Mostly

Mostly kits but MDC Roundhouse has some shake the box type that can be made to look better with wire grabs and stirrup steps, nicer brake wheels, and even real wood roof walk. 

Old Pulman, LaBelle and others make wood kits, and Grantline (and many others) sell hardware kits if you want to grow your own. My only complaint with all the wood cars is the weight so will conceal some in or under the car during construction. This is easier to do with some forethought. 

N Scale

If you are modeling in N, I would be looking at Fine N Scale kits for a good supply of truss rod freight cars, Micro Trains has a good selection of wooden freight cars dating back to the Civil War era, and Athearn has wooden freight and passenger cars. Many car kits that Republic Locomotive Works can be converted to standard guage. M.C. Fujiwari has converted some smaller  hoppers and the look great

"I'm thinking wooden "    

Check out ebay vintage kits for some neat stuff by Central Valley and other old companies. Round House also made some plastic tank cars and other useful cars. You don't need as much rolling stock to model an old time line so quality can replace quantity. Here's a flatcar I got on ebay years ago, I can't recall who made the kit but it is wood and was fun to build .....DaveB  

Try These

Bitter Creek Models has some nice cars that may be to your liking  http://bittercreekmodels.com/page3.html .

Central Valley

• Central Valley made some great kits if you can find them

There are no quality RTR

There are no quality RTR models of "turn of the century" models made in HO standard guage.  The last new RTR models were Roundhouse's re-tooling of the 36 ft box car, stock car and reefer initially produced in the 1970's.  They appear to be pretty much out of production.

You can buy old MDC and Roundhouse kits and RTR Mantua and Bachmann "old timer" cars, they pretty much train set quality, but can be kitbashed into something reasonable.  Old Life Like and Accurail twin hoppers can be kitbashed into 1899-1905 era steel hoppers .  Bowser GS gons are in that same era.

The majority of your rolling stock in the pre-WW1 eras will be "craftsman kits".  Alkem, Bitter Creek, Amesville Shops, BTS, Central Valley, Labelle, and a few Westerfields.

http://www.alkemscalemodels.com/

http://bittercreekmodels.com/

http://www.amesvilleshops.com/

http://www.btsrr.com/

https://www.labellemodels.com/

http://www.westerfieldmodels.com/

Ironically, although the number one commodity hauled by tonnage pre-1900 was coal, there are no accurate pre-1895 coal cars made in plastic.

Locomotives are also pretty slim.  Roundhouse (out of production) sold 2-8-0, 2-6-0 and 4-4-0's.  Bachmann made 4-4-0 and 4-6-0's and Mantua made 4-4-0's.  There are early era brass engines.  Virtually all the plastic engines need to be re-worked to make them pre-WW1 (headlights, no generator, valve gear, cabs, etc).

Tichy makes queenposts and turnbuckles.  Jordan makes wagons.

The big loss was Art Griffin stopping the production of early era decals a couple years ago.  That was huge hit.  About the only early rail lettering is Clover House dry transfers and some Westerfield decals.  There are a few sets for specific roads made by smaller  producers.  Other than that you have to custom make your own decals.

More or less the model railroad industry thinks trains were invented sometime after WW1.  Modeling an eraly era is not for the faint hearted.

Old time MDC

Shake the bag. No longer in a box.

http://stores.ebay.com/RIVER-CITY-RAILROAD-RCR_36FT-OLD-TIME/_i.html?_fsub=174146619&_sid=287414219&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322

I have bought from them in the past. They also sell project cars. Unpainted.

Rich

How accurate?

Another consideration is how accurate do you want to be?  For example the MDC/Roundhouse 36 ft boxcar is the defacto "old time boxcar" probably because the model has been in production since the 1960's.  The irony is ithat the 36 ft car is more of an 1890's-1910 car (prior to that the 34 ft car was standard and after that the 40 ft car took over) and the MDC model is actually a 1900 era car that has been rebuilt in the 1920's.  The grab irons date it as post 1906 (having grabs on both the sides and ends, note the Bitter Creek models only have grabs on the sides, not on the ends) and the brace on the door is a WW1 era addition. 

All of the craftsman kits will be more accurate, but the MDC cars are quicker to the layout (yes, about a third of my boxcar fleet is MDC 36 footers, most with minor detail improvements).

B.T.S. in N Scale

All of the BTS rolling stock kits are lisenced to Republic Locomotive Works.

Wow, this all such great info

Wow, this all such great info - thanks for all the responses! I definitely have some digging to do tonight with all of these sites... 

Gratitude to all!

Art Griffin

I think Art Griffin still produces early freight car decals: http://www.artgriffindecals.com/ 

Click on the green "Car Decals" button in the lower left corner.

Regards, Volker (Germany)

Early Rail

A early rail group discussing the General loco right now if not familiar with the group. Info in Files and Photos there also.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/EarlyRail/conversations/messages

Nice to see Bitter Creek back with a few models.after he bought the business from Bob in the late 1990's

Rich

Griffin

Nope, he's out of business, but the site is up.

