I'm planning a layout set in the early forties. Where can I find out what locomotives were in use then? And what sizes and sorts of railcars? Thank you.
The 4-8-8-4 Big Boys were all the rage during the 40's. The Burlington Zephyr was still going strong and there were a lot of Doodlebugs running, some pulling a freight car or two, along with many Interurban lines with most pulling a few freight cars as well as passengers. There were a bunch of "Motor Cars" of all descriptions running too. The 1939 Worlds Fair displayed a yellow and brown two-tone painted monstrosity that tried to make a train look like a 1936 Chrysler Air-Flow car. It had a huge grille on the front to get air to cool a piston motor that ran on "distillate", (a sort of kerosene, naphtha, good drinking' whiskey mix.) It looked more like a worm crawling across the landscape than a serious workin' train. But times were good, the Depression was about over, and the whole nation was re-starting up from out of dire poverty. It was a good thing too because we were actively making war machines to fight Hitler, when we were sucker punched by Tojo and his minions! We could even afford a new car. Jobs were plentiful for anyone who wanted to work, and no one had learned how to live on welfare yet. Old folks were taken care of because we had Social Security only three years before, so houses were being painted, bridges being built, highways being paved, and trains hauled almost all the freight, and passengers. Things started getting tighter from 1942 on. This was the high time of those wonderful huge steam engines, so you could run anything from an 0-4-0 up to the Big Boy! Crack passenger trains raced up and down the eastern seaboard at speeds nearing 100 miles an hour! Almost all freight cars had been the 36 footers, but by 1940 most had been replaced by the new extra capacity 40 foot steel reefer and box cars. Trucks were mostly for local delivery, so you wont need a lot of them. Those nasty old diesel engines were just starting to sprout from some of the new kids on the block. They had a wimpy squonk sounding horn that was hard to hear very far away. Nothing at all like a steam whistle that could be heard for miles and could freighten every living thing when standing close by! Most streamliners looked like fancy painted kiddie cars with one little head light at first, then it got changed to one that dipped and bobbed all over the place making everyone dizzy! They called it a "Mars" light, and it looked like something lost trying to find where it was. When you saw it coming in the night, it wiggled, waggled, and bounced up, down, swung sideways, then up and came down at you like something terrible hunting for you! Cows quit giving milk, chickens lost their feathers, and horses threw off their riders then ran away in panic! OH it was a fright, I tell you for sure! You could just about run any of the streamlined diesels and be OK, but the ugly ones we got running wild today, were only a nightmare back then. Shudder! [ March 14, 2005, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: watash ]
