On Building A Freight Car Fleet

A Portion of The Kit Stash

 Like many model railroaders, I have accumulated a large number of freight cars and locomotives over the years.  My early Athearn train set cars and additions from Model Die Casting (Roundhouse), Tyco and Con-Cor were later joined by more detailed models from Intermountain, Red Caboose and others.

My early purchases as I got more serious about the hobby were from hobby shops, and occasionally mail order, as this was before the Internet.  Most were kits, because I had enjoyed building aircraft models and this carried over into my model railroad hobby.  There were a few "ready to run" model purchases, joined by some gifts from family.

When I got even more serious about the hobby, I found other kit manufacturers such as CB&T, Branchline and LifeLike Proto 2000 (now Walthers Proto).  There were even a few exotic (to me) resin kits from Sunshine as well as swap meet finds of other craftsman type kits.

Some of these purchases were spurred by my interest in the Great Northern and other Hill Lines, some by what I had seen on the tracks in real life as a kid, and some by whim.  I did tend to stick with the 1960's, despite temptation in the form of gorgeous looking modern era cars.

For a long time, however, my purchases were only loosely guided by a vague concept of how I might eventually incorporate them into a large model railroad scheme.  Some of this was understandably the result of lack of time to embark on planning and building a layout, or defining what it would even look like.  Some due to the shiny allure of a new model that I happened on and convinced myself I really wanted, without much thought of how it "fit" into any bigger plan.  Some just looked fun to build.

When I began to narrow my focus, and develop an interest in building more detailed models, it was actually helpful in limiting impulse buying.  It has not slowed me down but it has  guided me toward models that I know I really want.  Some earlier buys have been sold to make way for things that better fit where I see myself going.

Recent purchases have tended toward craftsman kits or kitbash opportunities that will challenge and develop my skills.  There are some incredible small makers of resin car and mini kit offerings along with masters of kitbashing who share their talents for me to learn from.

As I am not building a large layout with a big “fleet”, I’m not as much driven to balance my models with car distributions or relative numbers of a particular car as I am  to explore modeling challenges.  I am adding some particular car types in line with my forest products interest.  This includes tank cars, double door boxcars and flat cars.  The Great Northern is my home road, along with subsidiary Pacific Coast, and sister roads Northern Pacific, SP&S and CB&Q so these roads feature prominently.

Forest Products as Traffic

 Earlier I mentioned that forest products are a primary focus of my layout interests.  This interest is expressed not only by my decision to model a paper mill as the central industry on the layout but also in the revenue traffic that the Olympic Peninsula Branch will carry and, necessarily, the types of freight cars needed to handle this traffic.

The inclusion of appropriate loads on various types of freight cars is a great way to increase the variety of industries served, implying their existence off "stage" as they feed traffic to the portion of the railroad modeled on the layout.

The Great Northern, like many Western railroads, depended heavily on forest products for revenue.  Advertisements and other GN publicity materials illustrate this well.

This one, showing rolls of paper coming off of the finishing line at a paper mill:

1959 magazine ad - author's collection

Another discussing transport of logs and lumber, as well as promoting the railroad's efforts in developing industrial land for forest product manufacturing:

1957 magazine ad - author's collection

The boxed text in the center of this ad points out that the railroad not only transported forest products, but also consumed them for their uses, such as with ties for track.  Yet another source of loads for freight cars, in this case for company service and maintenance-of-way efforts.

Going into more detail, company publications provide interesting background and examples of car loading for various wood products.

from Talking it Over, GN employee publication

March 1965 - author's collection

This short article includes very helpful detail photographs of several different plywood and lumber loads on bulkhead flat cars, which were fairly recent developments in the mid-60's.  It is interesting to note that full and partially wrapped as well as unwrapped loads are all shown.  This is a period where shippers were transitioning to new types of cars as well as new means of protecting their products from the elements.  Previously, much finished lumber was shipped in boxcars, laboriously loaded by hand, as well as on standard flat cars, particularly rough lumber.  In some cases, gondolas were also used.  The desire for faster loading of larger loads, and for protection from the elements, was driving change in the railroad practices at this time.

Great Northern Goat, publicity publication

June 1965 - author's collection

This article in a monthly GN publication highlights a new customer for the railroad, a plywood mill in Montana.  The bottom photograph of a box car with the iconic standing Rocky goat logo shows forklift loading of plywood into what appears to be a double door 40' car.  This car would have been in my favorite glacier green color, a very signature car for the GN and one that sparked my interest in the Great Northern as a kid.

