Poll - Modeling Era

You are my sockpuppet so listen settle down before get spanked again.

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Brad, or is it Steve?

Reply to
SteveCaple
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Your aim is off. At least you won't breed this way.

Reply to
SteveCaple

brad spake thus:

Uh, Brad, I think this person is just a citizen (apparently from alt.corel) caught in the crossfire, not one of the Mongol Horde.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

This is your final warning.

Reply to
ah

There was electricity in 1895?

Reply to
SteveCaple

In article , says...=20

Remember a dude by teh name of Ben Franklin?

--=20

"Tis an ill wind that blows no minds" ...PK

Reply to
Chairman Covv

MM:

My railroad is suffering from nonexistence at present, and the era has always been iffy. My last one, such as it was, tried to be something around

1890 but probably ended up more like 1912, and at present I'm trying to find a way to reconcile a liking for early equipment with a desire to model newer things. For instance, I want to take a shoebox and build a Walmart. Maybe I should just do what I like and not worry about eras overly much. At any rate, it's mostly moot at present, since the house isn't fixed up enough to be doing much railroading (Yay, wet basements and battered shingles. At least I have most of the prewar crumble wire replaced by now).

Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track, a wet basement, and some plans

Reply to
pawlowsk002

Reply to
Henry Murray

My layout is in the same stage as yours, though I know what I like. :-{) My collection is a bit schizophrenic as a result. My primary era will be the late 1930s, just prior to archbar trucks being banned. I like the old Central Valley and Silver Steak kits with truss rods and archbar trucks, etc. Actually, the Central Valley kits are, I think, representative of the late 1800s and probably would not have still been around at that time but I'm willing to bend the era just because I like those old kits so much. All of my steam era stuff will be based around this time. My second era of interest is the early 1960s. I have a UP turbine and C-855, some other diesels from about that time, and a separate batch of rolling stock appropriate to that era. I also have the Walthers Super Chief set with a set of PAs substituting for the F units. Yeah, I know the Walthers set is supposed to be 1951 and not accurate for 1963. Modeler's license. 1963 is the chosen year for this batch of equipment because it was the year the C-855s were built and the UP still had a couple of turbines they had not yet retired at that time.

Reply to
Rick Jones

I agree with you as to choice of era. To a steam enthusiast, the '30s are a delight. The Depression may have slowed down new loco production a bit, but, it really curtailed the retirement of older types. As we shifted to a war economy at the end to that decade, there was even greater reason to keep the old-timers around. Here are some roster figures obtained from the book "Steam Locomotives of the Burlington Route" by Corbin and Kerka which illustrate what I'm trying to say. If these numbers are atypical, I'm sure someone will supply the appropriate correction:

1935 - 1080 - - sixteen "types" in terms of Whyte classification. 1940 - 1010 - - fifteen (last 4-4-0s scrapped) 1945 - 949 - - no change

I also have a second interest. Heavy electric locos. No steam is allowed in one "city". The amount of trackage devoted to the "juice jacks" is not great. There are, however, two points which allow for the interchange of steam and electric motive power to service said city. I have relative few Diesel units on my railroad. One, however, an MDC box-cab, does service a small car ferry in the same metropolis. Pollution (smole) abatement is not a completely new idea. One thing I have not, and probably will not, construct is a catenary system. I've tried, but, seem to be too clumsy for coexistence with same. I do plan to erect some fake outside third rail in the passenger terminal. Thank you.

Jerry

Reply to
trainjer

HM:

I suggest you add a British police box somewhere unobtrusive. Noth> > My primary era will be the late 1930s, just prior to archbar trucks

tj:

I like that idea...I was thinking I might go for the mid-30s and just ignore my few diesels.

Jerry wrote:

J:

I've toyed with the idea of electrifying. One neat feature of having a terminal electrification like you are describing is that it adds time to the run, and some extra moves when you cut in the electrics.

How about adding some MU cars when you get that third rail down?

Also...what sort of car ferry? Is it a float or a boat?

Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and some plans.

Reply to
pawlowsk002

Very true, but there's even more fun at my passenger terminal. It has five tracks, three of which are designated as in-bound. These are accessed to a "functional" turntable. (A freely rotating Atlas unit with an elongated bridge.) An in-coming train undergoes the following routine; The road engine is uncoupled and then escapes for possible servicing using the tt and another inbound track. An electric switcher then disassembles the old train, one car at a time, for reassembly on an out-bound track. This is done from the rear. If an observation car present, its direction is changed via the tt. Pullman cars, coaches and diners are not rotated, but, combines are treated like observations. Head-end cars are taken to the appropriate baggage and/ or mail facilities to be replaced by new units. Finally the road engine is attached and the new train returns back to the interchange point. This can take up to an hour to perform.

I don't think I will. To be honest, I just don't like their looks. I would really like to operate a two car articulated unit similar to the old Pittman "Bride and Groom" with pantographs. Construction should present no problems, BUT, it would be too long for my tt. I do run a modified Atherne RDC but only as a single unit.

