Rolling Stock Rosters

2-8-2

Member
Howdy! This topic recently came up in my discussions about coal operations, and I thought I would post it here to get some more input. My road is freelanced, so some of my rolling stock will get my own road name.

Is there a general rule of thumb for how much of your roster should contain other road names? Meaning, if you're modeling the Nickel Plate Road, obviously a lot of your equipment is going to be NKP. But how much do you dedicate to other railroads? If your lines are located on the east coast, do you add more from the same region, then taper off as you head west?
 

eightyeightfan1

Now I'm AMP'd
I model modern times. So most of my rolling stock is from everyone, UP, BNSF,CSXT, and I even have a model of a 50' boxcar from the real local railroad, the Housatonic.(it was a club car I bought at my LHS)
I also freelance so my railroad does have some of its own rolling stock. Couple of boxcars, and a flatcar....So far...
 

60103

Pooh Bah
I would say 50% home road, but that might vary for a lot of reasons.
If you model a dedicated coal branch, you might have unit trains of only home road. If you model a spun-off branch line, you might not have any home road cars.
Single-commodity trains (say, auto racks) running on a schedule have cars distributed by the proportion of the route for each railroad.
 

nkp174

Active Member
For the NKP, for instance, they didn't have a lot of originating business...and they had zillions of foreign reefer trains...so you'd have a very different makeup than, say, the Virginian which would have had mostly Virginian hoppers and Battleship gondolas.
 

MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
Here's an attempt to mathematically build a box car roster for CNR in 1950s southern Ontario:

CNR Boxcar Calculator

An interesting point that he makes in this article CNR Company Coal is that "company coal" - i.e. for use by the railway itself - arrived in IC hoppers for the most part. That's a similar observation to the one about foreign road reefers. It could also apply to any other leasing company with specific use cars, like tankers, reefers, grain hoppers, and so on (depending of course on your location and era).

Andrew
 

nkp174

Active Member
Cool link, Triplex!

I liked the bit of local history...massive C&O 2-8-2s could only handle 11 2-bays up Cheviot hill. Sounds more like my DSP&P where some locomotives could only pull 1-3 cars.
 

MilesWestern

Active Member
2-8-2. This topic comes up pretty regularly on Yahoo group STMFC (STeaM era Freight Cars) I suggest that you join the group and do a search back through their archives, there's a wealth of information to be had there.

Tell me if you saw this and joined the group, ok?
 
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