled up then unless one wants to model a jogging trail.

So location and time period are important in my estimation. The entire limited modeler concept, that is picking an era, picking a location, and trying to model less of it but doing a better job of it is also very much a major plus in my opinion. I would not be as far along as I am now with out the info from Jim and Eric that has helped so much with getting this together. Thanks to you both!

Push back

One of my pet peeves is the habit of some modellers who always speak of railroads in the past tense, as if they don’t exist anymore, or at least aren’t worth noticing anymore.  Present day railroads move far more freight than they did a century ago (1920’s), and far more efficiently.  There is a lot less track, and a lot less single car industry.  But I believe there is now more variety in car types.  And there is still a lot of variety in operation, from shortlines that do have a few single car industries up through class 1’s routinely moving trains way longer with way more power.  There are shortlines like for example the Arcade and Attica, the Gettysburg RR, or the Kentucky and Tennese that run frieght, and also host a tourist operation running steam or ancient diesel and vintage passenger cars on the same trackage.  A single GP40-2 shoving a string of 89’ auto racks around an unloading facility conveys a sense of little power moving big loads that you just don’t get with any 1920’s prototype.  At least for me it does.

I can see how the 1920’s appeal to some people to model.  If nothing else, you get a good excuse to stick a model T or two around the layout, and maybe a Curtis Jenny in a field.  And of course steam engines have a certain fascination, much in the same way tractors from the 19-teens and 20’s do (some great videos of those on youtube).  And there’s the fascination of historical research, especially for someplace you’re familiar with as it currently exists.  One of the first things I did after my recent move is dig up historical maps of the area I now live in - it’s fascinating to know how places evolve over time.

So I have no problem with you being totally focussed on the period you choose to model.  What irked me about the article is that it reads as if anyone who doesn’t model the 1920’s has missed the boat, and (arguably) negatively biases facts about other eras in the process.

Athearn has the new SD90MAC

Athearn has the new SD90MAC coming out that people are going crazy about....And what is new from 1920 that has the internet on fire?  

Seems Money walks and talks.  not so much from the pre WWII era.

What's new

"Early rail" forums people have been posting major manufacturer ads from 1969.  Same stuff that's on sale today.  Nothing new for 50 years.  And people wonder why people don't model early eras.

Actually MRH forums have covered a couple new "non-commercial" products, 3D printed PRR class GB and P&R class HKa, since there are no mass produced coal cars for the pre-1900 era (even though coal was the number one tonnage commodity hauled up until the 1950's) any new coal car piques interest.

Era and modelability

One of the things I will always argue against is the flawed concept of today's railroads are in horrible shape.  Having started a railroad career in 1979 that lasted through 2017 I can attest that the US/N American freight network is the premier freight network in the world, bar none.  We move more stuff, faster, cheaper, more safely and more efficiently than any other network in the world.

The catch for modelers is the " … far more efficiently" part. Efficiency in a real railroad reduces modelability and "play value" in a model railroad.  The better a railroad is at what it does, the less interesting it becomes to model.  In just the 35+ years of my career I saw (and helped implement) huge changes that reduced the modelabilty of trains.  Larger engines that reduced fueling stops, run-throughs that reduced switching, improved communications that allowed more CTC and radio based operations, larger cars that reduced car size, unit trains that eliminated switching, intermodal that reduced boxcar traffic, improved electronics that eliminated cabooses, allowed EOTD's, DPU that eliminated helpers and with stronger drawbars allowed longer, heavier and fewer trains.  One of my performance goals as a trainmaster was to retire at least one main track industry switch a year.

Yes, today's railroads have interesting areas to model.  Yes, you can model industrial switching.  But think about the fact that we need boards like this to help people FIND those interesting locations.  When I started railroading, the way you found those types of operations was you just walked down to the tracks.  They were everywhere, they were anywhere.  They were the norm, not the exception.  And as one goes back in time the railroads get less efficient still, and more modelable.  There is more activity, there are more steps, there is more handling of the cars. There is more inefficiency.

Yes modern day railroading is interesting, but everything that a modern day railroad does that makes it interesting to model, they did more of it in the past.

I think that maybe the railroads....

were a helluva lot more important to the country in 1920 as compared to today....nearly everything moved via rail.

Livestock, commodities, manufactured goods, people, and the railroads themselves played a far more active role in economic development.   They were the big player in town.  As far a new equipment,  well I guess that there will always be fervor for the latest and newest, but another indistinguishable wide-cab, modeled after a prototype that didn't deliver the specs promised does not excite me!!!

My two cents....

