How consistent with my consist?

For freight cars, you can mix as many different road names as you want. As cars would criss-cross around the country, they can end up on any railroad trying to get to their destination.

Passenger cars would typically be all one road name in a train, except for certain instances such as the California Zephyr, which was a joint operation between three railroads and their cars were mixed together to build a consist.

Hope this helps!

While the big name trains like the Broadway Limited, 20th Century limited, Super Chief, etc. tended to be "matched," there were always exceptions as traffic demanded.

In the case of the California Zephyr, cars from the D&RGW, CB&Q, WP and one PRR car were indistinguishable from each other except for a small letterboard on the car ends identifying the owning railroad:

However, during peak season, it was possible to see a "foreign road" car in the mix to handle extra capacity or special tour group.

Depending on the train, cars can be a mix of heavyweight and lightweight:

Or, include head-end express cars:

And if a railroad had both stainless steel and painted cars, it's possible both would show up in the same train:

And when you get into the 1970's merger and early Amtrak, it's almost anything goes:

Rusty

Since I dont have a Home layout, all my stuff is in tubs and toolboxes. When i get to my club(s) I take everything out and mix everything up with Freight trains and Passenger trains I try to stay in prototypical range but it doesnt work out that way. 

 

And when you get into the 1970's merger and early Amtrak, it's almost anything goes:

Rusty

You ain't kidding me Rusty!  Hodge Podge Express!

So my goal of keeping my consist consistent is somewhat out the window and I can collect even more now than my PA regional favorites.  I'll have to hide that from the banker!

The following information on prototypical railroad consists may be of interest to you:

When building freight consists for your favorite road, it is fun to know what the mix of cars would have been in a particular train. This information is highly era-dependent, and I’m most familiar with the 1930’s to 1950’s. If your interests lie in modern railroading, you’ll need to rely on someone else.

Overall, the US freight car fleet in 1948 had the following percentages:

36% Boxcars (mostly single-door 40-foot)

31% Hopper Cars

8% Tank Cars

7% Refrigerator Cars

7% Gondolas

3% Stock Cars

3% Flat Cars

3% Automobile Boxcars (mostly double-door 50-foot)

1% Covered Hoppers

1% Other

Some large adjustments must be made for different regions of the country. For example, most of the hoppers were on eastern lines like the PRR, N&W, VGN, B&O, C&O, LV, etc. Western roads had only about 10% of the hoppers during this railroading era. Let’s ignore seasonal shipments such as fruit, vegetables, and cattle and focus on typical railroad consists.

Now, what road names do you include in your consist? How many “home road” cars should there be? It depends a lot on the railroad. I have some information listed below from 1944 that details the percentages of the home road and other road cars that were mixed in with the following railroads.

Erie, Wabash, CNJ, ACL, Southern, Rock Island, SP, and MoPac ran a mix of 25-30% home and 70-75% others.

D&H, B&O, IC, C&NW, CB&Q, and UP ran a mix of 35-40% home and 60-65% others.

PRR, Milwaukee Road, GN, NP, ATSF, and D&RGW ran a mix of 45-55% home and 45-55% others.

The champion is N&W, which ran 78% of its home road equipment. The runners up in second and third place are C&O and L&N with 68 and 66% home road freight cars respectively. At the other end of the spectrum are NKP and B&M with 16 and 17% home road cars. Boston & Albany came in last with only 5 percent (although technically NYC cars should probably also be counted as home road).

About three-fourths of the “other” cars should be from roads that interchanged with your railroad. The right regional mix of cars can really 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 (my railroad is circa 1953). You can buy less and yet have more fun.

Oh, by the way, in the steam era the Pennsylvania Railroad owned about 30% of the entire nationwide interchange fleet, so you cannot possibly go wrong with having some Pennsy on your roster (a shameless plug). B&O and C&O owned about another 35% of the nationwide interchange fleet, so they were widespread as well.

Now, just how long should that consist be? If there are grades on your railroad then the answer is, “Shorter than you think!” The C&O had to negotiate Cheviot Hill outside Cincinnati, which was at a 1.9-% grade westbound. C&O K-1, K-2, and K-3 Mikado’s, which were some of the heaviest 2-8-2s ever built, could each pull only 11 loaded 50-ton hoppers (these are the short 2-bay hoppers like those made by Weaver) up the grade. This required 50-car hopper trains to have five 2-8-2s, one or two on the lead, one or two cut in the middle, and two trailing pushers. These were not the only locomotives that labored as they pulled the steep grades common to the C&O railroad. Their mighty H6 2-6-6-2 articulated locomotives were only capable of pulling 16 to 17 loaded hoppers up the 2.5% grades common in the coal country of West Virginia. If you have 2% or 3% grades on your layout, then trains should not be very long unless they have multiple engines.

