Transition Era Freight train. Looking for ideas,starting from scratch.


dieselfan1

Member
I have a good sized N scale layout (20'x18') around the walls layout w/duckunder for continuous running on two mainlines. I run mostly modern heavy mainline freight. Its about 90% complete and fully running. Kato unitrack. All scenery, no towns or structures.
I did this for a few reasons.1. I never really liked the towns I had on my previous layouts,(this is layout #8 and the biggest one yet).2.No buildings means no money spent on them. More money for trees and trains. 3. With no structures to tie the layout to a certain year, I can run modern equipment like a lashup of SD70 Ace's with long strings of ethanol tankers or some SD70 Mac's with a string of Bethgon Coalporters or a new Amtrak passenger train with at least a dozen cars.
Or I can go back to the 1940's and break out the Great Northern Empire Builder with an A-B-B-A of F-7's with a 15 car train. And lets not forget the California Zephyr with A-B-B lashup of WP F-3's.
What I want to get next is a 1940's -1950's freight train. I have no ties to any roadnames so I'm wide open. I do know I want either F units or early SD-7's. I want long trains, 50- 70 cars. What were some roads that used diesels for heavy freight? What kind of freight? I really like the idea of a A-B-B-B-A Santa Fe lashup of F-7's pulling a long string of Fruit express reefers.(Kind of like an early unit train). Or 3-4 Western Pacific SD-7's pulling a mixed freight of lumber and boxcars.
Just looking for some ideas. Whats your thoughts? What you got?
 
I think you are on the right track (pun intended). I model primarily the Burlington Route/Great Northern/Northern Pacific in HO, in the same time period. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. (Burlington Route) hauled a lot of coal, and a lot of refrigerated goods, using FT's, F3's and F7's, mainly in the A-B-A configuration. But sometimes you'd see additional units. When teh road switchers started to come along, they used everything from GP7's to SD24's in that period. I stay away from most of the six-axle units (except for passenger E-units) because of curve and #4 turnout restrictions on my layout.

Probably the best thing to consider is the practices of any particular railroad you are modelling, plus the availability and reliability of a particular model of diesel locomotives in N scale.
 
I have a good sized N scale layout (20'x18') around the walls layout w/duckunder for continuous running on two mainlines. What I want to get next is a 1940's -1950's freight train. I really like the idea of a A-B-B-B-A Santa Fe lashup of F-7's Whats your thoughts? What you got?
Your big layout sounds great. Pulling long trains is what I like most and then having a big complex freight yard. The santa fe F3's and F7's are some of my favorites and the long A-B-B-B-A lashups too. I have a 7' x 10' U-shaped N scale layout......still much building more to do.....but have a fully functional one scale mile loop and a 55 car train I run a few laps most days. I use an FT A+B to pull the train......or sometimes two F3A units (I'll get some B's eventually).....and I have a bunch of modern large and small diesels.......all diesel fleet. Have 60 or so coal cars I will connect up together some day.
 
Just for fun, I'd go with a Challenger or Big Boy (pricey, but no worse than an ABBBA set of diesels) and then use it to pull the consists you listed. An SP cab forward would be good too. Why not think outside the box and throw a steamer into the mix. The choices listed are good.......but I'd go for something new.
 
Just for fun, I'd go with a Challenger or Big Boy (pricey, but no worse than an ABBBA set of diesels) and then use it to pull the consists you listed. An SP cab forward would be good too. Why not think outside the box and throw a steamer into the mix. The choices listed are good.......but I'd go for something new.

Don't think that I hadn't thought about steam, just not big boy or challenger. Too big. But a 4-8-4 like the UP 844 would be pretty cool.
 
Here is what I like.... f7 freight.jpg
 
I model the transition era, and there are a lot of options for you. Most freight cars in that period were 40 footers, but some 50 footers were in service. You'll get to run cabooses too. Steam was most common until the early to mid 50's. There are a lot of early diesels available. F units, Alcos (my favorite) GP7s and 9s, SD7s and 9s, PA and FA diesels. FM units were also available among others. The early switchers were also interesting, with units from Baldwin, Fairbanks Morse, EMD. I find the early diesels seem to have a bit more character. (personal opinion).

My layout is a short line usually pulling shorter trains up to 14 cars due to the length of my passing sidings, but similar diesels were also used on longer trains. Steam can be fun too. Some can be expensive is you want some of the larger locomotives. I can't run these due to the length of my turntables. I do have a few larger ones, but they don't show up very often. Mostly they are taken out of their boxes and run for a while to keep them lubricated. I mostly run smaller steamers.

You will be able to run some of the great passenger trains of that era. Love the streamliners, but they wouldn't show up on a railroad such as mine. Passenger equipment was interesting back then. Modern smooth side stream line cars were coming into service but many heavy weight cars were still abundant in service.

The sky is the limit in that era with mostly everything available in most scales.

