Making Realistic Looking Train Consists

While railfanning last week something occurred to me. While watching freight consists go by, I realized that my trains don't look much like these (aside from being much smaller). Seriously..... I realized that I own very few commonly seen freight cars. The vast majority of my cars are rarely seen railroads. I have modern boxcars in many of the obscure railroads such as Sabine River & Northern, Sierra RR, North Lousianna & Gulf etc.
Other than CSX cars, (which is the RR I model) I have very few cars from railroads such as BN, BNSF, Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern etc. All commonly seen in my area. I wonder if others have un-wittingly steered their freight car inventory towards somewhat obscure railroads and have ignored more commonly seen rolling stock. I have been guilty of buying cars that I think "look cool" instead of being more practical in my freight car shopping. One's railroad is one's railroad and a lot of the fun for some comes from having your own little world, but for those who are trying to model the modern railroad this could be important. I did take a step in rectifying my situation today in placing an order for BN, UP, SFe, CN and NS boxcars. 2 ea. from Roundhouse.

 

I like to occaisonally take a camcorder with me on my commute to work on a commuter train. As we inevitably pass by several other trains, I tape the consist through the window. I can then take my time, transcribing the information and choosing my model consists accordingly.

Over the years I've noticed seasonal variances, such as a glut of auto transporters in the fall with the new model year cars.

One other point though, at least at the train shows, people tend to watch the locomotives and the caboose (or EOT/FRED). Everything else gets lost in the blur...

 

Acually, I have a completely different problem. Lets just say I have too many cheifs and Not enough Indians!!!

If I had a roundhouse, my cheifs could fit into the yard, and the cars would fit into the roundhouse(almost).

It is getting better, though, and I do have one and a half mixed consists.

 

I guess it depends on what area you are modeling, what Railroad you follow, and what era your railroad is in. There is a lot of shortline rolling stock out there, most of the cars belong to the class 1 railroads, CSX, BNSF, UP etc.
Where is your railroad set? Auto plants online? Coal mines? Heavy industry? Sea ports? Do you interchange with other railroads? What years are on the calender? 1950, 1960, 70's etc.
Yes there is a lot that goes into deciding what cars go on the layout. But to me that is part of the fun, deciding what cars should be on the layout for the years that the railroad is trying to model.

 

It was interesting when I visited the US last September watching the train consists. It was noticeable that there were certain mixed trains where you could tell what part of the country it was coming from by the mix of cars on the train.

A good example was a train that arrived at Enola yard (Harrisburg) while we were there, which looked to have originated in Georgia, big cuts of Kaolin tanks & covered hoppers from Kaolin companies & the Sandersville railroad.

Another thing was the look of the freightcars, most covered hoppers were plain colours (usually grey) with just reporting marks, tanks were the same, mainly white or black, boxcars also mainly in plain colours, some with older logo's patch painted out.

The amount of plain freightcars around today seems to be fairly badly represented apart from models like the Walthers pellet hopper, most "modern" models on the market seem to be of '70's-ish origin and wear more colourful schemes.

What do you guys think?

 

Hi Martyn,

Did you noticed those cars with strange company names like "boxer" and other mysterious designation.
These companies seem to take much effort to paint their name, with lot of colours, and stylish lettering.
I wonder if they hire professional paint artist or just the guy at the corner of the street...

Mystery had grown when I found out that the same firms apparently run rolling stock in France also.
Would it be a mega merger that STB did not hear of ?

marc "wondering" patiou

 

Hiya Marc, didn't see any ones with "boxer" on
In terms of boxcars:
This was about the fanciest modern boxcar I saw...

There were a few of the '60's & '70s schemes around still, like these two...




Actually I don't think I photographed any non railroad boxcars (RBOX/ABOX excepting, and they are railroad owned in one sense)
Prize for funkiest freightcar goes to BP/AMOCO, with this beastie...



not fun to decal!
Enjoy

 

<font color="336633">As I model the BN, the majority of my cars (about 70%) are painted in BN.

I also have some rarer cars on my roster, but looking at trains when I was in the US last, most trains had one or 2 oddaties in the consists, even intermodal.

also when running mixed freights its best to put cars in bunches, like 4 tanks, 5 boxcars, 3 covered hoppers then more boxcars etc, as there seems to be very few single cars in freights.

</font>

 

Nice pic of the BN one there Alan, didn't MR do a thing on them a few years ago? Very cool car!

I agree with the comment ref. putting cars in bunches, possibly slightly less so with boxcars though. certainly with cov-hops & tanks etc it does hold true.

I guess this is what I meant by "plain" cars...

 

I also agree about every train having " oddities"...!

Open autoracks live! Well they did last September in Marion Ohio! - That was the only autorack we saw in the entire trip that was not fully enclosed (including roof & end doors), and we must have seen hundreds if not thousands in 12 days of railfanning out east!

 

Hi Martyn,

You know why these cars were shipped unprotected ?
Look at the color : these are funeral cars
As we say in France "you don't shoot at a funeral"
And I must insist,one company is doing some strange paint job on their rolling stock with spaghettis like (sorry for Italians fellows)lettering, hastily lay on former owner reporting marks.
There is a secret mega merger going on and nobody seems to care...I'm gonna email Fox Mulder because somebody has investigate that matter.
Is this new RR company coming from space ?

marc

 

Looks like we need all the video companies to show the ENTIRE train consists.

 

One of the video companies is advertising that they show the whole train every time, but I can't remember who.

This is a great thread by the way... Interesting that we are all drawn to the 'interesting' cars and buy them because they are unusual. Then look back and notice that most of the cars in a train are kinda dull. I wonder why the manufactures produce the unusual more than the dull... 'cuz we buy them!

 

I just like to buy cars that I see alot of. Doesn't matter which road or whatever(of course I gotta get every SP,SSW or DRGW car produced though). A couple hoppers I have were repainted into DRGW but only black with reporting marks. They add a nice variety that way.