You’re not alone Joe

Joe,

You are definitely not alone. One reason I stayed in 2015 was because I had some cars that I payed to have professionally weathered, tagged and the numbers changed on back in 2015. By 2018 those cars had a fresh coat of paint covering over the old fallen flag paint schemes, rust and graffiti.

Now whenever I take on a new project myself I’ll check rrpicturearchives.net for cars from that time period that I find interesting and would look appropriate on the SC.

Tim Garland

Agreed...definitely not alone.

Joe I strongly suspect there is a silent majority out there reading with interest OR your thoughts may well stir interest. 

Kind regards...

Join the club

Joe,

There are many out there like you, me included. It is part of creating a world that you feel comfortable and satisfied in. Isn't that the feeling you want when you go to your train room to spend time on you hobby? It is for me when I climb the stairs to my train room and enter the world I am re-creating as it was on September 27, 1956 on the B&O Shenandoah Sub-division. 

 Examples of what I did that is similar to your behavior:

1) used an October 1956 Official Railway Equipment Register to analyze the quantity of certain types of freight cars (boxcars, flatcars and gondolas) each railroad had to determine what percentage of coffee line cars you would possibly see on my sub-division. Rightsized/"right roaded" my fleet accordingly

2) made sure tank cars of ammonia going to the two fertilizer manufacturers on the sub-division came from companies that were on the east coast and made ammonia for agriculture use

Only I know (and readers) that I did this, but it makes the operation "feel right" in the slice of time that I am creating in miniature.

Keep up the good work and don't fight the feeling; run with it!

Fran Giacoma 

Data

The difference you have Joe is you have actual data that shows specific car numbers.  VERY hard data to come by.  Unless you can find a conductor's wheel report or an agent's inventory, the only thing that the average modeler can use is just guessing on a generic source such as an ORER and hoping that that the traffic mix on their sub matches the national mix.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I found car hire reports for the St Joe Terminal for 1910 and they give the car hire amounts for the various roads, but not car number level data.  They give an idea of the relative number of cars and the various roads.  Its was very interesting to see the wide variety of roads, but the distribution did not conform to the distribution of cars in the national fleet.

I have tonnage by general commodity class by month for my prototype when it was an independent shortline, but no car level data.  By estimating the average tonnage per car for the various commodities and what type of car they would be in, I can estimate the number of each car type used each month on my line.

Best part of modeling...

Doing the research, learning what was there, replicating it to the best of your ability, and then bringing that work and those moves back to life is the best part of the hobby. 

I'd love to have more information about the specific cars in my area and era. 

Nice work, keep it up! 

Randy

It's your railroad

Heck Joe, do whatever makes you happy... I'm modeling a freelance road so no such need for me. However, I find it cool that you've done that much research. That's probably why when I see a post of yours I'm instantly clicking on it to see whats up. You've done an awesome job recreating the real thing... I'm always amazed at your work. 

Thank you

Thank you all for your replies!  I honestly thought I'd wake up to find this post on the second (or third) page.

Fran, the kind of research you mentioned is one of my favorite parts of this hobby.  As you said, it makes things "feel right", even if no one else ever knows about it.  I sometimes daydream about what I'd model next if we ever had to move, and I often land in the late 1970s UP or RI/UP, where I'd be without all the data I now enjoy.  If I went in that direction, I think I'd do exactly as you've done.  However, the more time that goes by, the more I feel like I might be a "lifer" with the IAIS.  Even if we were to move, I think I'd end up modeling it again in some fashion.  This access to data is a big part of that, since I really enjoy that analysis and being able to know exactly what was there - what fits and what doesn't.  The data's been a big money saver for sure!

Several years ago I narrowed my era from Spring 2005 to just May 2005.  At the time, I sold off all the cars from particular moves that no longer fit the new era, but I never thought about re-balancing the moves that remained.  I finally did that over the past couple months and found the exercise to be a lot of fun.  For my tank car fleet, for example, when I was modeling Spring, GATX cars outnumbered UTLX, so the roster reflected those ratios.  However, when I narrowed to just May, UTLX cars were more numerous, so I bought and sold what I needed to in order to align the roster with the new ratios.  Boring for some, I'm sure, but it brought new life and interest to the hobby for me.

Dave - Good thoughts on the data.  You're right that it isn't the kind of thing that often drops in your lap as it did for me, but regardless of how much detail we have access to, I think the remaining research is still just as much fun.  Great sleuthing work to find car info for the W&N!

Randy - I'm pretty sure we were separated at birth.  It's been really cool to see the paperwork you've found, and the employees you've made contact with, for your prototypes.

Ben - Thanks very much for the kind words.  I'm just a big ol' copycat, piecing together my favorite techniques and hobby principles from all the talented folks on the web and here locally.  When you see me honking something up, that's usually when I'm attempting to chart my own course.

