Approach to researching important railroads and rolling stock during WWII

[jamesspo]

Hi everyone - railroading newbie here, just getting started. I come to the hobby in part because of my strong interest in the history of World War II, and in particular, the industrial and commercial activity in support of the war. As such, I'd like to focus on rail lines during the war years, with a focus on rail usage important to the war effort. I'm interested in both freight and passenger, but I suspect freight will be the central focus.

At this point, I'm just looking for pointers to get me started on my research. Since I know very little about rail lines/companies of this time frame, my focus to this point has been from the WWII history side of things - and that's turning up pretty lacking, with not a lot of focus on (domestic) rail. Strangely, I'm also not finding much in the way of special interest groups or web pages for early 1940's rail, but I may just not have dug deep enough yet. I see a lot of pages and info on the 50's and 60's, and up through the 20's and 30's, but just not as much on the war years.

I suspect I'm going to need to just figure out what rail companies were operating at the time (and where), to find something to model and get a feel for what locomotives and other rolling stock were common at the time. I know there was transition going on from steam to diesel, as well as some attrition of rail companies due to just coming through the depression. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing with regard to modeling..but it's certainly interesting! Any pointers to get me started are welcome!

Edit: A side question - is early 40's rail well represented in the available locomotives, rolling stock and scenery? What about within different scales?

 

[Burlington Bob]

Here are some YouTube videos that might help.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=railroads+during+world+war+II

 

[Espeefan]

There is a steam era freight car list on yahoo that is very prototype oriented. There is also a new book coming called WartiMe Rails that covers the photography of Jack Delano. Check Ron's Books, it says coming in January.

 

[jwb]

A photographer (later musical composer) named Jack Delano was employed by the Office of War Information to take photos of home-front rail activity during the war. http://www.railphoto-art.org/exhibits/delano/ There are numerous books with his photos (Don Ball's Decade of the Trains among them) and since they're US government property, not subject to copyright. They're all over the web. Have fun!

 

[cajon]

Do a Google search for any of the RR Historical Societies then look in their archives for WWII info. You can probably find info there on most of the major & even minor aspects of WWII in Google. Also check Yahoo Groups for any WWII forums. All the info is out there you just have to find the right search terms. But the more searching you do, you will find even more terms.

 

[dave1905]

First step : Search on line for a Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for the 1939-1944 era. If you have to, go to the later 40's. That lists more or less every car owned by every railroad in N America. They were published quarterly. It gives the dimensions of the cars and their capacities along with the type of cars, but no pictures.

Second Step : Buy Don Ball's "Decade of the Trains: The 1940's" which has a lot of pictures of all sorts of railroad subjects.

Third step : Decide what you want to do. Are you modeling a busy port? Are you modeling a busy industrial area? Are you modeling along a major artery with a lot of through trains?

Power will be almost exclusively steam. The only freight diesels in production were the RS1 and the FT and they were restricted by the war production board. Premier passenger trains might have diesels (except in some commuter districts) and there were some diesel switchers. EVERYTHING else was steam (or electric in the east). The majority of boxcars were 40 ft cars, 50 foot cars carried autos and airplane parts. Gondolas were commonly 46 ft or 52'6". Very few 65' gons. Virtually all coal was in hoppers (in the east and Midwest) or GS drop bottom gons (in the west). Tank cars were predominately varieties of 6k, 8k and 10k riveted cars with a few pressurized cars. Reefers were a mix of steel side and wood side cars. There were a few composite "war emergency" cars, primarily gons and hoppers, built in the early 1940's when steel was short.

Depending on what area you pick the effect of WW2 could range from nothing at all to vast changes in operation. A lot of conventional industries changed production for the war years. While I was visiting the battleship USS Texas I noticed that one of the 40mm AA mounts had a builders plate from the Easton Safe Co, Easton, PA. One other thing to remember is that that for every tank the US shipped, it shipped tons of food and supplies, and dozens of other vehicles (jeeps, trucks, bulldozers, cranes, ambulances, tankers, etc.).

 

[Iron Horseman]

At this point, I'm just looking for pointers to get me started on my research. Since I know very little about rail lines/companies of this time frame, my focus to this point has been from the WWII history side of things - and that's turning up pretty lacking, with not a lot of focus on (domestic) rail. Strangely, I'm also not finding much in the way of special interest groups or web pages for early 1940's rail, but I may just not have dug deep enough yet. I see a lot of pages and info on the 50's and 60's, and up through the 20's and 30's, but just not as much on the war years.

