Figuring out Road Names for Freight Consists

Pick any active RR of the 40's.  If they had freight cars that would be a safe bet.

Let's face the facts, it really does not make a whole lot of difference.  This is a hobby why stress over (the title of this thread).

JagsandTrains posted:

Hello everyone. This may be a silly question but I am trying to figure out Freight consists for my engines.

Lets say I am running a Reading T1. What different railroad names would they haul Freight for? 

Hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance. 

First, determine what era you are trying to model, i.e. 1940s, when the T1s were new, or mid 1950s, word the end of the T1s service life.

Second, the type of freight you want to haul (remember that the Reading RR handled a LOT of coal), i.e. standard 40 foot boxcars, ice reefers, flatcars/gondolas with various loads.

Third, do you tend to prefer the eastern railroads that the Reading interchanged with, such as B&O, C&O, CNJ, PRR, etc.? You might have to do some research for photos of Reading freight trains, plus more detailed information from the Reading RR Historical Society.

Here is something I put together about 15 years ago that might be helpful.

When building a freight consist for your favorite road, it is fun to know what the mix of cars would have been in that freight.  This information is highly era-dependent, and I’m most familiar with the 30s-50s.  If your interests tend to modern railroading, you’ll need to rely on someone else.

Overall, the US freight car fleet in 1948 had:

36% Boxcars (mostly 40’, single-door)

31% Hopper Cars

  8% Tank Cars

  7% Refrigerator Cars

  7% Gondolas

  3% Automobile Boxcars (mostly 50’, double-door)

  3% Stock Cars

  3% Flat Cars

  1% Covered Hoppers

  1% Others

Some large adjustments must be made for region of the country, for example most of the hoppers were on eastern lines (PRR, N&W, VGN, B&O, C&O, LV, etc.).  Western roads had only about 10% hoppers.

Now, what road names to include in your consist?  How many “home road” cars should there be?  It depends a lot on the road.  I have some information from 1944.  Some examples of  mixes of  % home road/ % other roads for cars on the railroad were:

25-30% home / 70-75% others: Erie, Wabash, CNJ, ACL, Southern, Rock Island, SP, MP.

35-40% home / 60-65% others: D&H, B&O, IC, C&NW, CB&Q, UP.

45-55% home / 45-55% others: PRR, Milwaukee Road, GN, NP, ATSF, D&RGW.

The winners are L&N with 66% home, C&O with 68% home, and the champion is N&W with 78% home road.  At the other end of the spectrum are B&M with 17% home road cars, NKP with 16%, and Boston & Albany with 5% (although technically NYC cars should probably also be counted as home road).

About 3/4 of the “other” cars should be from roads that interchanged with your railroad.  The right regional mix of cars really can make your train look realistic.

If you primarily model one railroad, like I do with PRR, then freight car purchases can be made with the above data in mind.  You can limit what you buy to the cars that will “fit” your region of the country and the time frame for the railroad (mine is circa 1949-53).  You can buy less yet have more fun.

 Oh and by the way, in the steam era the Pennsylvania Railroad owned about 30% of the entire nationwide interchange fleet, so you can’t go wrong owning some Pennsy (shameless plug).  B&O/C&O owned about another 35%, so they were widespread as well.

I think that is the right advice.    Era dictates as much or more than road name. 

Jim 

There are people probably far more informed on the Reading specifically that can/will answer this, but a couple of thoughts. 

1. Freight cars largely went everywhere so in a sense any road from the time your modeling could work, east coast, west coast, midwest - they traveled everywhere. 

2. The Reading was part of a group of railroads that called themselves the "Alphabet Route" to compete with the Pennsylvania, New York Central on Northeast (New York, Boston, Philly etc.) to Midwest (Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis) routes. Some of the roads that were part of this group included the Reading, Western Maryland, Nickel Plate, New Haven, and Jersey Central. So it makes sense those would be railroads freight cars you would find in their consists.

3.  Find some books on the Reading that discuss traffic patterns, interchange, and on line traffic that might give you some good ideas of what traveled across the portions of the Reading you are wanting to model. It's possible that something like a refrigerated boxcar train of beef from the midwest was a regular train, or coal drags, or merchandise freight.  

Hope that helps in getting you started! 

Bob, that is some great data - thank you for taking the time to share it!

Bob posted:

Here is something I put together about 15 years ago that might be helpful.

When building a freight consist for your favorite road, it is fun to know what the mix of cars would have been in that freight.  This information is highly era-dependent, and I’m most familiar with the 30s-50s.  If your interests tend to modern railroading, you’ll need to rely on someone else.

Overall, the US freight car fleet in 1948 had:

36% Boxcars (mostly 40’, single-door)

31% Hopper Cars

  8% Tank Cars

  7% Refrigerator Cars

  7% Gondolas

  3% Automobile Boxcars (mostly 50’, double-door)

  3% Stock Cars

  3% Flat Cars

  1% Covered Hoppers

  1% Others

Some large adjustments must be made for region of the country, for example most of the hoppers were on eastern lines (PRR, N&W, VGN, B&O, C&O, LV, etc.).  Western roads had only about 10% hoppers.