Research

I find I am beginning to enjoy more and more to doing research and I thank you for helping (along with others) showing me the way. I  model the CN Valley Sub in Central Wisconsin now in the year 2015. I switched the dates and some buildings because I (liked them) purchased a fleet of oil tank cars from Scaletrains.com that were built in 2014. They are run as 2 unit trains, the only 2 I now run. Everything else is local switching. Most of the rolling stock and engines from my previous modeling time of 2005 have been sold off. I now have a library of photos, my own and from internet rail sites that at least passed through Junction City, Wisconsin. I am modeling those as close as I can and just recently started changing numbers on rolling stock to match. Other than the fleet of 48 tankers I have 40 pieces of rolling stock seen on the Valley Sub in 2015 and only looking to add 12 more. Everyone has their own enjoyments, I love my PT and local switching. As my first sentence indicates, research is moving up the list. I just wanted you to know as Phil Taylor mentioned that there maybe a lot of us out there who read your postings with great interest.

Tom

Nope, not just you

I am lucky in the sense that I model a small NG railroad, and a good series of books was written with full rolling stock rosters by timeframes.

I have a book with all the rolling stock written down by me in the timeframe I model (the summer of 1943) and I'm ticking them off if/when they get modelled.

The ET&WNC had TOFC cars and I'd love to model one, but sadly they were gone by WW2, darn it.

I model a fictional branch line of the RR, bought out before the war, so there are three cars marked for the 'previous' railroad name, but one is a shed and the other two (a low gon a passenger coach) never get into op sessions. I couldn't resist locomotive #14 in green-gold, when Bachmann came out with it with sound installed. I've only run it a few times (no weathering, crew figures or real coal in the tender like my other locomotives) and it's never run in an op session, either.

The only exception I run is a coach I simply had to have on the layout. #23 was sold by the line before the war and turned into a diner in Newland, NC. It existed into the early 90s when someone burned it to the ground. I got to see it as a little kid and have a photo of myself standing in front of it (thanks, Mom), and as no other coaches from the RR survived to this day, I had to justify having it that they'd sold it to the RR I model before the ET&WNC took over, and once they did, they re-lettered it as it'd been for them in the 20s and 30s...

NG Roster

That makes things easier since there's no interchange with other railways.

I *wish* I had such actual documentation that Joe has though, showing all cars from both home and foreign roads that showed up.

However I do have detailed roster information for my own railway, a pretty good handle on the industries served by it, plus some research on nearby industries on connecting roads for bridge traffic; I also have lots of photographic data and observations to get an idea of the types of equipment running over the line, and a working knowledge of CN and CP (connecting roads) fleets helps build up a reasonable fleet for the layout.

I'd never want to do that

I'd never want to do that much research on car numbers but I certainly can't fault those that do. You already know I'm a freelancer but I will say that overall numbering schemes for cars and locos interest me. I've done some very limited and basic research into the how and why trying to figure out how to number the small handful of locos and cars my private line will actually own. Single digits don't seem very realistic! As the overall layout is getting closer to a more final stage of completion and I start looking at making decals or having them made, I'll need to delve into it further. It's interesting stuff.

Examples

Many moons ago, before I retired, I had access to real railroad data on a detailed car level.

This subject, car distribution, has come up on forums before.  On one particularly long, boring conference call in 2008, I compared the distribution of initials and car types on several different territories.

On an E-W route through central Nebraska, I looked at about 15,000 cars on trains (one day's business).  The largest single initials were the home road, followed by many, many private and shortline roads.  The next class 1 railroad was 71st in car count on the list (there were 305 different sets of initials).  There were a total of 11,000 private owner cars and 4700 railroad (all railroads) owned cars.  The high counts of private (and shortline) cars were due to that route having a large number of coal and grain trains.

On an E-W route through West Texas, I looked at about 1500 cars on trains (one day's business).  The largest single initials was DTTX.  Even combining all the subsidiary and predecessor roads, DTTX was larger.  the next largest class 1 was the 10th initial.  There were 950 private cars and 680 railroad (all railroads) owned cars.  The route through Texas had very little grain or coal and a high amount of intermodal.

On an N-S route through Arkansas, I looked at about 3050 cars on trains (one day's business).  The largest single initials was another connecting class 1 railroad, not the home road.  If you combining all the subsidiary and predecessor roads, then the home road was larger.  There were 1670 private cars and 1400 railroad (all railroads) owned cars.  The route through Arkansas had very little grain or coal and a high mix of auto, manifest and intermodal.

The point being that the territory you are modeling has a huge influence on the distribution of car types and initials of the cars on on the trains.  Just basing it on the distribution in the national fleet won't necessarily give you an "prototypical" result.

Territory modeled influencing the car fleet

Dave H. makes a good point in his last post about how important the territory you are modeling is to your car fleet. Thru research, I found the number of carloads (annual and a sample month) and a basic list of commodities that were shipped/received for each of my industries in my general modeling time frame. Some interpolation comes in when I had to figure where the lumber came from for the lumber dealer, the groceries and household goods for the Coop and the Grocers Wholesale, the coal for the coal dealer, farm tractors for the dealer, and so on. Once I made my list by researching companies in the areas that produced or consumed the products on my sub-division, I could populate my fleet accordingly. For example box cars carrying lumber would be SP, SP&S, NP for the northwest and ACL and SAL for the south. Anthracite coal for home heating would show up in RDG, DL&W, Erie, and the occasional CNJ hopper car, all being "friendly" connections (some thru each other) with the B&O. I use the distribution in the national fleet (by car type) to then determine which road name you would like see most.

