Model Forum / General / Railroads / June 2004

Santa Fe originally was painted blue with yellow stripes in places rather
than the warbonnet scheme back then.  I think that the warbonnet scheme came
after Amtrak started up.
As with all diesels, the number of cars pulled could vary a lot, depending
upon the loads/empties ratio and the grades.  I'd consider 10 cars on a
model layout to be a nice number of cars.

--
Bob May
Losing weight is easy!  If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less.
Works  every time it is tried!

Bruce

The renumbering into the 3200s dates from about 1970 and they were rebuilt
in the early 80s to look slightly different. As far as the details are
concerned I would suggest that you consult one of the specialist mailing
lists where you'll get probably more info than you really needed. If you
want to get funny about it decide on a location and build cars to carry the
traffic likely to be found in that place. Loads will depend on the terrain
and types of cars, but a pair of these will look really good with 30-40
cars.

Freight cars for it to pull? Since the loco scheme suggests the 70s then
there is huge number of different schemes and prototypes -  while there were
huge numbers of  older cars still in service, the 70s resulted in a huge
boom in boxcar building under the Incentive Per Diem scheme. This means that
a lot of apparently tiny railroads had large numbers of brightly coloured
cars roaming all over the country.  Research into this can be a complete
hobby on it's own, but I would suggest looking through back issues of Rail
Model Journal which is full of good ideas for 70s freightcars.  Don't overdo
the home road cars - you'll want to suggest a wider world beyond the
confines of the layout. Here are a few thoughts - I'm assuming general
freight service when I think about this rather than specialist operations.
Generally the Walthers and Branchline schemes are pretty accurate for their
chosen prototypes - Atlas will fudge things a bit but the cars are usually
of similar type, whereas Intermountain and Accurail will often do schemes
for various roads that don't really match the real cars on those roads.
Athearn Genesis cars are good - the old range less so.

Boxcars
I'd start by looking at the MDC PS 1900 series exterior post boxcar (which
does up nicely when given wire grabs), and can stand in for the Railbox cars
of the period or be kitbashed into a pretty accurate model. Also think about
the Branchline 50' Berwick boxcar and  similar cars for IPD paint schemes.
The Athearn 5800 series kits for the flat roofed Pullman boxcar can be used
for a late 70s setting. Accurail's ACF exterior post box is more convincing
as a model than the later Atlas version - I can't say quite why, but the
Atlas has something wrong about it; watch out for strange paint schemes on
the Accurail cars though.

There would also have been a good many older cars around - 40' and 50' AAR
cars like those offered by Branchline  lasted a long time as did the PS-1s
like the Kadee models thought they may have seen a repaint or two in the
intervening years.

Covered hoppers
Santa Fe had a good many hoppers generally similar to the P2K PS-2 CD
covered hopper. Also look at the Atlas ACF cars and with a bit of work the
similar, but subtly different Accurail car as well as the Atlas cars.

The Athearn steel caboose is a Santa Fe prototype. Some got sold off to the
Frisco in 77, but I don't know how many were still in mainline service by
this time.

I'm sorry this isn't comprehensive, but  really this becomes a whole new
research project for you . Ask focused questions and you'll probably get
intelligent answers. Join mailing lists and review the archives; use the
public library to get copies of books and go back over your magazine
collection for pictures (libraries and publishers will often arrange to
photocopy articles for a small fee

Aidrian
Also devoted to external combustion.