Now, what road names to include in your consist?  How many “home road” cars should there be?  It depends a lot on the road.  I have some information from 1944.  Some examples of  mixes of  % home road/ % other roads for cars on the railroad were:

25-30% home / 70-75% others: Erie, Wabash, CNJ, ACL, Southern, Rock Island, SP, MP.

35-40% home / 60-65% others: D&H, B&O, IC, C&NW, CB&Q, UP.

45-55% home / 45-55% others: PRR, Milwaukee Road, GN, NP, ATSF, D&RGW.

The winners are L&N with 66% home, C&O with 68% home, and the champion is N&W with 78% home road.  At the other end of the spectrum are B&M with 17% home road cars, NKP with 16%, and Boston & Albany with 5% (although technically NYC cars should probably also be counted as home road).

About 3/4 of the “other” cars should be from roads that interchanged with your railroad.  The right regional mix of cars really can make your train look realistic.

If you primarily model one railroad, like I do with PRR, then freight car purchases can be made with the above data in mind.  You can limit what you buy to the cars that will “fit” your region of the country and the time frame for the railroad (mine is circa 1949-53).  You can buy less yet have more fun.

 Oh and by the way, in the steam era the Pennsylvania Railroad owned about 30% of the entire nationwide interchange fleet, so you can’t go wrong owning some Pennsy (shameless plug).  B&O/C&O owned about another 35%, so they were widespread as well.

Bob - This is great information. thanks for posting this. I fear my NKP freight roster is well above 16%. My guess is for most modelers the home road, whichever that might be is probably out of proportion for obvious reasons being the home road and all. I'm gonna have to go do a count and figure out the percentage on my layout, I'm quite curious now. 

Thanks Bob and others for the replies so far! Some great info. I tried researching online for photos but am having trouble finding good photos that are not Locomotives. So I guess looking at CNJ, LV, NH, NKP, PRR, Erie, etc. freight cars would be appropriate. 

I try to duplicate consists that I see in period videos and photo books of the line I model.  An example for an eastern road like the Reading is the large number of soft coal road names like WM and B&O in the hard coal regions, especially in the late steam/diesel era.  Look into which roads the Reading interchanged with as well.   

There are plenty of Reading resources for any era out there. Have fun and learn about the road at the same time.

Earl

I thought at one time B&O had some interest in the RTG.

According to my 1930 Moody's Transportation Manual, in 1930 the NYC agreed to sell its Reading stock to the B&O giving the B&O 66% ownership.

JagsandTrains posted:

Thanks Bob and others for the replies so far! Some great info. I tried researching online for photos but am having trouble finding good photos that are not Locomotives. So I guess looking at CNJ, LV, NH, NKP, PRR, Erie, etc. freight cars would be appropriate. 

Another consideration is distance.  The average railroad haul at that time was sround 250 to 300 miles.  Cars of direct connections were far more likely to be seen on the RDG than tose of railroads 2000 miles away, produce and meat reefers being an exception.

Direct connections were CNJ, DL&W, LV, B&O, PRR, NYC, L&NE, L&HR, WM.

OTher railraods within a few hundred miles of the RDG included NH, B&M, CV, D&H, ERIE, RF&P, ASL, ACL, SOU, C&O,.

Least frequently seen would be west coast roads such as WP and SP&S.  Others at least 1000 miles away from the RDG included NP, GN, UP, D&RGW, KCS and SP.

If you are asking what roadnames would be correct....ANY railroad in North America that is from the era you are replicating.  For me it's 1955 so any railroad from the US, Canada or Mexico from that era may end up in a mixed freight.

For my Reading T1, the early version, I run 23 Blue Coal Weaver 2 bay hoppers behind it. Running other trains I just make sure, for myself, I run car related to that time period..................Paul

Hello all! Thanks for all of your replies. They were very insightful. I was able to purchase some books and videos to do some research. 

The vidoes came in first. I was able to find some good ones from Heron Video. What I found was that the majority of the coal Hoppers were Reading, NYC, or Pennsylvania. For boxcars etc it was mostly the same. Usually a lot of NYC and Pennsy with some oddballs mixed in. The oddballs I saw were Wabash, PFE, NP, Cotton Belt, Millwuake Road, CNW, UP, etc. 

Also look at WHEN the freight cars came into play.  From what I could find on Google, the T-1s were mostly cut up for scrap in 1958, so any car built after 58 would be wrong.

What Bob Bartizek posted is good data to know.

I model the Seaboard Air Line and have a vast variety of freight cars they owned.  Too many in fact so the last several cars I acquired/built were from other RRs that interchanged with SAL.  Look for books on the Reading to see if they have any freight car consist data.