The “literature” of model railroading

What do I mean here by “literature?” I don’t mean novels or other creative literature. I mean it in the sense familiar to any professional or academic: the published work in and about the field. This ranges from professional journals to books, volumes of conference proceedings, and monographs. And in professional fields, having a submitted paper accepted for publication will require it to contain adequate citation of the literature, in the sense just described.

What is the point of this? To give credit to the work of predecessors, to show that you understand where the paper you have submitted fits into that literature, and even to mention viewpoints that may conflict with the one you have espoused in your paper. One becomes accustomed to having the citations in mind while writing or reading a professional paper, and checking submitted or published citations to see if they seem appropriate. Having been both an associate editor, and then editor for five years, of a major journal in my field, metallurgy and materials, this used to be a completely instinctive process for me. My late friend Richard Hendrickson’s professional experience as an English linguist was entirely parallel.

But model railroaders, relatively few of whom are professionals in the sense just described, usually have no such experience and usually don’t even have any idea of the concept. Richard was in fact the one who pointed this out to me, and I immediately understood what he meant.

I guess my professional background died slowly. I’ll give one example. When Jim Hediger reviewed the First Edition of Pacific Fruit Express for Trains magazine, he commented thus: “Here is a superb illustrated history of the company whose name is synonymous with perishable freight. Rounding out the work is the most complete bibliography and index I have ever seen in a rail history book.” 

Having acted as editor for that entire book, and collected references from my co-authors as well as researching those for my own chapters, I can take credit for creating that bibliography (and I indexed the book, too). To me, Hediger’s description was a real compliment, and we included it on the dust jacket of the Second Edition of the PFE book. 

This came home to me more recently when a reader of one of my “Getting Real” columns in Model Railroad Hobbyist noticed a long bibliography, and wrote an email commenting on it. And in fact the same would be found in all volumes of my book series, Southern Pacific Freight Cars. Obviously to any experienced researcher, such bibliographic resources can be a gold mine in pursuing information beyond the publication in hand.

Incidentally (I’ll say more about this presently), nearly all that literature cited in those books is the literature of professional railroading and railroad history. That is obviously part of the literature of our hobby.

But in model railroading itself, what comprises the literature? The most obvious answer combines not only books, such as the familiar Kalmbach Media soft-bound books on practically every aspect of the hobby, but also the magazines: Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman most obviously, but also the defunct titles, such as Mainline Modeler, superb resources with many timeless items of information. Today, we need to include on-line resources such as blogs and museum archives.

Many modelers, of course, discard magazines after having paged through them, much as one would do with a weekly news magazine. That means they have no personal archive of magazines, except maybe an occasional helpful issue or article that is saved. But increasingly, magazine archives are appearing on-line, making it unnecessary to keep your own shelves of old magazines. (Though the on-line material often has been digitized at pretty low resolution, meaning that photographs are a complete loss; and on-line archives have a distressing tendency to suddenly disappear.)

As a single example of something I was able to retrieve from archives and greatly enjoyed and benefited from reading, below is the first page of Frank Ellison’s landmark series of six articles, tellingly titled “The Art of Model Railroading,” which appeared in Model Railroader in the issue for June 1944. And yes, I’m old, but not old enough to have read this when it came out.

In these six articles, Ellison was promoting the idea that operating a layout went far beyond building locomotives, laying track, or creating scenery. Instead, he suggested, it would need to be a coherent whole, not only with all those “construction” aspects, but also having flexible electrical control and above all, a realistic operating scheme. This was a pioneering idea, and tracking it down in the “literature” to appreciate it is part of what I’m writing about.

One more example of a magazine article from the distant past that is still worth reading is Doug Smith’s article on freight car forwarding, published in the December 1961 issue of Model Railroader. Smith not only reviewed a number of proposed systems for car forwarding, he went on to suggest ways to update the Ellison car-card system, ideas which are relevant today. And most important, he emphasized prototype practice as the guide we should follow.