For diesel fans, most first-generation diesel units like the FT, F-3, FA, and RS-3, could only handle about two-thirds of the load of a typical 2-8-2 steamer. The FT diesels used by the Santa-Fe were rated at one loaded car per axle when traversing the Cajon Pass grade. This loading factor limited a FT ABBA set to hauling only 16-cars up its grade. Both steam and diesel motive power could handle about 3 or 4 times as many cars on level terrain as they could on a 2% grade.

If you are interested in replicating a prototypical consist on your layout, fewer cars in the train and less variety in road names can both be very realistic.

 --Greg

P.S. Above information is courtesy of Bob Bartizek

Greg, that's GREAT info to have as I build my empire.  So how does a railroad company account for their own inventory?  Did they even worry about that?  Do they trade or reconcile who has what at a later time or do they chalk it up to the cost of doing business?

Sent you email on separate matter.

Here's my suggestion.  If you are trying to model something that you have seen on a real railroad whether in person or in pictures or videos, try to match it.  As an example, I am modeling a Milwaukee Road "meat train" that I used to see as a boy in northwest Iowa in the 1950's.  The train was made up entirely of meat reefers and pulled by Milwaukee Road F-7's and had a MR bay window caboose on the end.  Most of the reefers were either Morrell or Spencer Packing Co., but there were all the other as well such as Swift, Wilson, Cudahy, Armour, Rath, and Raskin.  Since this is what I remember it is how I will set mine up so it looks right to me.  

Modern unit trains usually have a lot of matching cars on them, especially the newer ethanol trains I see near me.  Coal trains usually have mostly matching cars, but Intermodals have several different cars.  Similar styles but different road names.

Passenger trains were another story.  The local ones I saw were pulled by steam engines and had a variety of heavy weight cars of mixed colors and heritage.  But the ones I have modeled here are the famous name trains that ran out of Chicago like the California Zephyr, the Santa Fe Chief and El Capitan, the City of New Orleans, and the Union Pacific City Trains.  They usually had matching cars until the last days before and after Amtrak.

I am mainly modeling the 1950's through 1970 so my engines are more of one road name than they are today.

Art

Try thus freight on for size...

Saw it pictured in a train magazine

Whatever works 

Greg Houser posted:

The following information on prototypical railroad consists may be of interest to you:

When building freight consists for your favorite road, it is fun to know what the mix of cars would have been in a particular train. This information is highly era-dependent, and I’m most familiar with the 1930’s to 1950’s. If your interests lie in modern railroading, you’ll need to rely on someone else.

Overall, the US freight car fleet in 1948 had the following percentages:

36% Boxcars (mostly single-door 40-foot)

31% Hopper Cars

8% Tank Cars

7% Refrigerator Cars

7% Gondolas

3% Stock Cars

3% Flat Cars

3% Automobile Boxcars (mostly double-door 50-foot)

1% Covered Hoppers

1% Other

Some large adjustments must be made for different regions of the country. For example, most of the hoppers were on eastern lines like the PRR, N&W, VGN, B&O, C&O, LV, etc. Western roads had only about 10% of the hoppers during this railroading era. Let’s ignore seasonal shipments such as fruit, vegetables, and cattle and focus on typical railroad consists.

Now, what road names do you include in your consist? How many “home road” cars should there be? It depends a lot on the railroad. I have some information listed below from 1944 that details the percentages of the home road and other road cars that were mixed in with the following railroads.

Erie, Wabash, CNJ, ACL, Southern, Rock Island, SP, and MoPac ran a mix of 25-30% home and 70-75% others.

D&H, B&O, IC, C&NW, CB&Q, and UP ran a mix of 35-40% home and 60-65% others.

PRR, Milwaukee Road, GN, NP, ATSF, and D&RGW ran a mix of 45-55% home and 45-55% others.

The champion is N&W, which ran 78% of its home road equipment. The runners up in second and third place are C&O and L&N with 68 and 66% home road freight cars respectively. At the other end of the spectrum are NKP and B&M with 16 and 17% home road cars. Boston & Albany came in last with only 5 percent (although technically NYC cars should probably also be counted as home road).

About three-fourths of the “other” cars should be from roads that interchanged with your railroad. The right regional mix of cars can really 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 (my railroad is circa 1953). You can buy less and yet have more fun.

Oh, by the way, in the steam era the Pennsylvania Railroad owned about 30% of the entire nationwide interchange fleet, so you cannot possibly go wrong with having some Pennsy on your roster (a shameless plug). B&O and C&O owned about another 35% of the nationwide interchange fleet, so they were widespread as well.