I don't know about any specific books on the management of rails during the war. I am afraid that information is going to have to gleaned from the history of each railroad. I don't know too much about it, but I do know after the government take over of the railroads in WWI that CB&Q President Ralph Budd stepped forward and was appointed Transportation Commissioner, Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. While he submitted a resignation in 1941, in that position he was able to convenience the government that the railroads could manage themselves in WWII. Hence, there was no USRA control for WWII. This sort of information is in books like Burlington Route

One could also look up biographies on the likes of Ralph Budd, Joseph Eastman, and Henry F. McCarthy.

One can begin to understand what lead up to the events of railroads in WWII with the book, The Politics of Railroad Coordination.

I suspect I'm going to need to just figure out what rail companies were operating at the time (and where), to find something to model and get a feel for what locomotives and other rolling stock were common at the time.

That information is easy, and can be found in any number of books on the various roads. Name almost any historical railroad you can think of and it was probably in existence during WWII.

I know there was transition going on from steam to diesel, as well as some attrition of rail companies due to just coming through the depression.

Yes, the diesel revolution (once again lead by the CB&Q) was put into hold due to the war. Many super steam locomotives were built that would never have been built if it had not been for the war.

Edit: A side question - is early 40's rail well represented in the available locomotives, rolling stock and scenery? What about within different scales?

Yes, that is probably the best representation of available steam locomotives. Rolling stock not so much. The 1950s and forward are much better represented, but there is still no shortage as the railroads were still using some stuff left over from WWI. A couple notable exceptions are the famous GN 1944 plywood boxcars (plywood instead of steel - how clever), and Walther's has made some troop train cars. Scenery is scenery. Trees and rocks don't change much through time. A brick building is pretty much a brick building whether it was built in 1901, through the early 1950s. Once again construction didn't really start changing until after the war was in progress as people tried to figure out how to do more with less and different than traditional materials.

 

[jamesspo]

Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions. I'm already way ahead of where I was because of them.

Some specific replies:

First step : Search on line for a Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for the 1939-1944 era. If you have to, go to the later 40's. That lists more or less every car owned by every railroad in N America. They were published quarterly. It gives the dimensions of the cars and their capacities along with the type of cars, but no pictures.

Excellent - I'll procure one of those.

Second Step : Buy Don Ball's "Decade of the Trains: The 1940's" which has a lot of pictures of all sorts of railroad subjects.

Done. That looks like an excellent resource.

Third step : Decide what you want to do. Are you modeling a busy port? Are you modeling a busy industrial area? Are you modeling along a major artery with a lot of through trains?

Yep, lots of decisions to be made. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I'll just let the history guide me. I may actually incorporate something with a more personal connection - a joint Navy/Army military installation in southern Indiana - NSWC Crane - where I worked for about ten years. It was opened in 1941, and I know there would have been a lot of rail traffic to/from there for munitions transport at that time. There's a pretty nice network of tracks on-base. Today the one line out seems to connect with what is now the Indiana Southern rail line, which I think would have been part of the New York/Erie line during the War. Not sure though - lots more research to do on that. But if I went that route, I might model some operations on base, with expansion into other other cities in Indiana and combining with passenger traffic along the way.

Thanks for all of the details on power and rolling stock, Dave - much appreciated. I was not aware that it was so exclusively steam at that time.

I don't know about any specific books on the management of rails during the war. I am afraid that information is going to have to gleaned from the history of each railroad. I don't know too much about it, but I do know after the government take over of the railroads in WWI that CB&Q President Ralph Budd stepped forward and was appointed Transportation Commissioner, Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. While he submitted a resignation in 1941, in that position he was able to convenience the government that the railroads could manage themselves in WWII. Hence, there was no USRA control for WWII. This sort of information is in books like Burlington Route

Good info.

Yes, that is probably the best representation of available steam locomotives. Rolling stock not so much. The 1950s and forward are much better represented, but there is still no shortage as the railroads were still using some stuff left over from WWI. A couple notable exceptions are the famous GN 1944 plywood boxcars (plywood instead of steel - how clever), and Walther's has made some troop train cars. Scenery is scenery. Trees and rocks don't change much through time. A brick building is pretty much a brick building whether it was built in 1901, through the early 1950s. Once again construction didn't really start changing until after the war was in progress as people tried to figure out how to do more with less and different than traditional materials.

Excellent. So on my decision on scale, I'm pretty sure I'll be going HO, as I have the room (or can make it), but if I did decide on N, would that be significantly limiting?

Do a Google search for any of the RR Historical Societies then look in their archives for WWII info. You can probably find info there on most of the major & even minor aspects of WWII in Google. Also check Yahoo Groups for any WWII forums. All the info is out there you just have to find the right search terms. But the more searching you do, you will find even more terms.

Thanks! I'll check out the RR societies.