It remains my opinion that there is a literature of model railroading, and awareness of it should be the hallmark of any serious modeler, particularly those who write articles — though I wouldn’t foresee serious lists of literature citations in model magazines. The further literature is that of professional railroading, both operations and history. It too is important to modelers, and I’ll have more to say about that in a future post.

Tony Thompson

An old Shake ’n’ Take project: Conclusion

This series of posts describes a freight car build that originated as a so-called “Shake ‘n’ Take” kitbashing project at the 2015 meeting of Prototype Rails in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Previous posts in the series gave the prototype background, links to project directions, replacement of original car body ends, and addition of details. In the previous post, Part 3, the model had been given a coat of Tamiya primer (see that preceding post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/an-old-shake-n-take-project-part-3.html ).

As stated in that previous post, the model was now ready for its final paint coat, and that was applied. The model was also removed from its “paint shop” trucks and give the correct ones that it will operate with. In this condition, it’s shown below. 

Next came application of decals. A very nice decal set for this car was assembled by Steve Hile, and the lettering elements were all well arranged and complete. I enjoy this part of a freight car project, when the model assumes its identity as an individual car. Once all decals were in place, the car was given a coat of clear flat.

Next, the car needed to be weathered. I used my tried and true method of washes made from acrylic tube paints (see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right corner of the present post). Then, after another protective coat of clear flat, I added route cards and a few chalk marks. Here is the completed model.

Incidentally, the black paint patch under the right-hand door is the service stencil for the air brake reservoir (and was only on this side of the car). The black sill patch toward the right of the car side is a repacking stencil, applied on both sides. You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

Just for comparison, here is the prototype photo I relied on in carrying out the project. You will note the same paint patches that were applied to the model, are visible here too, and were the reason they were applied to the model. (Chet McCoid photo, San Diego, Dec. 26, 1954, Bob’s Photo collection)

Finally, I want to wrap this up with an image of the heading for the project directions, appropriately crediting Richard Hendrickson for the original idea of the conversion, along with Greg Martin’s management and Schuyler Larrabee’s editing. Thanks, guys.

This concludes work on my 2015 Shake ‘n’ Take project from Cocoa  Beach that year. As always, an interesting project with some learning aspects, and a distinctive freight car as the product.

Tony Thompson

Personal: Master Model Railroader #772

I recently completed the requirements for the NMRA’s Master Model Railroader (MMR) in their Achievement Program. This program has been around for something like 50 years, and that over 700 people have fulfilled the requirements before me tells you that it is certainly a doable project for plenty of modelers.

Years ago, when I was the editor of the newsletter for NMRA’s Division 2 of Mid-Central Region (Pittsburgh), I wrote a piece about the Achievement Program. In it, I stated that the MMR is doable with patience and dedication, a little bit like deciding to visit all the National Parks in the United States. Yes, it would take awhile and some resources, but it’s entirely possible if you make the effort.

The program has 11 categories of achievement, of which the modeler has to complete at least seven. I had completed four by 1990, when I still lived in Pittsburgh, but then moving and being without a layout for awhile, I kind of lost momentum in the MMR program. 

Recently, though, I read my friend Seth Neumann’s write-up of his meeting the requirements for one of the certificates, Model Railroad Engineer — Electrical, and I thought, “Heck, I’ve done enough to qualify for that.” 

And so it proved, along with two of the “layout” categories, Master Builder – Structures, and Master Builder — Scenery, as part of progress on my layout. That made seven.

One thing that results from receiving one’s certificate of completion is an article in the NMRA Magazine, with whatever kind of biography one wishes to submit. I wrote one up, but was disappointed they didn’t use one photo I sent them, documenting my pretty nearly life-long interest in trains. It was taken when I was rather small, showing me admiring an International–Great Northern (Mopac) Ten-wheeler at Cotulla, Texas, where my parents lived at the time.

Here is the article as presented in the NMRA Magazine’s November 2024 issue, with this cover:

The first page looked like this. If you click on the image to enlarge it, it’s readable (should you wish to do so). They did use this contemporary photo of me alongside the layout.