0020.jpgIMAG0007.jpgIMAG0056.jpgIMAG0098_BURST002.jpg
 
I already have a 11 car Caifornia Zephyr with an A-B-B of F-3's in Western Pacific colors and a 15 car Great Northern Empire Builder with an A-B-B-A of F-7's, which is what got me wanting a freight train from roughly the same era.
I like your Milwaukee Road switcher. Grungy. Thats how I remember seeing them look back in the sixties when I was a kid by my Grandma's house in South Minneapolis. She lived 1/2 block from the grain silos along Hiawatha Ave. where there was quite a bit of switching traffic.
 
About the only CLEAN Milwaukee equipment I can remember seeing was the Hiawatha. Most everything else I remember was grungy.

What I would like to model is the North Coast Limited. I rode on it numerous times when I was a kid growing up. No interstates back then. I have figured out a was to have some NP passenger equipment on my layout. Local passenger service is handled by either a gas electric, or an NP RDC with a club car in tow. I picked up some cars from the North Coast Limited than in my freelance world carries tourists from Logan, MT to West Yellowstone, MT and Yellowstone Park. The NP did run a regularly scheduled passenger train from Livingston, MT to Gardiner, MT and the north entrance of Yellowstone park until 1948. After 1948, occasional special passenger trains did run to Gardiner, as well as freight service along the line. The curved platform was demolished in 1954.
IMAG0048_BURST002.jpg6148.1350768498[1].jpgnorthernpacificdepotgardiner[1].jpg
 
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What I would like to model is the North Coast Limited.

That is another train high on my hit list. I have stated this on a few forums recently. I am waiting for Kato to do this set but I am to the point now where I might as well start getting the CCS or the Con Cor separate cars then get some undecorated F-7's and have them painted up. You could have some bucks into that though then when you get it done Kato announces the are going to do it so who knows.
 
Yesterday I won an ebay auction for these two kato U.P. B-units. I found the auction in the final minutes and the price was still low so I bid and won! One is F3, other is F7. Wish I could return to and railfan the era of EMD A-B-B-B-B-A F-units!

$(KGrHqV,!lMFG60jCsGLBR1c+M(wq!~~60_57.JPG
 
For me, if I was to do the 40s and the 50s it would be the Northern Pacific yellow stone division, the grade through the bad lands was so wicked they built the worlds largest steam engine before the big boy to pull the long freight and coal from Glendive to Mandan, all 11 yellowstones were reassigned later in the 50s to pusher service in montana when the diesels were starting to take over and then retired in the late 50s. Its hard to find pictures but I can only imagine the lash ups used to get long freight through the bad lands. Not sure when they started pusher service through there but all coal trains now have pushers out of glendive, sometimes three not including the DP.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...tive.com%2Fyellowstone%2F%3Fpage%3Dnp;983;199

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-8-8-4
 
Growing up I had relatives working on both the NP and the Milwaukee Road. I was about 11 years old when I got to ride in the cab of the Yellowstone on it's last duties as a helper over Bozeman Pass between Livingston, MT and Bozeman, MT. They were scrapped after that. What a monster they were, especially when you were a kid.

I am not a brass collector, but I managed to find a Z-5 about 20 years ago. I custom painted it and ran a PFM sound system in it for a number of years and recently changed it over to DCC, even though I still operate DC only on my home layout. It's my traveling locomotive. We manage to travel frequently and will always visit model railroad friends if we'll be traveling close by so we can have something to operate. It is also equipped with Tsunami sound. Years ago at the model railroad club in Great Falls we had it pulling over 130 freight cars without any help. I wish I could justify running it on my layout at home but a locomotive like that would never have appeared on it, and my turntables are only 90 feet long. I will take it out of its box from time to time and run it just to keep things lubricated.

I would have liked to have modeled either the NP or Milwaukee Road but with the space I had available, I wouldn't be able to justice to even part of a subdivision of either railroad so I freelanced to stay right in the area I live, but connecting to both railroads.
 
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wow thats cool! I would love to have ridden in the yellowstone, a guy at work told me that the NP offered the city of Mandan a yellowstone engine for display and they turned it down, too bad, it would have drawn a lot of people I think.
 
It would have been nice to preserve it. The DM&IR does have one on display. If I ever get up in the area in my travels, I would not pass up the chance to see it.
 
I want long trains, 50- 70 cars. What were some roads that used diesels for heavy freight? What kind of freight? I really like the idea of a A-B-B-B-A Santa Fe lashup of F-7's pulling a long string of Fruit express reefers.(Kind of like an early unit train).
I always liked Santa Fe's FT units they were using long before others were considering diesels. There unique ABBB sets when they were having union issues about how many engineers had to be in an ABBA set. There are two pictures that I want to model. One is of two sets of the ABBBs passing (obviously a posed publicity shot) on the two bridges over the Colorado River at Topoc Arizona. The other is one of the first photos taken of the newly delivered FTs #100 in action. The photo was used by EMD as a promotion of their freight locomotived. The new locos are pulling a block of brand new 50' ice hatch reefers going around a corner where so many Santa Fe publicity shots are taken.

I've got the FTs and the ice hatch reefers (Athearn BB from a few years back), all I need to do is recreate the curve.... Doing a diorama of the two bridges would be way too difficult just for a picture.
topock.JPG
 



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