Freight cars

Ken, I focus on 1926 in HO scale. There are a number of pre-Depression Era freight cars kits featured on my blog. A link is in my signature line below. Check out the page on plastic models for that era. That link is just below the search box.   Eric

How much digging into the past have you done?

ken,

Dig, dig and dig.  There are photos somewhere.  The trick as you know is finding those.  Any museums near that town?  What about the archvies of a nearby university?  You might try writing to the town to ask about a retired railroader from the line.  Someone in local government may be able to help you.  Don't give up.

Den  

The era?

Looks like 1930 or even 1935 would give almost as much loco variation as 1920 /25?    I'd model whichever era I liked the best and assume that enough photos will show up eventually. There's plenty of work to do on a layout before it gets to the point where it needs to be era specific.  I'd just look thru websites and find stuff from the era then interpolate how your layout should look from that. As for HO scale rolling stock, Westerfield and the other specialist manufacturers along with the more common old time offerings from mainstream manufacturers both now and out of production should provide plenty of cars for an early era layout. Check out ebay listing and see what's there, usually there's lts of interesting older era kits or built models......DaveB

Research and decisions to be made

I lose one of the early (1880s era) 4-6-0s in '26 and another in '31.  But the big thing that made '20/'25 catch my eye was that I could (in theory) easily swap between the two dates and, by swapping a 4-4-0 for a 2-8-0, claim to be accurately modeling either date.  I wonder how much things changed in those five years?

Thanks, Eric!  That was some interesting reading, and I am a little surprised to find that I already have or have looked at most of those kits, even for modeling 1940.  The next question is, how does the available range of kits compare to a typical mix of cars seen in the US in that era?  Obviously it would vary a lot by location, but is it practical to model any location using only available plastic rolling stock?  The PRR seems to be pretty dominant - is that because they were that dominant, or because that's all that has been made?

Have you looked at my web site?  I've been digging!  When I started, there was basically nothing available on line about the D&W, other than a few short references and a couple grainy photos.  What I've collected so far has taken several years, a week-long trip to the national archives, and a chunk of money for whatever pops up on eBay and at swap meets.

I have copies of some documents collected by another D&W researcher, but I fully intend to drive to Stuart myself before long and see what the local Library has to offer.  I seriously doubt that there are any D&W employees surviving.  The railroad ceased to exist over 60 years ago, which would put any former employees well into their second century of life by now.  I work with a couple people who worked the line when they were new, not long before it was abandoned, but they really can't tell me anything about my era - they're still almost four decades too late for me.

Fortunately, I really enjoy the research aspect of the hobby, and my layout is likely to be as much of a diorama as it is a working layout.

It's a different world

Ken,

Here's one of my favorite pre-Depression Era images that inspires me to model the 1920s. 

This is Potomac Yard in Alexandria, Virginia, circa 1925. How many steel-sheathed box cars do you see here? How many USRA box cars do you see here? How many covered hoppers do you see here? How many splashy paint schemes do you see here? 

This steam era is now foreign to most model railroaders.

Many railroads were not using a logo or emblem on their freight cars in the 1920s. There were no Pennsy Keystones, or B&O Capitol emblems, or Erie diamonds, or Seaboard hearts adorning the sides of box cars. It was a time when the 36 and 40-foot wood-sheathed cars dominated the fleets. Look closely here and you will see many door-and-a-half 40-foot automobile box cars and ventilated box cars that have a second door outfitted with bars and screens. It is this very different texture to the freight car fleet that attracts my modeling interest. There are many familiar railroad names, but the presentation on the various freight cars is different from what the hobby has been exposed to over the years. It's very much a different world.

If you like this image, then please go to this Library of Congress page and download the 32MB TIF image so you can zoom in and look around at all of the great freight cars in this yard.

Eric

Building and Operating?

Ken, are you building, operating or both?

I lean more toward operations.  If it were me, I would see if there were significant differences in customers and how the railroad was operated in the two time periods.  If one time period suited my operational desires better than the other, that is where I would build.

If I were only building models, I would make my decision based on what I like to build and what I want to look at after I put it on display.

Either way - start doing something now and don't get paralyzed doing research.

...

You can model 77 in 1925, it's either a wreck behind the shed or in another road's paint...