On the lower deck of my layout I model the Great Northern from the Puget Sound coast to Wenatchee, WA--because this is what I remember best from my childhood. On the upper deck I model where I live now: the ATSF (Santa Fe to Socorro, NM) and the New Mexico Central (Santa Fe to Gallina, NM), my own fictional successor to the D&RGW Chili Line. The entire layout is fixed at 1962. That doesn't mean I don't run the cool old-timer stuff that I've acquired: I call those tourist trains. Too, 1962 in northern New Mexico was a lot more archaic in many ways than 1962 in Washington State. I was looking for East-West trends to justify manufacturer bias before I knew that was the reason behind Tony's poll. More than that, though, I was looking for trends that justified manufacturer bias in N scale toward huge, modern cars and engines (as well as cars missing their roofwalks). I was surprised not to see what I was looking for: about 40% of us favor steam or transition era, which seems like it would be enough to entice people to manufacture more engines and cars from that era. Apparently people on Trainboard are not representative of the buying population. Although N scale locos and cars from the steam/transition eras were manufactured in abundance for many years, the past several years in N scale have seen a massive shift toward huge and modern. And if you're only going to model huge and modern, that leaves out all of the really incredibly cool railroads east of the Rockies that are no more. I don't know what's driving this change. I like BNSF and UP okay, but I'm getting really bored with seeing them all the time--especially dragging fifty container or grain cars. I enjoy most seeing mixed trains from smaller, older railroads.
Nearly after my own heart. Santa Fe Eastern Lines Tulsa subdivision late 1952. Tulsa because it's my hometown, it's a pleasant cross between main line and branch (both streamlined and non-streamlined passenger, but not too long, and moderate length trains in keeping with my apartment-sized layout), and late 1952 because that's when I can have my kitbashed E1A and B and can haul both ice reefers and piggybacks with either FTs or a Berkshire. I do love mixing ice hatches and TOFC behind steam power. 'Transition period' indeed... I have a theory about that, by the way. Seems to me the Santa Fe invented piggyback not so much to expedite delivery to the end user as to have a way to ship frozen foods without irritating fresh fruit and vegetable shippers. That really was quite a controversy in the early fifties--frozen food shipment was in its infancy and fresh lettuce shippers in particular were unhappy at the thought of not shipping on ice because ice does wonderful things for keeping lettuce crisp. With truck trailers holding frozen food, and ice reefers hauling lettuce and such, the Santa Fe was providing the best possible shipment to both customers--and they could get into the frozen food haulage trade without being the one to irritate these important California customers. Anyway, I like the contrast and think it all makes for a very handsome fast freight.
The gateway to mechanical reefers, the cars that put the stock cars out of business. Cattle could be processed locally and the frozen carcases shipped to anywhere in a mechanical reefer instead of shipping live stock to centralize slaughter houses in the areas where the product was consumed. Ice reefers were not effective for transporting frozen meat long distances.
I model BNSF in North Texas to Colorado in early 2000's. I am an old MoPac guy who used to model MP in Western Missouri. Then in the late 90's I moved to an old Santa Fe town and watched to early multiplicity of BNSF schemes roll along the main and fell in love with them. A few years later I moved to Saginaw, TX and there found BNSF North Yard and a main & industries that simply begged to be modeled. Those inspirations culminated in my switching in 2003--yet another move--from modeling MoPac merger era (1983) to my emphasis today and I still love it. I currently building my second layout based on that location. Ron
Precisely so. Frozen food needs to be much colder than ice. Anyway, it's a strange criteria for picking an era, road and locale. But it worked for me. I like my Tulsan and the half-streamlined (with through sleepers) Oil Flyer.
That is the reason I run steam. It just seems that trains were more interesting and varried. The closest thing to a unit train was a coal drag or the reefer trains durring harvest time. I'm really pleasantly surprised how the poll turned out. I have considered starting the same poll with the same wording on other forums to see how the results compare. I don't think the results are unique to this site though.
I'm kinda mixed on my feelings on new/old trains.I think trains before 1990 or so were really interesting to watch,because you never knew what the heck you were gonna see,in my area,the D&H alone had something like 14 classes of locomotives in a pile of different schemes,never mind what showed up from other railroads.Modern railroading to me is kinda boring to watch.The same locomotives on every RR,unit trains,not much in the way of variety other than seeing basically the same locomotives from another RR running through if you're lucky..From a modeling standpoint,though,OWNING modern model trains is different than watching the real stuff,an SD90 and stacks/racks are a lot more interesting/impressive to own day after day than a GP9 and 40-50 foot boxcars...Even though I model Northeastern PA in 1972,I still like to run/own all the modern stuff,it's too cool to ignore.And also,so is steam,got a pile of that,too,LOL!!
Well I voted for Eastern steam/transition period but given the rather large proportion of coal hoppers that I own, from 2,3 and 4 bays up to Topgons and double tubs, I would have to say Eastern coal operations as a subset. The transition era is better suited for those with small layouts. Trains were smaller as were engines and some short lines and branch lines could be easily modeled in a confined space. Hard to visualize modern trains with their brute power and mile long unit train of cars on a small layout. Now on an Ntrak size layout having 100 car trains is very doable.