It's a float. It is mounted with a nearly HO scale tugboat along side on top of a small wheeled table. It has three tracks and can comfotably hold fifteen freight cars. It's employed as an interchange unit. Once it receives its consist, it is rolled away to have the old cars replaced and then returned to the slip. Its tracks are not powered. The Diesel switcher servicing this area uses spacer cars to load or retrieve the freight cars.

HTH. Thamk you.

Jerry

Reply to
trainjer

Interesting that you mention electrics. I have some interest in heavy electrics like the GN and MILW ran in the Northwest. There's even a bit of madness that has considered putting up catenary on the main line to run some of that stuff, if I could afford to buy it in brass. I'm not familiar with the years in which GN and MILW ran their various heavy electrics, or when the wires finally came down. I do have a couple of brass trolleys and plan to have something running around the eventual city portion of my layout. Another bit of extreme madness within me even considers trying to build a grand union in the center of the city, with overhead.

Reply to
Rick Jones

Terminal electrification has largely been replaced by lethal injection.

Reply to
Steve Caple

Reply to
Henry Murray

My favorite electric engines are the boxy pre-GG1 types of the Pennsy.

Hegge's article in the November '57 MR on bashing diesel B units into free-lance electrics. I find that old MDC boxcab diesel shells and certain cabooses (sans cupolas) are better starting points. The more rivets there are, the better, through I'm obviously not counting. The drive can be diesel trucks or even small steam switch engines complete with side rods. Among my future projects is a modified O1 type for which I plan to build a more realistic chassis. You may be familiar with it, but, if not, may I recommend the old Kalmbach book "When the Steam Railroads Electrified" as an excellent source of prototype material. Thank you.

Jerry

Reply to
trainjer

It is a poll on era, not prototypes. The descriptions given were used to tie the eras to the railroad covered by the web site, the GB&W

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It's a simple poll, not a detailed survey.

Man, some of you modelers really go off the deep end pretty easily.

Scale was a past poll ... maybe gauge will be a future one. I guess you'll just have to check in every two months if it troubles you that much.

Previous polls:

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____ Mark Mathu

Reply to
Mark Mathu

My thought was to model the B&M Hoosac tunnel area in the 1940's. The tunnel was electrified, because it was so long that smoke and flue gases made it dangerous-to-impossible for the crews and passengers behind a steamer. The electrification lasted until dieselization in the '50s. Hoosac is out in the Bershire Mts of western MA, a rural area with smallish towns, lots of classic red brick Victorian buildings, still in use today. I'd have to make another photo trip out there to find the trackage and facilities where steam was switched for electric, and vice versa. This project may be beyond my space and time limitations, but I keep thinking about it.

David Starr

Reply to
David Starr

tj:

There's a lot here so I'm go> >

tj:

Wow. I just love terminal operations, especially with passengers. There's so much more to passenger trains than just shuttling around and interfering with the way freights.

So the switcher uses the TT to disassemble the train, then moves the cars from an inbound track to an outbound (I am assuming that your OB tracks don't access the TT). That's an ingenious and no doubt space-saving solution you've come up with there. The best part is how handily it seems to solve the tail-car turning issue... once you get to it, it's the only thing left on the IB track, so you just run around the switcher and bump it onto the table. Heck, your model tail car doesn't even need a functional rear coupler!

Is it prototypical? I don't know. There were a lot of ingenious turntable tricks in the early days and on foreign roads. It solves a problem for the model railroad, so it's at least functionally prototypical if not historically so. I don't suppose you have any photos of this terminal available? I'd like to see it.

I do like old heavyweight MUs, but they are only really lovely in a battleship sense. How about something classy like a Silverliner? Your turning problem might well be moot, too, if you use MUs... just make sure you've got a cab on both ends. No escaping necessary!

Fantastic. That sounds like a m> My favorite electric engines are the boxy pre-GG1 types of the Pennsy.

Bob H. is indeed one of the greats. I just picked up a pile of back- issue mags at the train show, and two had Hegge articles...one on his Crooked Mountain Lines, the other on building one of his earlier heavy electrics...his B-B-B-B boxcab. Hegge seemed like he got into bigger and bigger locos as time went on...didn't he build a W1-like unit out of a pair of F7 shells, eventually? It was a quite prototypical sort of slippery slope, when you think of it.

How'd you make your O1-type? Was it from the weird and quite basic kit that I saw once in MR (I forget who offered it).

Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and some plans.

Reply to
pawlowsk002

You first troll.

-- I can't remember where I read it, but in one of the non-official histories of WP it was revealed that in some proto-version, straight from the primordial soup, the encyclopedia was in fact to be written by anyone, but with editorial oversight by People With A Clue. In this story, it was written that none other than Jimbo Wales sat down and got to work on some economic theory article or something ... and then, if I remember this right, he started to get that unusual sensation one gets while writing a test or doing homework or, in general, just plain educating oneself. He though "Damn, someone is going to mark this!", and Jimmy didn't like that. So instead he invented a system where the TA's are less educated than he is. Bullshit baffles brains, and intuitively he realized that the more BS, or the less brains, the easier the job is. Thus Wikipedia, where as soon as you demonstrate you are transcending the system, you are kicked out...

- An illuminating insight into the mess that is Wikipedia, from Wikipedia Review

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Reply to
DavidNebenzahl

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