The second page, including a listing of the seven certificates I completed, was this:

I am glad to finish something I started so long ago, and despite a little embarrassment about the long gap in my efforts, still feel gratified that it finally all turned out. But just the same, it doesn’t make me one iota different as a modeler or a person than I used to be.

Tony Thompson

Car movements for an operating session

About five years ago, I posted some thoughts about how car movements are directed on my layout, prior to and during an operating session. This was in response to a question about how an op (that is, operating) session is set up. That previous post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/07/selecting-cars-for-op-session.html .  

Since that time, I have heard any number of layout owners talk about how they set up op sessions. One commonly mentioned goal is to make the layout “self-resetting,” or “continuously operated.” That usually means that at the end of an operating session, the clock and layout power can be turned off, and at the next session, days, weeks or months later, simply turned back on, and operations can continue. 

To make this happen, train schedules obviously have to continue also, either onward through the “timetable-night,” or automatically the next morning. More importantly, from the viewpoint of the present post, car cards/waybills have to have been turned or changed at some point. 

Sometimes the layout operation includes turning waybills when cars are spotted, while in other cases the layout owner may do that between sessions. But the goal is for car cards/waybills to direct operation in potentially continuous fashion. Cars naturally move from staging onto the layout, and move off again as part of their waybill cycle. Once waybills are cycled in staging, everything can repeat.

But often in practice, this “hands-off” approach doesn’t work well, with industries having too many or too few cars in some sessions, and even local trains that can turn out too big or too small. Part of the problem can simply be too many cars on the layout, or too many waybills for one or more industries. But fine tuning can only go so far in creating a reproducible continuous operation.

Often the answer is more intervention for each session, checking how the waybill numbers look for specific trains and destinations, and altering them to suit. No, this is no longer “automatic,” but it produces more consistent sessions. That was what proved necessary on my late friend Otis McGee’s layout.

My layout emphasizes individual car cycles, including the spotting of empty cars for loading. This gondola is being moved to Jupiter Pump & Compressor in my layout town of Ballard to receive an outbound load. The power is a Key brass model of an SP Class C-10 Consolidation, SP 2829, with its rectangular tender.

On my layout, I usually start my plan for each op session by simply choosing a number of industries set outs or pickups that seem appropriate, based on “walking around” the layout and comparing status of all sidings with the “industry actions” list from the previous session (as I described earlier: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/07/waybills-part-66-car-movement-system.html ).

I originally created the “actions” list, showing what cars were at which industries, which ones were to be switched, and which new cars would be spotted, just as a convenience for the following session. I often pair op sessions over a weekend, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and with the “actions” list, it is quick and easy to re-stage everything for Sunday, merely returning to Saturday’s starting arrangement.

But since then, the list has proven to have other uses. I can readily check back on previous sessions and see what sequences had been followed, and decide if I want to continue them, or go in different directions. I also have a record of how heavily certain favorite cars have been used, and can make sure to rotate them off the layout so that I can bring into play as many cars of my fleet as possible.

To illustrate the amount of information, I show below the “actions” from the two sessions I hosted last April for the ProRail operating event (for my commentary on it, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/prorail-2024.html ). These were my 90th and 91st sessions on the present layout. I don’t mean for readers to examine this image (unless it’s really interesting), but only to show the sheer volume of data represented. Though the main goal originally was the re-set, I’ve found it to be a real tool for session planning. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

Because the list shows me what was set out and picked up in the previous session, often I concentrate on pickups and set-outs at industries that were not switched in the prior session, then fine-tuning the numbers of each local train for the branch, so things will work all right. The goal is interesting and enjoyable sessions for visiting operators, and good sequences of industries served for my vision of the layout.

This also applies to through freight trains. I regularly cycle the cars in these trains to maintain variety, and they rarely or never operate in successive sessions in identical consists. Below is an example of eastward timetable freight No. 916, just reaching Shumala on the layout.

I feel that there is more to say on this, and likely I will return to the topic in future posts.

Tony Thompson

Small project: a Maine Central gondola

In 1939, the Maine Central Railroad received an order of 150 low-side steel gondolas, 40 feet long, numbered 17000–17149. They were evidently durable cars; by the time I model, 1953, all 150 were still in service. A recent discussion of these cars on the Steam Era Freight Cars list (or STMFC) made me think about them.