 

[jamesspo]

Ug, I had a point by point reply written to several of you, but it seems to have gone into the ether for some reason (it said the reply would have to be approved by a moderator) - no idea why. I'm back to work today, so will have to keep my reply short, but I did want to thank everyone for the great information. I'm off and running on several avenues now, and finding a lot more information. I've also purchased a few books that should help a bunch. More later as I dig into the research!

Edit: Hmm, and now it magically appears... oh well.

 

[Burlington Bob]

By Iron Horseman;

Scenery is scenery. Trees and rocks don't change much through time.

For many (most?) areas of the country that is true. However, for many rural areas, at least here in Illinois, there is a huge difference between the wooded areas of the late 30's early 40's and the same areas today. What is most often densely wooded today was quite sparse back then. This was due to the fact that farmers had cattle, hogs and/or sheep that they turned out in the "woods" to let the pasture areas recover. It also had the benefit of controlling undergrowth and that, in turn, led to the limitation of new tree growth.

Back in the late 30's to the early 40's there was an aerial survey taken, I believe, of the whole country. Illinois has this available on the internet at http://crystal.isgs.uiuc.edu/nsdihome/webdocs/ilhap/county/. Areas that are densely wooded now were very sparsely wooded then. On the area that our family farm was located on there was about 17 acres that we considered "woods". Back then, you could count the individual trees very easily and see the creek that ran through it quite clearly. If you look at a Google satellite view from today you cannot even see the creek or can barely make out the individual trees from one another. This is because very few farms today have free range livestock; instead, hogs especially, are grown in buildings from start to finish. This has allowed very thick woods to develop now.

 

[jamesspo]

By Iron Horseman;



For many (most?) areas of the country that is true. However, for many rural areas, at least here in Illinois, there is a huge difference between the wooded areas of the late 30's early 40's and the same areas today. What is most often densely wooded today was quite sparse back then. This was due to the fact that farmers had cattle, hogs and/or sheep that they turned out in the "woods" to let the pasture areas recover. It also had the benefit of controlling undergrowth and that, in turn, led to the limitation of new tree growth.

Back in the late 30's to the early 40's there was an aerial survey taken, I believe, of the whole country. Illinois has this available on the internet at http://crystal.isgs.uiuc.edu/nsdihome/webdocs/ilhap/county/. Areas that are densely wooded now were very sparsely wooded then. On the area that our family farm was located on there was about 17 acres that we considered "woods". Back then, you could count the individual trees very easily and see the creek that ran through it quite clearly. If you look at a Google satellite view from today you cannot even see the creek or can barely make out the individual trees from one another. This is because very few farms today have free range livestock; instead, hogs especially, are grown in buildings from start to finish. This has allowed very thick woods to develop now.

Yep, indeed. To be fair though, I was really using the scenery term too loosely to refer to everything in the landscape. I was thinking more of differences in buildings and houses, but I can see that that's not likely to be a big factor - not much change in construction and style until the 60's, I'd guess - so there should be plenty of applicable stuff to buy.

 

[Burlington Bob]

Basically, it'll allow you to get by with a lot fewer trees if you wish and still be an accurate depiction of a rural area in the Midwest.

 

[jamesspo]

Basically, it'll allow you to get by with a lot fewer trees if you wish and still be an accurate depiction of a rural area in the Midwest.

Yep. I second what you said about the sparseness at that time. I've seen some pictures of the military base I mentioned above during that time, and it was significantly less dense. There was a lot of clear cutting that happened in Indiana in the early 20's century.

 

[Iron Horseman]

Basically, it'll allow you to get by with a lot fewer trees if you wish and still be an accurate depiction of a rural area in the Midwest.

In the 1930s dust bowl area there was a huge effort to plant hedge rows every 1/2 mile so by the late 1940s there were rows of trees everywhere. It is funny to now see them all being removed over the past 2 decades as they hinder the larger farming equipment used today.

 

[Burlington Bob]

The state cut down a row of old trees along a highway near here about ten years ago. My father-in-law said they were planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps way back when. I haven't heard of any reason to believe otherwise. Another thing that was popular for awhile way back was planting multiflora rose to use as sort of a natural fence and as a home for wildlife. That turned out to be a huge mistake!

 

[bsmart]

You might want to look at this book in the U.S. Army History of WWII (The Green Books)

http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/010/10-20/index.html

It is one of the volumes on the Transportation Corps. One chapter is about transportation movements in the U.S.

You can download the entire 580+ page book as a PDF. Since it is a U.S. Gov't publication it is not copyrighted

 

[Charles Smiley]

WWI had the US gov. running the US Railroads under the USRA and it was a near-disaster that left the railroads all but burnt out.

WWII was much better with Ralph Budd appointed by FDR to unite all the roads and make them work well. Since Budd was a real railroad man and a top-notch engineering person it worked very well. Start with researching this man's life and efforts might be a good start for the big picture.