"Old West" era trains available?

There's quite a lot of stuff in varying qualities. Like the Jupiter and the 119 (the golden Spike engines) available in plastic and brass. Period passenger cars from MDC/Roundhose which aren't very good and Con-Cor which are. Again as wll as some pretty good brass. Freight cars from MDC/Roundhouse as well as resin kits from companies like Funaro & Camerlego which are very good.

There is a yahoo group called early-rail which I suggest you subscribe to.

They even have a co-operative doing some reasin kits for early vehicles.

For engines, the 4 and 6 wheel driver locos were the common engines with the Consolidations being the big freight engine. For passenger cars, the early clestory roofed cars were what was common. Steel floors were rare anywhere but the more modern east. Pullman just started thei service (Pullman provided sleepers to the various railroads in their own cars!). For freight, the 30' car was a lot more common and they were all wood cars slowly converting to steel framed cars towards the end of your era.

-- Bob May

rmay at nethere.com http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net

If you're not afraid of wood craftsman kits Trout Creek Engineering has a nice selection of pre-1900 rolling stock kits.

HO Scale stuff.

Bachmann has 1870s/1880s locos. Motor in tender. Take out the drive shaft between the tender and loco for display purposes.

r

You did not mention what area of the country. I take mid 1800s as

1850. Very little west of the mississippi river. Do a scroogle search for transcontinental railroad. Scroogle does not track you like Google.

sorry, that would be Texas and Arizona

Craig

Search the 'Net for trains texas and trains arizona You can also try railroads texas, railroads arizona. You will find a lot of links. It will take some reading, but you will learn a lot. Store the links in your Favorites folder. I do this a lot as many times I have seen mis- information from people in forums. Most of the time, I can sort out the real data from the opinion data by searching. Good luck.

r

Ahh... the old "search the net" reply...

This month's Railroad Model Craftsman (October 2009

has a 16-page special section called "Old Time Railroading" between pp. 54 & 54, with lots of advertising. Some of the train models advertised in that section go back to the 1860s.

____ Mark Mathu Whitefish Bay, Wis. The Green Bay Route:

Aha! The fourth dimension!

Unlike when you're a kid and had to read a 100-page novel and were disappointed to find that there extra pages in the book, THIS was a happy discovery!