Do I need a model of one of these cars for a layout set on the West Coast? No, but such a car certainly might appear anywhere in the United States, so it could fit in. I believe it was Tim O’Connor who observed that small railroads, or small car groups like this one, are statistically invisible in the national freight car fleet by themselves, but in total, they add up to well over 5 percent of the fleet. So you do need to have a selected few.

A good prototype photo, shown by Tim O’Connor on STMFC, shows one of these cars at Everett, MA on July 2, 1950. The car has the round “Pine Tree” herald, introduced about 1949, but the as-built cars had the “Box Name” emblem, and many cars continued to carry that paint scheme as late as the 1960s.

This is of interest because years ago, Ertl Models introduced a low-side 40-foot steel gondola model in HO scale. I picked up one in Atlantic Coast Line markings, though the model does not match the ACL cars of this type (which is why it was still in the box). The model was manufactured in China and is ready-to-run, with free-standing grab irons and sill steps. The “wood” floor in this photo needs to be trimmed to fit better.

The models also have quite a nice underbody, with all equipment well presented.

While reading the STMFC discussions, including the point that drawings by Chuck Yungkurth of these MEC gondolas were in the May 1989 Railroad Model Craftsman, it occurred to me I could repaint my model and letter it for MEC. As it happens, Highball Graphics makes a Maine Central set that can letter several different freight cars, including this gondola, set F-218 (see it at: https://highballgraphics.com/product/maine-central-steam-era-freight-equipment/ ). I ordered a set. 

Then I went ahead and repainted the Ertl car body black, while masking the couplers and temporarily replacing the trucks with my “paint shop trucks.”

With that paint in place, I proceeded with the nice Highball Graphics decals. These were straightforward to apply, though possibly a little oversize for the gondola.Here’s the lettered model, still on its “paint shop” trucks.

With lettering completed, I weathered the outside of the car moderately, and the inside considerably more. My method was my usual approach using washes of acrylic tube paints (for more on this, see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of the present post). This dulls the lettering, along with softening the stark black car color. With that step finished, I added a coat of clear flat, followed by a few chalk marks and route cards.

This simple project, repainting and re-lettering an existing ready-to-run model, has been interesting and, as I always feel when completing f freight car project, definitely fun.

Tony Thompson

SP piggyback, Part 4: progress on the 3D models

In this series of posts about Southern Pacific’s early piggyback operation, I provided historical photo coverage, including the flat car conversions that SP made for the original service. That particular post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/sp-piggyback-part-3-piggyback-service.html .) Now I want to turn to modeling of these flat cars and their trailers.

Last fall, I posted about some superb HO scale models 3D-printed and given to me by Andrew J. Chier, models of Pacific Motor Trucking (PMT) piggyback trailers, and two of the Southern Pacific’s original piggyback flat cars. (PMT was an SP subsidiary.) I included in that post a photo of AJ’s own completed models. Since then, I’ve been slowly progressing with completing these models, and that’s the subject of the present post. (You can see that previous post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/more-amazing-3-d-printing.html .).

My first step was to free the trailer bodies from their as-printed supports, clean them up with care (because small details are fragile), and then give them a coat of primer. I used Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (White)” for this. Below are two of the trailers, as primed. The excellent and complete detailing of these models is even more evident with the light color of the primer.

I did the same white primer on the flat cars, and then painted them with the Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (Oxide Red).” It’s a bit too red for SP freight car color, but when weathered, the difference won’t be very evident. As with the trailers, the remarkable thing about this 3D-printed model is the completeness, with all the trailer support and tie-down equipment in place.

The question can certainly  be raised about the photo above, whether any of the trailer equipment was a different color than the car body. I believe, after reviewing a great many photos, that the answer is “no.” 

The prototype image below will show what I mean. It shows the relatively new piggyback terminal at the site of Los Angeles Shops, with trailer unloading in progress. It’s part of an SP company photo, dated 1955, and the complete photo is in my Volume 3 of the series, Southern Pacific Freight Cars, on pages 284–285. I can see no indication that anything differs from body color.