Lumber mills, plywood plants and logging are all typical of the forest product customers providing loads that were a mainstay for the GN and for my model railroad.  Other loads that would be common include telephone poles on flats or gondolas, often very long and requiring idler flat cars; cedar shakes, woodchips and boxcars with paper products inside.

There is another entire set of loads and cars involved with pulp and paper mills, with a variety of tank cars handling chemicals, additives and byproducts.  These are deserving of a much more detailed treatment in a future post.

As I have been building my model freight car roster, it has been helpful to look at available information like the advertising and promotional materials above, as well as period photographs, traffic reports and equipment rosters.  These have shown the variety of flat cars, gondolas and box cars used for forest products by the GN and sister railroads in the Northwest.

I plan to highlight these various car types in more detail, along with their loads, in the coming months.

Field Research - PC 9041 GS Gondola

 There is an outstanding railroad museum in Snoqualmie, Washington, just East of Seattle toward Snoqualmie Pass off of Interstate 90.  In addition to a historic depot downtown and scenic weekend train rides, the museum has both indoor and outdoor exhibits, including a collection of locomotives and rolling stock.

Of great interest to me is a gondola in their collection, one of the only remaining pieces of Pacific Coast Railroad rolling stock.  On a visit to the museum, I took a number of photographs of the car to capture the details.  Although it sits inside of a fenced siding, I was able to view most of the car from different angles.

PC-9041 GS Drop Bottom Gondola

According to Great Northern Railroad Historical Society (GNRHS) Reference Sheet #364, the Great Northern transferred a number of older GS gondolas from GN series 76000-76249 to the PCRR around 1956 to replace worn out cars for hauling coal.  This drop bottom gondola was originally built for the Great Northern in 1918 by Western Steel Car and Foundry in Illinois, as part of the GN's first purchase of General Service (GS) gondolas.  After its use by the PCRR, this one went on to serve Rayonier on their logging railroad on the Olympic Peninsula, hauling gravel, and then was donated to the museum in 1986, after 68 years of use, as described on this sign next to the car.

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, the car sits outside and shows the effects of it's long years of service, but amazingly, one can still make out ghostly remnants of the large "PACIFIC COAST" billboard type lettering that the PCRR used on their gondolas.

Faint Lettering on Car Side

Lettering Diagram from Champ Decal Set HG-126

The gondola sits on trucks that have "NP" and "NORPACRY" cast on them, so at some point the original trucks apparently were changed out for these Northern Pacific solid bearing trucks, whether by one of the railroads or the museum, I am not sure. These trucks are similar to the original Bettendorf trucks that were supplied on these gondolas, based on equipment diagrams and photos in the reference sheet.

On the "B" end, it has an Ajax handbrake and you can also see the air retainer valve and the bottom dump door release mechanism.  The power handbrakes were added during rebuilding in 1939, when the sides and ends were also replaced.

Brake or "B" End of PC 9041

There is no commercially available model that matches this car, one would need to accept some compromises unless you wanted to completely scratch build it.  I plan to kitbash a car or two to represent these signature PCRR gondolas so being able to photograph the car and supplement my other research materials was very welcome.

Where's This Train Headed?

Here is some background and detail on what my modeling and interests in model railroading are about.  In my first post, I described my model railroad as a proto-freelanced branch of the Great Northern Railroad, set in the Puget Sound area during 1965, with a forest products emphasis.

Specifically, I'm calling it the Olympic Peninsula Branch of the Pacific Coast Railroad (PCRR), which was actually a small branch of the Great Northern in Western Washington after 1951.  The real PCRR was primarily a coal hauling line conceived originally by investors in the Seattle area to carry the coal mined from nearby seams in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains to the port of Seattle for use by steamships.  

There is an excellent book, Pacific Coast - Seattle's Own Railroad, authored by Kurt Armbruster, which tells the story of the origins and history of this small railroad.  The book focuses primarily on the history from 1874 up to the Great Northern purchase in 1951.  Great Northern operated the line until the Burlington Northern merger in 1970.

Book Cover

The book is available for purchase through the Great Northern Railroad Historical Society (GNRHS).  You can follow a link to the GNRHS store page for the book here.  

In my model world, the PCRR operates from Seattle to the Pacific coast on the Olympic Peninsula, and obtains much of its revenue from various forest products industries, including lumber as well as pulp and paper mills. My PCRR pivoted from coal to forest products as the steam era waned and the coal seams were abandoned, expanding it's reach for this rapidly growing revenue source.  Using my modeler's license, the line runs mostly on track that actually once belonged to the Northern Pacific Railroad, extending west from Centralia to Grays Harbor on the coast, as well as north to the naval shipyard at Bremerton, a significant customer.  The Olympic Peninsula is the land mass west of Puget Sound, between Seattle and the Pacific coast, where these locales are found (see map below).