Peace Bill

Rock On, Jim Six

I agree with Jim, that old time railroading has more switching possibilities, and having seen Dave's  ( dave1905 ) layout in person, it's possible to have so much more railroad in the available space when the equipment is smaller. Of course, being a steam era modeler myself, I will always also have a biased opinion that the steam era is more interesting  to me than the modern era. Besides, the fact is that I live the modern era everyday at work, which also stands to reason why I do not want it on a layout at home, I need the separation between work and hobby. 

Now to be fair to the modern era crowd, the area where I work would make a great modern era switching layout. I work out of a satellite office in Orange, TX where there are three switching jobs using either Union Pacific GP38, GP40, or even GP60 locomotives, or leased locomotives from HLCX, or GMTX. My job works on a 10 mile industrial lead, and switches a lime trans loading facility and a polymer plant that blends and trans loads plastic pellets. The other duties are the interchange with the Sabine River Northern railroad at Mauriceville, TX. 

Naturally, the lime plant uses old covered hoppers no longer suitable for grain service, and the polymer plant uses modern jumbo covered hoppers. The SRN interchange consists of jumbo covered hoppers for a plant they service, 50 foot boxcars for paper mill service and the paper mill related tank cars for chemicals. One of the other jobs working out my office works the industrial leads that service Dupont, Arlanxeo, Chevron, and Print Pack plants with jumbo covered hoppers, tank cars, and carbon black covered hoppers.

The other job works on the industrial lead, servicing Firestone with tank cars and boxcars, and the Rescar tank car repair facility. They also run the main track to service a carbon black plant with hopper cars, and two other plants that get an occasional covered hopper car. There's even a locomotive rebuild facility just off the main track that gets occasional service with old locomotives to be rebuilt into switchers or even gen-set locomotives. All three jobs send and receive their cars from a fourth local job that hauls trains from our small 100 car four track yard to the main hump classification yard located 25 miles away in Beaumont, TX. 

These examples are the best I can come up with for modern switching on today's class one railroads, since again as mentioned, I live it everyday at work, and therefore am most familiar with the jobs described above. There are many other industrial switching jobs that work out of the main yard in Beaumont, and if anyone is interested in learning more about these modern switching jobs, feel free to contact me through the MRH email system for information. Jim

Beaumont

Building on Jim Moe's post.  This points out a difference between modern and earlier eras.  Note that most of the cars he is switching are covered hoppers or tank cars.  50-75 years ago there would be way more boxcars. and way fewer covered hoppers.

Also there is a big change in what is being hauled.  50-75 years ago there would have been rice, cotton, bagasse, and salt.  Beaumont is a major terminal for the export of potash, from Canada.  50 years ago?  Nope.

One thing to remember also is that 50-75 years ago it would have been 2 or 3 railroads, each with their own switchers and locals, instantly doubling or tripling the switching activity.

Importance

I agree with Bill, one of the reasons I like the 1920’s is that the railway was central to life back then. Everything arrived by rail and everything got shipped out by rail. If you wanted to go to the next town, or across the country there was only one way to do it, by rail.

These days, most people are not even aware that the railways exist except when it inconveniences them by having to wait at a grade crossing.

To further this point, I don’t have any roads on my layout, other than the street in front of the town, I am not allowing any competition for my railroad!

I do like Jim’s point of the limited modeller, your choices need to correspond to the space you have available, you just are not going to do big time modern unit trains in a small room, so choose your era and prototype wisely!

One thing I did not mean to

One thing I did not mean to cause is to divide us into a vamp of steam era modelers and a camp of modern modelers every year from the 1800s to today has a lot to offer for modeling. 

The point of my column is that IMO it is easier to model earlier times in a small space than modern railroading. That’s all. 

Jim.   

Modeling early 20th century

It's true in modeling the first half of the Twentieth Century, you can pick almost any location and you will find a lot of local switching going on.

If you model more modern times, you have to be a lot more selective if you want local switching. Many locations have become run-through, and trucks tend to serve the smaller industries, leaving the larger industries to be served by rail.

So Jim's right, modeling early 20th century does give you more options as to places you can model and the ease with which you can find industries that fit a smaller layout. If you go more modern, you'll have to be more selective as to the place you choose to model, and finding small layout-sized industries will be tougher.

Size

One other advantage is the size of the equipment.  You can fit way more 1900 era 30-36 ft cars in the same space as you can 50-70 ft cars.  A 50" driver 2-8-0 pulling 30-36 ft cars around a 24" radius curve looks better than an SD70 pulling a string of auto racks.  An 8 actual foot long train of a 2-8-0, 14  34 ft cars and a bobber caboose looks more like a "real" train than an 8 actual foot train of a couple SD40-2's and 8 or 9 50-70 ft cars.

The disadvantage is you have to kitbash or scratchbuild most of your rolling stock and you can't "visit" an actual railroad except a few pieces of equipment that have been stuffed and mounted.