Next I needed to add weight to the flat car. The design of AJ’s model cleverly allows for this, with a pocket in the underframe. I showed this in the previous post (link in uppermost paragraph of the present post). I cut some 3/8-inch lead sheet from McMaster-Carr to fit, and attached it with canopy glue. Since it will be invisible, I haven’t painted the lead. The remainder of the underframe, not shown here, is a part that fits right on top of this.

In addition to this sheet of lead, there is a 3D-printed frame part that goes over it, and that part has effectively “pockets” that permit adding additional, smaller pieces of lead sheet. Again, I fixed these in place with canopy glue. In this way, the weight can be raised to the vicinity of the NMRA standard for this car length.

From here, the flat car project is ready for the details to be added (grab irons, sill steps, brake staff and wheel) and also lettering. The trailers are primed and are ready for their red and orange paint. I’ll turn to all that in a future post.

Tony Thompson

More distinctive flat car loads

I have always enjoyed making and operating flat cars with distinctive loads, and am always on the lookout for additional opportunities to make them. Almost always, I make them removable, so that loads delivered on my layout can be picked up as empties in a following session. This post begins a series about two more loads, in these cases fairly distinctive ones. 

The first one I’ll describe is a load I’ve owned for some time, a marine boiler. I’m not sure of the source (a reader may know), but it sticks in my mind that it was from Chooch. Anyway, its width will fit on an HO-scale flat car, with the boiler’s long axis parallel to the length of the car, and that is one way to mount it. I prefer removable loads, and this one will be that way too.

I did wonder about what kind of marine boiler this might be, and my friend Ben Hom (a shipboard engineer during his time in the Navy), directed me to some excellent resources. First, the Wikipedia entry for Scotch marine boilers, as this type was known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_marine_boiler . 

In the above model view, the closed opening at the bottom is where fuel enters the combustion chamber, the middle section above that is a fire-tube boiler, and the steam is collected in the top part with the heavier bolts. The inside of this is shown in the side-view cross-section below, from the Royal Navy’s Stoker’s Manual of 1912, which can be found on the Wikimedia page for Scotch boilers. Path of hot gasses is shown by red arrows, movement of water in the water space is in black arrows.

In looking at the numerous photos of loads of this general kind, I always recall a group of Southern Pacific photos taken when their home-built Class F-70-4 depressed-center cars were new. It was during the run-up to World War II, and the photos show marine boilers being delivered on these cars to the shipyard in Richmond, California for use in Liberty ships. Here’s one of them, with the SP car in the foreground; note the light color of the boilers:

For more about the Liberty ships and their boilers and steam engines, I would recommend a really interesting and complete report on the topic (see it at: https://ww2.eagle.org/content/dam/eagle/publications/company-information/workhorse-of-the-fleet-2019.pdf ).

A close-up of the boiler still loaded on the car is also illustrative, because you can see the tie-down method (it looks like cable, but could be steel strapping). Note that the drum-shaped boiler is a bit wider than the car. Incidentally, SP’s notes on the photo state that this boiler weighed 52 tons, so a flat car of 70-ton or more capacity would be needed. Here again, the three combustion chambers are at the bottom, the fire tubes are in the middle, and the steam section is at the top.

Since I had a second model boiler like the one shown at the top of this post, I cut it down so that it could be mounted “cross-wise” like you see on the SP car shown above. It’s shown below after painting, a light color like the boilers shown in the SP photos. This is the “back” of the boiler, compared to the photo above.

I was interested to know more about how this boiler worked, so I did spend some time with a serious book on the topic (Steam: Its Generation and Use, 38th edition, published by Babcock & Wilcox, New York, 1972), but didn’t find much help. Evidently the Scotch marine boiler was not of great interest to Babcock & Wilcox.

I have been exploring simple bracing for securing the boiler. The SP photo above, showing the load on the car, seems to have really minimal bracing, and tie-downs over the top of the boiler, so I will do the same. I’ll continue with that part of the topic in a future post.

Tony Thompson