Now, just how long should that consist be? If there are grades on your railroad then the answer is, “Shorter than you think!” The C&O had to negotiate Cheviot Hill outside Cincinnati, which was at a 1.9-% grade westbound. C&O K-1, K-2, and K-3 Mikado’s, which were some of the heaviest 2-8-2s ever built, could each pull only 11 loaded 50-ton hoppers (these are the short 2-bay hoppers like those made by Weaver) up the grade. This required 50-car hopper trains to have five 2-8-2s, one or two on the lead, one or two cut in the middle, and two trailing pushers. These were not the only locomotives that labored as they pulled the steep grades common to the C&O railroad. Their mighty H6 2-6-6-2 articulated locomotives were only capable of pulling 16 to 17 loaded hoppers up the 2.5% grades common in the coal country of West Virginia. If you have 2% or 3% grades on your layout, then trains should not be very long unless they have multiple engines.

For diesel fans, most first-generation diesel units like the FT, F-3, FA, and RS-3, could only handle about two-thirds of the load of a typical 2-8-2 steamer. The FT diesels used by the Santa-Fe were rated at one loaded car per axle when traversing the Cajon Pass grade. This loading factor limited a FT ABBA set to hauling only 16-cars up its grade. Both steam and diesel motive power could handle about 3 or 4 times as many cars on level terrain as they could on a 2% grade.

If you are interested in replicating a prototypical consist on your layout, fewer cars in the train and less variety in road names can both be very realistic.

 --Greg

P.S. Above information is courtesy of Bob Bartizek

Having been NYC's Manager of Car Distribution Systems it the time leading up to PC, I'm very familiar with this topic.  A few random comments stimulated by what I've just read on this topic.

An important fact to remember is that most of the generalities about the distribution of the car fleet are wrong in most specific cases.  Using the national distribution of car ownership at any location gaurantees being wrong.

In the 50's and 60's every railroad tried to get as many loads as possible in its own (system) cars and send the foreigns home.  This was to a large extent offset by local car shortages that required loading a high percentage of foreign cars.

The average length of haul of loads on all railroads was around 300 miles,, more on western roads, less in the east.  A result of that was that the distribution of cars on a railroad was very much biased towards railroads within a few hundred miles of the destination.  For example, on the east end of the NYC or PRR you would see a large number of DL&W, ERIE, CNJ, LV, D&H, NH and B&M cars.  On the west end you would see few cars from those railroads and many from all of the railroads that served Chicago and Detroit.

I think the key point for a modeler is to get more cars from railroads with a lot of loadings near the area you are modeling and many fewer cars from railroads whose nearest conenction is a thousand miles away.

In regard to the following statement about mixing freight and passenger cars.

"?  I do realize that sometimes (maybe more often than not) you may see a few passenger cars up front followed by some freight cars and the freight cars drop off over the journey... correct?"

This is not at all correct for trains in the continental US.    Trains handling both passenger and freigth were referred to as mixed trains.  Often when passenger traffic was too low to justify a train, a mixed train would be run.  In nearly all cases they would have only one car carrying passengers.  That car would usually be a combine or the caboose, occasionally a full coach.  It had to be at the rear of the train because that is where the conductor and rerar brakeman were, and they had to be on the last car of the train.   There were a few with more than one passenger car, but they were rare special situations.

Instead of "freight cars drop off over the journey", think pick up and drop.  The counts have to be equal of the course of a few weeks - unless cars are being scrapped or built on the branch.

This thread too quickly shifted to the exceptions when it comes to passenger trains and not the predominant norms.

With few exceptions, railroads mostly ran passenger trains of consistent vintage, paint schemes and styles. So the Milwaukee Road “Hiawatha” from, let’s say, 1938 had a matching consist of ribbed cars, all with the Hiawatha logo, pulled by a Class A Atlantic (and later an F-7 Hudson) also adorned in the same paint scheme and logo.

Aside from the exceptions listed above, plus the odd mix you’ll find in today’s excursion trains usually featuring a classic steam locomotive, you’ll find that passenger trains were very much brand oriented. These railroads were competing against each other for passenger traffic in their regions. And, in the streamline era, those cars featured marketable amenities unique to the railroad.

Now, you can still do whatever you want on your layout, but why not delve into the history of railroading a little bit more and see for yourself, in old videos and photos, what freight and passenger consists looked like? There is no shortage of information, or access to it, these days.

Thanks much for all your input.  Understanding more fully how these ran during their time was very helpful.  Certainly reviewing video and delving a bit into the history is next on my list of to dos.  It also gives me a reason not to be dissuaded in acquiring a freight car that looks great and "speaks to me" even if it is not a local road.  

The only thing I could add to this is that up until the late 50's the caboose was assigned to the conductor (who was in charge of the train, not the engineer, as some think) and it stayed with the company (flag).  So a train crossing several states might get several different conductors and caboose.  The conductor would find another train going the opposite way to hook up his caboose to bring him home.  So if it were a PRR engine and consist the caboose would be PRR.  They weren't loaned out.  Everything else is mix and match, including passenger consists, especially late in the passenger era.  BTW; passenger trains didn't need a caboose because the conductor could just use a spare table and chair.