Trainfest was recently held in Milwaukee and a number of new model railroad products were announced. Of particular interest is an HO scale model that should become a favorite of anyone modeling the 1910-1950 time span. Accurail has announced a 36-foot, double-sheathed box car addition to their line. The model is mainly inspired by a 1914 New York Central box car design, similar to the above image. There will be a few variations available with different ends and center sills. Here’s the Accurail announcement as a PDF.
Some of my projects are long term affairs but they eventually move forward. Here’s a peek at one of those projects. This freight car started about five years ago when Accurail released their very nice 41-foot steel gondola. Except for the ends and a couple of small details, the model is a close match to a Wheeling & Lake Erie prototype. 2000 of those gondolas were built in 1921.
Three more box cars have been decaled and a final gloss coat has been applied. These have been built and in service for awhile. They went through the paint shop a couple of months ago. Next week they will receive a flat coat and start rolling through the Weathering Factory. Click on any image here to review a larger size.
The last couple of posts have focused on resources available here on the blog to assist modelers with a focus on 1920s and 1930s freight car fleets. While enjoying my morning coffee, I was reviewing images on a photo archive and realized how much I’ve learned from this resource and realized it hasn’t been promoted as much as other sites. There are great photo archives available on line with thousands of images that date to the first four decades of the Twentieth Century. The Library of Congress has a Mother Lode of images, many of which have been enhanced and posted at the Shorpy site. Several cities and libraries have extensive online digital archives; the Denver Public Library, Historic Pittsburgh, Cleveland Memory Project, West Virginia History on View, and the Vancouver Public Library, to name a few.
The Erie Lackawanna Railroad Historical Society has been posting several images a day from an extensive negative collection for the last few years. The images were taken in the Teens by a company photographer to document accident scenes and places along the right-of-way. Many images capture the railroad traversing a rural scene, while others show the hum and bustle of a small town or larger city. Vintage freight cars can be seen in many of these photos, along with vintage signs, homes, commercial structures, and industries. For a modeler of the Teens through the 1940s, the images are pure gold as they are filled with details that can be implemented along our model right-of-ways and towns. The images are like a window back in time that offer a glimpse of homes and small industries before they were leveled as towns grew with population increases. It was a time when the railroads were moving goods to serve communities and transport people to places near and far. Anytime I view images like these, an old indie rock tune, “Places That Are Gone,” by Tommy Keene starts playing in my head.
The details seen on many of these images inspire our hobby efforts no matter the scale, era, or gauge of our model railroads. I encourage you to visit the Erie Lackawanna Photo Archive regularly and make new discoveries among these century old photos.
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A few of the plastic HO scale freight car models in the Wheeling Freight Terminal fleet.
I started this blog in May 2009 after moving to a new home and city, and starting a new layout. I had been focused on modeling 1926 since 2005 and met a few other railroad modelers with interests pre-dating World War Two and the Depression. At some point in 2012, a discussion about HO scale freight cars led to creating a guide to plastic freight car models appropriate for a 1920s layout. These discussions ended up as a separate page here which has become a resource for many people who model the 1920s and 1930s. Over time, this resource page has become one of the most visited pages and posts on this blog. Each week when I check the blog statistics, the guide to 1920s era freight cars is among the top five.
As it has been a few years since the page was launched, it was ripe for an update. There have been some new models from Broadway Limited, MTH, and Tangent, as well as a sweet announcement from Rapido. There have also been changes as Red Caboose was bought by Intermountain, so a few notes have been added. The updated page remains at the same location. You can also find the link in the menu along the right side of the main blog page. I think we are set for another couple of years.
Post a comment below and let me know what you think. What is missing?
