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Excuse my apparent ignorance but as well as being a Limey and therefore at a disadvantage in terms of 'local knowledge' vis U.S outline railways, I come from a wargames modelling background, making my living painting military gaming figures.
True, I dabbled with British steam stuff as a lad, but I am by no means a hardcore railfan (yet)
Well, cutting to the chase, I decided on a layout based on Union Pacific sometime from the mid 1970's onwards... (I have a love of old National Geographic mags of the 70's and 80's and I want to add a few 'vignettes of 'Somewhere USA) but at the same time as I purchased a few loco's I got a nice rake of 10 x 50' box cars marked up for Santa Fe...
The price was too good to miss at $3.50 each
The question is, could these be resprayed and re-marked for use on a UP themed layout. I suppose in the dream scenario I could use them without alteration, but I get a feeling that's not the case.
My planned layout is a 32 foot x 2 foot end to end layout with at least 16 turnouts and sidings... I envisage two yards at either end (its a horse shoe shape) with a smaller branchline off the middle.
Excuse my newbie ignorance, but I'd be really grateful for any hints and assistance.
With no reservations to prototype modeling, yes, you should be able to just paint them. I'd recommend stripping the old paint with 91% isopropyl alcohol first.
You don't have to repaint them if you don't want to. All the class 1 (meaning major carriers such as UP, BNSF, CSX, etc.) haul cars originating from other railroads. This is an economic necessity since a load may originate in one part of the country served by one carrier, and it's destination may be in a different part of the country served by a different carrier. Otherwise, the load would have to be transferred from one boxcar to the next, costing money and time (which is also money!) So having some BNSF boxcars in a UP train would be perfectly prototypical. I have seen exactly that situation myself.
And since that has been going on for almost as long as there have been railroads, I think you'd be fine using them as is. The Burlington Northern/ ATSF merger didn't happen until the mid 1990's, so anytime before then would be fine for your cars.
I had wondered about that, based on the fact that the U.S is a much larger expanse to traverse than the UK, but of course not being a native of said country, I was not certain.
Oddly enough I was reading about leased out loco's earlier today.
Thanks guys, that gives me a lot to work with already
You can use the cars, as indicated in other posts, and add UP cars to the train. Pretty much any kind of car, and from any railroad, or even non-railroads (leasing companies like General American Tank Car--GATX) can be found in almost any train. Lorries on flat cars were doing well during the time you are interested in, so you can add to the train by putting a few of those on your layout. Most trains of that time would have a locomotive owned by the railroad it was running over leading the train. This is because many railroads had their own specifications for what a locomotive should be equipped with. The biggest equipment is Automatic Train Stop, and radios tuned to the railroad's frequency. As the years went by, more locomotives came equipped with radios that could transmit and receive any frequency, and less lines had ATS, so you could see more and more foreign-owned power leading.
Our states are the size of most European countries, and the distances traveled for trains is very large. A run of 2,000 miles (3,200 km) is not uncommon for a train here.
Yes I recall Bill Bryson that we think of a long journey as the same distance the average American will drive for a decent taco.
A friend of mine in SoCal is always reminding me of that fact (he has not forgiven me for getting locked in the local freight yard last year, taking pictures and having to explain to the local Law Enforcement why he was there)
So, Terry... were I to say depict a pre BNSF layout, I could reasonably mix B&N and ATSF locos and stock without worrying?
It looks like I'll actually end up going with BN for the most part... that green looks stunning and it seems to fit nicely with the time period that I have in my mind.
Yes, if you were to run mostly BN locomotives, generally they would be hauling coal or grain, and ATSF locos would be hauling intermodal (TOFC) and GM (mostly boxcar) trains. A BN coal train would have a UP loco on the front, most likely going to a power plant on the UP. A Santa Fe train would usually be on its own rails, unless detouring for some reason. You can put a locomotive from almost any railroad as a trailing unit on a train, and nobody would question it at all. The lone loco could be "run-through", it could be a lease engine, or paying back time or mileage to UP for other locos borrowed by another railroad. If ATSF needed an extra 10 locos for a month, they may borrow them from UP, resulting in 10 UP locos running around the Santa Fe system, then after the crisis was over, ATSF may send a couple of locos to UP for 5 months for them to use to pay them back.
I live within a few miles of BNSF (former BN) and former ATSF and former EJE (now CN) lines. I railfanned the ex-BN and ex-ATSF starting back in about 1992 or so.
I rarely saw ATSF locos on the BN except for an occasional ATSF unit in trailing position on BN trains. The BN trains were intermodal, unit coal and grain trains, and mixed freight (along with Amtrak runs).
UP detours or run-throughs or power sharing trains were common on the BN as well as NS locos. Occasionally, I'd see a CSX unit but more often I'd see leasing company locos like GATX.
I never saw BN locos on the ATSF line and I extremely rarely saw any foreign power on the ATSF. No idea why that was. ATSF ran mainly intermodal trains and mixed freights. I never saw a unit tank train or a unit grain train or a unit coal train on the ATSF.
Now that BN and SF have merged, I see everything imaginable on the BNSF, even Mexican locos. Haven't bothered driving down to the former ATSF line for several years.
This is all in the western suburbs of Chicago.
As far as boxcars go, I often see boxcars with paint patched for other railroads, especially ex-Railbox cars. I see many BNSF cars that are still in ATSF or BN paint and there are still many locos with BNSF patches along with the old BN or ATSF logos. Not everything has turned into a pumpkin.
I tend to agree with you. And I'm on the other end of the line (Southern California).
The only "foreign road" run through locos I remember seeing on the Santa Fe were Conrail locos. But a Santa Fe loco would always be leading.
I believe it was a New York-Los Angeles fast intermodal train that did not stop long in the Chicago area being the reason why the Conrail units ran through. Sort of like the famous Super C of years past.