Fran Giacoma

Rolling stock planning

Tom - That's neat to hear how your plan has developed over time.  However we arrive at our "mandate" of cars we need in order to properly serve our customers, having such a list can really be key in keeping our equipment needs in check.

Lee, that's a great story about that coach!  Good call modeling it.

Michael - I totally get that this wouldn't be for everyone.  In my case, though, the research hasn't been burdensome.  It's mostly been about tracking down photos of the cars from the doc I received, and in almost every case, I found that I either shot them myself at some point (with many cars ping-ponging back and forth in the same service over the years) or they showed up on Railroadpicturearchives.net or railcarphotos.com .

Out of 73 origin/destination pairs during the month I model, there was only one where I couldn't find a photo of a single car involved in that movement.  That particular customer - an anhydrous ammonia transload - typically only received one car a month, and the car they got in May, PLMX 3924, is nowhere to be found on the web that I can see.  Given that, I modeled the car that showed up to replace it the following month, PLMX 35600.

Or.....

You would most likely see anthracite in RDG hoppers on the eastern end of the B&O.  The B&O had a major interest in the RDG so would have favorable rates and connections.  I know in the 1890's the B&O and P&R (RDG predecessor) had an agreement that the B&O would market Reading Anthracite in their territory.  An all RDG route would maximize revenue for the B&O.

There would also be lumber in CV and CN cars from Canada and New England.  The Philadelphia Bulletin got their newsprint almost exclusively in CN cars.

Oh,that I could find such

If it interest you that's

If it interest you that's cool Joe. I hope that didn't come across the wrong way. I certainly research things, it's just not one of my favorite things to have to do but sometimes the need to know and simple curiosity take hold.  I was just saying I do need to look into car numbering overall when time allows. I'd like to establish some sort of realistic convention with mine as I acquire more rolling stock to letter for my private road.

I model a railroad that should have been.

I have very little exact prototype information and definitely not a car roster for all traffic. Most of my information is railroad maps and financial data. Truthfully the railroad was built on dreams and surprisingly little funds. I also freelance so my modeling represents the railroad as a business that someone turned around and made a financial success by completing the line south to the B&Os Philadelphia mainline.

I will need more hoppers because such a connection would have been the shortest route for southbound coal from the Readings coal mines. 

Even though I don’t follow an exact prototype l still learn about traffic patterns, how the railroads actually operated, even the nuggets of prototype cars and industries from where others model give me prototypical ideas for how things would have been done.

Because my railroad is affiliated with the B&O /Reading system certain traffic would take this route, Pennsy traffic would not.

I have been looking at the wnbranch website because his prototype is similar to what mine would have been, except for the steel mills. 

LCRR

Another industry that was common in that area were quarries.  I will have a quarry just south of Birdsboro that supplies crushed rock and then there was a quarry at St. Peters, PA that mined black granite.

Also don't overlook the stray iron ore mine.  There was an iron ore mine at St Peters, but it closed down about the time you are modeling.  Bethlehem Steel opened an iron ore mine at Joanna (by the Morgantown exit on the PA Turnpike) in 1956 and it closed in the 1970's.  There were non-rail served mines at French Creek.

Michael

No worries at all Michael.  I totally understand that the stuff that interests me may not do anything for someone else.  It's a hobby, so each of should be doing it the way we enjoy.

By the Numbers

I don't spend the effort to research right down to the car number and replicate that, but can use references to see car types and classes.

However, when Joe has a document that *starts* from actually having the car numbers, that's an invaluable original source for determining cars and building a fleet. You can work outwards from that looking for those specific cars, or at least similar cars from the same number range and class.

" I decided to renumber a

   That's something I'd consider if my layout ever got to the point where that car was the worst flaw on the layout, for now I'm a long way from that point :> ) .......DaveB

Car routing doc

Yes, that spreadsheet definitely gets a workout.  I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't have it open.  For a numbers geek like me, it's hard to imagine modeling without this kind of info now.  Which is why you'll probably see me modeling the IAIS until the day I die.

Me too Dave!  But I won't let a little detail like that stop me.   This kind of stuff - car, locomotive, and C/TOFC movements, accurate ratios, etc., is my favorite part of the hobby, even if the end result isn't always immediately apparent to most.

Not alone either

Joe,

I’ve been doing research for years on any cars that I weather , I almost always look at rrpicturearchives for the same car or similar close car when weathering.

Same on my research for routing all my cars. I use the industry database from the OpSig group for this. One factory painted car I have, a 50 ft GM&O boxcar, was already stenciled “when empty return to GM&O, Laurel, Ms”. I intended for the car to carry lumber for my online furniture company, and low and behold, there is or was a lumber company in Laurel, so that’s where the car is routed from.

Doing this kind of research to me is a fascinating part of the hobby, of replicating the prototype...