It's important to distinguish between the Pacific Coast Railroad and the Pacific Coast Railway, a completely different and unrelated railroad that operated in California.

When the Great Northern purchased the Pacific Coast Railroad, they soon replaced steam engines with diesels, using primarily GN owned motive power, and also "upgraded" some of the well used PCRR rolling stock, especially the aged gondolas used for hauling coal, with surplus GN cars.  

In my world, the PCRR has more and a wider variety of rolling stock as well as some of their own diesel engines, but GN or other Hill Line motive power and rolling stock are common.  This allows me to plausibly operate Northern Pacific or Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) equipment alongside PCRR.  As the Milwaukee Railroad also operated in this area, there is significant interchange with them as well.

This map shows the trackage, which was originally Northern Pacific, then BNSF, and is currently owned and operated by The Puget Sound & Pacific Railroad Co., part of Genesee and Wyoming Inc. a short line railroad holding company.

credit - By Aaron Schwarz - http://psp.ghrr.org/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24317853

My layout will focus on a major pulp and paper mill complex in Grays Harbor with local switching and a small yard and team track.  It will be a shelf layout primarily, although I hope to be able to accommodate a loop of track for a bit of continuous running as well.  This is both for my own enjoyment as well as my grandkids, in case we just want to "run trains".  Offline industries will include a plywood mill, lumber mills, creosoting plant, as well as a fish processor and cranberry packing plant.  I mentioned the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, and PSNS will be an important, if more occasional customer providing interesting loads.

This scenario allows me to model and operate a range of rolling stock, from standard 40 foot single or double door boxcars, to flat cars, gondolas and chemical tank cars.  Motive power is primarily switchers and four axle locomotives for short local trains setting out and picking up cars at the mill and other industries.  I plan to model the pulp and paper complex extensively and will discuss this in more depth soon.

Another attraction of my chosen railroads and setting is the opportunity to explore the history of these railroads in the Northwest and to model them accurately as I learn and build my skills.  Future posts will expand on these themes.

Photo by author

This photo is a present day view of the Navy owned track near Bremerton, my local railroad only a mile or so from where I live. I think it captures the spirit of branch line railroading for me, with the tracks leading to adventure and discovery around the bend ahead.

Successive Approximation

 We are fortunate to live in a time where very accurate railroad models are broadly available, whether in kit form or ready-to-run, in many scales and for many eras and railroads.  This may be most true for HO scale, where some amazing models are being produced for us to enjoy.

While I enjoy building models and am working to further develop my modeling skills for adding accurate details, there are times where models that are fully assembled and ready-to-run, or nearly so, catch my eye and my wallet.  An advantage of this is that my fleet of rolling stock has grown with some beautifully produced cars that can immediately be admired and eventually run on the layout.

These three Great Northern caboose models are meant to represent steel wide vision caboose designs from the 1960's and are an interesting example of the evolution of ready-to-run plastic models.

Athearn & Atlas Models

(click to enlarge)

The model on the left above is a custom printed Athearn model that was once produced by Track One from the Athearn wide vision caboose.  Track One has a Facebook page and may still be doing business, although the last post is from 2019.  While the model itself is not highly accurate for GN (the model is closest to a Rock Island prototype), the printing is well done, including the signature GN safety slogan, but without the "radio equipped" lettering.   The X-101 was a wide vision caboose built by International Car for the GN, so the general appearance is similar., although a third side window is lacking.

This model is what many would call a "stand in" due to some non-prototypical design features.  I have added more appropriate trucks with metal wheelsets and Kadee 58 knuckle couplers.  It really isn't bad for an Athearn blue box model with molded on details like the curved grab irons, but does lack GN specific details.

On the right is the Atlas version of a GN standard vision steel caboose.  Note the difference in the width of the cupola.   This model is closer to the actual cars that the GN ordered from Morrison International in 1963 and 1964, but still not exactly prototypically accurate.  Unfortunately the silver roof color is incorrect.  This car came with steel wheelsets and knuckle couplers.  It is lacking the GN tool and battery boxes on the side, and the unique GN end gates, with minor differences in the side window arrangement, among a few other details.  Again, beautifully painted and printed with crisp lettering and it has separately applied wire grab irons.