Suggestion would be to print off his catalog pages to get Ideas on what the lettering looked like.

Classic Kit

Look at this on eBay
LaBelle HO-56 Lindsay Bros. Box Car Kit

You'll need some archbar trucks. There are some cool resin printed Carter Brothers trucks on Shapeways. 

Accurail is going to be

Accurail is going to be putting out some 36' boxcars--I'm not sure just what year of production.  They also have some cars on their site with build dates in the 1910's, the earliest being in 1910; I'm not sure how accurate the kit is for the year.

http://accurail.com/accurail/7000.htm

Flat cars aren't hard to build--I'm searching gor the online article I used for my first one.  Here's a different article: http://www.davevinci.com/PRR%20Class%20Fk%20Wooden%20Flat%20Car.pdf

I scratch-built one myself; here's the link--not the greatest blog entry, but anyone with questions, I'll be happy to answer.  The car's been in revenue service for a bit, and running nicely.  It was not hard to build. http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/18330?page=1

It was built using this article...nice and easy.  I bought the bolsters, queenposts, brakes, stake pockets--anything I could get my hands on.  I wanted a nice running car; I wasn't interested in getting a high scratch-build percentage for NMRA scoring.  The wood's cheap, comparatively,so if you mess something up, put it in the scrap bin and do another one.  Lego bricks are your friend!

It can' of course, be built in different lengths.  Making it into a gondola would be easy as well.

Tichy has some cars that work.  The Ore Car is from 1906, and I susect that the low sided gondola, although a big car, could be seen some earlier than the listed date--at least something similar.

Rio Grande Models has some that might be useful, too. http://www.riograndemodels.com/index.htmalong with BTS.  http://www.btsrr.com/

Hope this is useful!

Cars

In addition to kits, kitbashing is a major source.  Here are some assorted cars.  In the back row the FEMV box is a LaBelle wood kit I bought used, the WNY&P is a modified IHC car, the P&R is a homemade resin kit, the W&N car is modified Mantua.  In the middle row is a Life Like kitbashed into a Standard Steel hopper (side stakes replaced with alternating channels and angle stock), another Life Like hopper kitbashed to a Pressed Steel hopper (new end braces, diagonal braces on the side and detailed door mechanisms), and the last car is a Concord Models PRR GD hopper (wood kit bought used and long out of production).  In the foreground are three Mantua gons.

This is the closeup of the homemade resin boxcar.  It is a P&R class XMe 34' car.  I made the masters from styrene, made molds and cast the shells and underframe from resin.  It uses Westerfield decals and Sunshine chalk marks.

Here is a B&O hopper I made by cutting 4 ft out of the center of a Life Like twin hopper, sanding off all the detail and adding styrene sides and detail parts.

Here is the finished string of 5 cars (if you are going to do one you might as well do more).  It has Griffin decals.

I also used the Life Like shell to make a P&R HTb wood twin hopper.  I filled in the ends with styrene, then scribed "boards" on the sides to make it look like wood with steel side stakes.  Both the P&R and the LV had cars like this.

Just some ideas.

Turn of 20th Century cars

To All: Most of my collection (close to 100 cars of various types) I scratch built, most lettered with Art Griffin decals. I recommend also MDC , Westerfield, West Virginia Car & Foundry, and others for 1880 to 1920 ish rolling stock. Yours, Elvin Howland/E. St. Louis Rail group Layout.

Of course now there are two

Of course now there are two turn of the centuries!  1899-1900 and 1999-2000.  There is lots of rolling stock for the latter!  The former, thats way way out of my knowlege base!

Turn-of-the-Century Which Century

Being pedantic, but we are now well into the 21st century so we should be specific and specify late 19th century rolling stock.  After all an EMD SD90 could be called turn of the century too.

I think there are some 19th century modeling websites around that may be helpful to you. 

Ken Adams

(Pedantic hat on for this post.)

Early Rail

 Why a lot of the turn of the century (1890-1910 era) modelers use the term "early rail" to refer to stuff pre-WW1.

Resin Casting

Hi Timdrum,

If you're working in HO or larger, consider taking the time to make several masters, rubber molds and use resin casting to duplicate the car bodies.  You can build a considerable fleet by investing your time and saving your money.

The truss rods, brake wheels, grab irons, trucks, decals and couplers are available from many sources.  You can add as much or as little detail as you prefer.

FWIW: TOC19 is being used by

FWIW: TOC19 is being used by many to refer to turn of the 19th century modeling.

RSLaser Kits

RSLaser Kits, one of our sponsors here has a series of kits.

And Rich says there are more on the way.

TOC cars

If you ever get a chance to buy a copy of "The American railroad freight car" by John White it's a great reference for scratch building or kit bashing early freight cars. It's a large book and many times priced high but occasionally I see a copy for a bargain price so be patient :> ) .......DaveB