what road names in California freight consists from the '40s

Great Northern connected with the Western Pacific at Bieber, CA.  This was the "Inside Gateway" line, i.e. Oregon Trunk (GN/NP/SP&S) from the Columbia River at Wishram, WA to Bend, OR, then SP trackage rights to Klamath Falls, then GN's own rails to Bieber.  Some of this traffic was forwarded to/from ATSF (probably at Stockton).  So, GN boxcars would be appropriate for your WP connection.  Some NP cars may have gone that way, too, but I think NP usually connected with SP at Portland.  FYI.

Sure would!!! Just as SP reefers were common in NY city....east coast roads ended up on the west coast. 

I go for a look.....For 40's and 50's I like tuscan, box car red, brown cars of the era. 

Well, when I was a kid in the early Fifties, I used to see SF, UP, SP and PFE plentifully interspersed in the PRR freight trains I watched on the Pennsy main line.  So I can't imagine any reason that the reverse wouldn't be true.

 

Some additions for your list:

 

1) Northwestern Pacific.

 

2) McCloud River Railroad.

 

3) Sierra Railroad.

 

4) Simpson Timber.

 

5) Mexican National Rwy. (N de M).

 

 

You see cars from all over the USA in SP, WP, UP and SF freights during the 1950s.  Naturally, the vast majority of cars are from western roads.

 

I am always pleased to see New Haven boxcars in consists.  I look for NH equipment in every book and I usually find at least one in a west coast 1950s freight.

 

NH Joe

"I am always pleased to see New Haven boxcars in consists"

 

   Some distant railroad cars I recall seeing in the 50's in central Cali are a new B&M blue boxcar,a C of G cigar car,a double sheathed  NYC boxcar, quite a few SP&S and other northwest boxcars(with lumber). and SRR DD boxcar. Most roads would eventually show up at busy locations but not all at once :>  Some branch lines were pretty limited in their traffic and might only get home road hoppers or gons of short haul materials or seasonal mostly home road reefers. The best way to decide on the mix is to browse for photos of the era and location and see what you can see....DaveB

San Diego, Arizona and Eastern

San Diego Imperial Valley

San Joaquin Valley

Santa Fe

Southern Pacific

Willy Peter (Western Pacific)

UP

Not sure this is helpful but during the mid 60's growing up in So Cal I was always intrigued to see SSW St. Louis Southwestern Railway (reporting mark SSW) Cotton Belt "Hydra-Cushion" single and double door Box Cars.  I always wondered then how those boxcars made it into those trains.

 

Jon

 

 

 "during the mid 60's growing up in So Cal I was always intrigued to see SSW St. Louis Southwestern Railway (reporting mark SSW) Cotton Belt "Hydra-Cushion" single and double door Box Cars.  I always wondered then how those boxcars made it into those trains."

 

   The SP and the SSW were somehow linked in ownership ( as was the T&NO) so they freely shared equipment. Lots of SSW cars roamed around central Cali too......DaveB 

Interchange allows the potential for any freight car to wind up in any part of the country.

 

It's Wyoming, but note the first two freight cars:

 

Rusty

Any road could (and can) be found anywhere, of course. That's what "interchange" is all

about. Real RR's are not "train sets".

 

If a load of XYZ was loaded in Albany NY, using a NYC boxcar, it wouldn't be off-loaded into a WP car in KCMo. The NYC car would show up in Los Angeles...

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I used to be a RR clerk, then programmer. My "railroading" wasn't the kind out in the yard and on the main. 

 

Railroads run on paper, not rails; the trains are just a method of generating more paper,

of the greenback kind, the forms kind and the now-common virtual kind

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Demurrage - every RR charges every other RR for demurrage - the length of time RR A keeps a car owned by RR B on RR A's tracks. This, of course, sends cars back to their "home roads" from the "foreign line" (proper RR term - other RR's are "foreign") as quickly as is reasonable.

 

So, if the NYC had a "car request" from an industry in Albany, for a shipment to "settle" (delivering carrier) on the ATSF in LA, to the consignee there, and the NYC had an appropriate ATSF "mty" (empty) car in the yard at Albany, they would load the ATSF car rather than a NYC car to get the ATSF car off their line as a loaded car - making money from using the ATSF car for the shipment and also no longer paying the ATSF for their (ATSF) car sitting on NYC tracks.

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But everything goes everywhere - two of the most common roads one sees on cars in old RR films are those of the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) and the Southern. Any layout of the 40's should have some of these, regardless of location. Lots of NYC and PRR, too, anywhere. 

The two that I thought of have been added,NWP and Sac Northern.

Mikey 

Even passenger cars interchange.  I have a neat SP video of the Lark, with two NYC cars in the consist.  Markedly similar two tone grey, but light and dark are reversed.

So here's a follow up.

Would boxcars, reefers and other covered loads be more likely to make the long haul vs. open cars like gondolas and hoppers? Seems intuitive to me.

It all depends on what is being shipped and where. 

 

Flat cars and gondolas can carry almost anything that's not practical to ship in a boxcar.

 

Rusty

Yes, boxcars and covered hoppers, as well as tank cars could all be from very great distances away. Now, thinking of the era/time frame of your layout, don't rule out sugar beets. The Southern Pacific had a huge fleet of open-top, bottom-side dump sugar beet gons, and MTH has very accurate produced that car in the Premier Line. It would definitely be worth checking out prototype photos of the SP sugar beet trains.

Yes, I saw those. My sense is that those are more appropriate for the Central Valley than the Bay Area. My traffic will probably revolve around fruit packing, commuter/excursion, possibly a lumber mill and I'd like to have a dock.

"Would boxcars, reefers and other covered loads be more likely to make the long haul vs. open cars like gondolas and hoppers?"

 

   It really depends on the loads not the car types. Products that can be sourced cheaper locally are not shipped long distances so things like rock and sand that move in hoppers are usually on home road rails or nearby roads if loaded out on a short line and things like specialty machine tools from the North East were shipped to California in NYC or PRR boxcars. Cali fruit went back to the east in PFE reefers. So a cannery in Lodi might load either an SP or NYC boxcar for their trip back east but a sand quarry in Felton never sees a N&W hopper. It's an interesting sub-set of the hobby to study where things were made and where they were shipped to. I have a large wall map of the US railroad network as it was before the mergers and can use it to decide which railroads  loads originated on based on what the various cities typically produced ....DaveB

   "My traffic will probably revolve around fruit packing, commuter/excursion, possibly a lumber mill and I'd like to have a dock."

 Here's a link to an N scale layout similar to your goals.  

 

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~hendoweb/ohb/

 

   Another line to check out is the Richmond Pacific terminal line up above Oakland, it was once SP and ATSF operated. 

 

   Beet traffic was seasonal but some ran thru the bay area, I recall a loading station just south of Gilroy  and I've seen beet trains on Altamont pass, I think there was a processing plant somewhere over by Tracy.....DaveB