Walthers Mainline Model

The recently released Walthers version of the Morrison International caboose is very nearly accurate for the GN right out of the box, with just a few specific details that could be added.  The window arrangement is correct for the GN.  Interestingly, as this is a Walthers Mainline model, it does not include any grab irons.  They are available as an add on detailing kit, however, and there are molded drilling dimples on the car to help in placing them.  I have not yet installed these as I just recently got this car.  It does include the distinctive GN tool boxes and end gates.  Unfortunately, Walthers quickly sold out of this car decorated for GN.  I was able to find one available from a dealer online after finding that my pre-order through another dealer was not fulfilled by Walthers.

Atlas, Athearn and Walthers Ends

(click to enlarge)

The end view shows some of the differences, with only the Walthers model on the right having the correct end gate, although no GN Rocky logo.  This model also has the smoke jack correctly placed, unlike the others.

It isn't a major challenge to add to or modify these to better represent the actual GN caboose they each represent.  For example, adding the tool boxes and end gates, a firecracker radio antenna to the cupola, perhaps decal additions where appropriate, preferred couplers (Kadee scale head are my standard), are all relatively simple changes to improve on the existing level of detail.

I like each of these models and they graphically illustrate the progression of ever more accurate mass production models that are being produced.  There may never be a "perfect" exactly prototypical model with every detail and feature replicated but the standards seem to continually improve.

Beginnings

 The beginning of a story (or a blog about railroad modeling) sets the scene and points in a direction of travel or narrative.   The main characters are also revealed, although not always right away.

My scene is a proto-freelanced subsidiary of the Great Northern Railroad in the Puget Sound region of Western Washington in 1965, with an emphasis on forest products, particularly paper mills.  I model in HO scale and enjoy building models that are reasonably accurate and detailed.  Currently, my layout is only a concept although my intention is to begin construction of a shelf layout module this year.  My workbench is active with model building projects ranging from straightforward plastic kit builds to resin or mixed media kits, along with some superdetailing and kitbash projects.  Scale vehicles are an aspect of my interests and will feature here from time to time as well.

In this case, the direction is topics around my interests in the hobby of model railroading, as well as the history of my chosen railroads, and related subjects that capture my interest or may be of interest to others. 

I'm no modeling or historical guru.  My blog is intended as a creative outlet and a way for me to share my efforts as I continue to build skills and knowledge.  It's also a means to give myself some encouragement as well as accountability to work toward my hobby goals.

Set Box Top & End From My Collection

The model railroading bug started for me when I was about eight or nine and my dad brought home an Athearn starter set.  This is the box that set came in, which currently is in use as an open topped tray to hold a few structure models.  Although the picture is a steam engine with passenger cars, the set was a diesel engine with freight cars.

This was a typical beginners set that included the engine, a few freight cars and a caboose - all Athearn classic "blue box" models that were ready to run, along with an oval of sectional brass track.

The photo below shows those set cars as well as a few items from those that my dad purchased to expand our small Plywood Pacific over the next few years.  There were others as well, many still stored in my boxes of rolling stock, some kitbash or upgrade fodder.

The boxes in the set are distinctively different than artwork for Athearn blue box cars sold separately, with the rolling stock boxes being nearly all light blue, no image on top.  Even the locomotive box is different in that it has the blue band on each end of the box top.

You will note a few things here.  First, the locomotive and caboose are Southern Pacific, not Great Northern.  At least there are two Hill Lines box cars in the set, the Northern Pacific mechanical refrigerator and the Great Northern plug door box.  Later purchases trended more closely toward my growing fascination with the GN and other Hill Lines (NP, CB&Q, SP&S and Pacific Coast RR).

The Tyco C420 locomotives are both fantasy schemes, although to my eyes they were very attractive at the time!  Many hours of fun model railroading were provided by these locos, which featured working headlights and had a massive look.  My deep appreciation for Alco diesels may have just started with these two models.

The Roundhouse covered hopper kit is one of those early cars that I have started to kitbash and upgrade.  It is getting square hatch covers from Details West, along with wire grabs and ladder rungs, more detailed brake gear, new trucks, paint and decals.  This is one of those on again, off again projects that sits and waits patiently for inspiration.  

From this start, my interests in building models developed, as did my focus on the Great Northern.  Much later I settled on 1965 as my  modeling year.  This was due to a number of reasons, including the type of equipment operated, roof-walks and a somewhat contrary attraction to the struggles of railroads at the time from the competitive pressures of trucking, consolidations and fading passenger traffic.  Last but probably not least, I found Glacier Green to be a favorite rolling stock color scheme, while not sharing an appreciation for Big Sky Blue with the simplified Rocky logo, which was introduced by the GN in the next year.

Later posts will expand on these themes but for now this gives you some idea of what I am about.  I hope that you find something that is of interest and I welcome the opportunity to hear from you as the journey progresses.