I've been Google-ing my brains out on this one and haven't been able to find and answer. Hopefully someone here does.
Simply put, is there a Web resource/link that will show me what railroads traveled what parts of the country between 1950 and 1965? Here's my dilemma:
I want to build an N gauge scene of a completely imaginary place with lots of somewhat mountaneous-cliffy forest land that could depict anywhere between Chicago and Oregon/Wash state during the 1950s and early 1960s. Could be the Missouri Ozarks, could even be British Columbia. Doesn't matter -- I'm trying to create atmosphere. But still, keeping a correct historical perspective for that time frame in whatever region I settle upon quite is important to me as well. I get the feeling that it's kinda hard to go wrong with an ATSF loco/rolling stock (which I'm kinda partial to) because the ATSF was pretty much everywhere, but the ATSF isn't the be all and end all, and I'm not even even sure the ATSF made it all the way up the Pacific coast.
But by the same token, I still would like to balance all that with whatever region and whatever railroad during that era had the coolest-looking engines, most notably for freight hauling, but the passenger loco and cars serving that region have to have a bit of panache, too.
In short, for accuarcy's sake, I dont want to have an ATSF freight running side by side with a Union Pacific passenger train if those two RRs would never have been seen side by side, even on differerent tracks. So -- anyone out there know of where I can reference a simple route map of the major RRs serving the different parts of the US between 1950 and
1965?Also, is there a Web reference out there that shows what RRs were using what color schemes for their locos during 1950 and 1966? The catalogs aren't a huge help in this respct. I'd hate to end up running a loco in a 1950s display with a color scheme that wasn't actually introduced until the 1970s.
And last, is there a catalog/model company that also produces N scale inter-urban electric/gas-electric commuter trains from 1950-65? I'd like to add something like that to my freight/commuter line, but all Walthers offers is a St. Louis gas electric car for HO (which doesn't help me at N gauge), and the one N gauger Walters has is being discontinued as soon as they run out of them.
Thanks for the help.
AJS