What is the least prototypical train you have run on your layout? Here is one that I ran. I typically run modern stuff, but my son wanted to use this small steam engine with some colorful grain hoppers.
Leave it to your son to remind us to have some fun in this great hobby! Besides, with UP running modern cars (and locomotives) behind its excursion steamers, I'm not sure we can question the prototypicality of any consist/locomotive combination. If I like it, it runs on my railroad, pulling or towed by anything else I like. If I don't like it, it stays on the store shelf for someone else who does. That said, I also have a ton of respect for those who put forth the effort to faithfully research and recreate history.
Great picture! I will be running 'mixed freight' with one or two coaches. One of the coaches will be a 'coupler transition car' from horn hook to knuckle.
Check out the Crab Orchard & Egyptian Railroad. They ran a working Steam 2-8-0 on actual work trains until 1986.
I get my kids a piece of rolling stock for every birthday and each Christmas. My youngest has a NS F-unit pulling a CN open autorack with purple cars, a rainbow CN hopper, a WSOR breast cancer car (it’s pink), one CN Transcontinental coach, a DRGW stock car filled with tigers, with the CN Transcontinental observation car bringing up the rear. She’s not a CN fan, but her favorite colors are black and pink so it worked out this way. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Technically speaking, the roughly O Scale model of Thomas the Tank Engine that was used on the original television series was the prototype for the 1:1 size Thomases that visit numerous sites around the country. There was a piece in a model railroad magazine about this that is in my hard copy accumulation, I think RMC some years back but not sure about this.
Great trains! My son liked the Thomas photos. The rainbow CN cylindrical Hopper is great. Another favorite of my some with all the colors.
Same here, I like both aspects. The history is fantastic I like reading/ learning about it, but I like looking at many types of rolling stock and engines. MK, nice water feature you made there, adds a lot of depth.
Purely from an aesthetics* standpoint, any locomotive or passenger car consist where there is a mile of space between units due to zealous pursuit of body mount couplers. You know who you are MT and IMR. *Yes, I know body mounting is "prototypical," but if I can't see it, it isn't there. Powering F units from electricity in the rails certainly isn't prototypical either.
I guess the hard core modelers are stuck with live stream or catenary. Though the idea of dead rail for larger scales is neat.
We all choose to discard "prototypical" when considering minimum curve radius. In for a penny, in for a pound; "prototypical" can be a wicked mistress.
