As I am going through my rolling stock and kits to be built I am trying to organize things. One thing I discovered is that I have acquired a good bit of rolling stock from Midwestern, and western railroads such as Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and CNW. My model railroad is located in the mid-Atlantic. My question is what is a good percentage of off road rolling stock to have? Also how likely would a car from a western road such as GN, NP, or SP appear in the mid-Atlantic? From growing up near the B&O I can remember certain railroads from outside the mid-Atlantic where common. I can remember seeing quite a bit of Santa Fe and Union Pacific cars rolling by the house.
I live on the west coast and see CSX and NS cars in UP trains on a pretty regular basis. It's more common to see those two companies' cars on a UP train than it is to see a BNSF car on a UP train, but UP and BNSF have parallel routes here. The most common cars I see are Golden West Service cars (various owners) and TTX cars. I would estimate only about 40% of the cars I see on UP trains are owned by UP. Mike
Take a look here at the NEB&W Operations Site. At the bottom of the page there is a list of percentage of coal cars from what roads. The "home road" in this case is the Rutland, and this is for the early 50s, but I think it still holds accurate for today.
Tom, Years ago, I remember the Kalmbach book "N Scale Primer" having a couple charts that would help. One chart showed the main railroads and what types of cars they mostly had. The second chart would help you more. It had a breakdown for an average railroad showing how many of its cars and "visiting" cars you would realistically see. Don't quote me on the numbers but here is an ideas of what it said.... Home road 50% of total cars Directly connecting railroads 25% of total cars Roads conecting through a different road 15% of total cars All other roads 10% of total cars. Hope that helps. Scot
