Model Railroading > Why the transition era is popular

As a follow up to Jason's thread below ( https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?3,4463208,page=1 )I was thinking about why I believe many modelers model the "Transition Era" even tough they didn't experience it.

The most common reason that's given is that you can have both steam and diesel engines operating. It was also the last "Golden Era" of passenger train travel so you can have great looking passenger trains. Both are good reasons but I have another one. Layout size.

If you don't belong to a club layout or have a lot of space for a layout you are forced into having a small layout. Smaller cars look better on small layouts. Since the last era where 40 footers were the most common was the 50's it drives people to model that era. 40' cars work great on small layouts and don't look out of place going through #4 and #5 turnouts. 50' cars still work but not quite as well. 60' cars just don't look right on small layouts. They need bigger turnouts and bigger buildings to look right.

So in Jason's discussion the question was asked why the 60's aren't popular to model. In some ways people who are modeling the transition era may really be modeling the 60's. When people see 40' cars they automaticly think 1950's transition era but they were still common into the 60's. Modified 40' cars were used all the way up into the 80's but were overshadowed by 50 and 60 footers. So if you are modeling the 80's having a long train of 40 footers just doesn't look right.

So as my kids get closer to finishing college and the possibility of a bedroom (or two if I punch a hole through the wall) becomes available for a big layout I'm looking to be moving away from the transition era into the 70's and 80's where I had the most fun trainwatching. Maybe I should be spending my time modernizing 40' cars so they will be at home on a new layout.

wingomann Wrote:
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> As a follow up to Jason's thread below (
> https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?3,
> 4463208,page=1 )I was thinking about why I believe
> many modelers model the "Transition Era" even
> tough they didn't experience it.

There is a lot of interest what with both steam and diesel, and shorter cars so easy to see the attraction. Definitely a significant number of people who are into transition and yet have no personal memories of it. In fact while my special interest is late 1970's thru early 1980's D&RGW and SP which I did see but I have made a nod to transition myself by buying an IMRC Cab Forward and am slowly collecting 40' ice reefer fleet and some early 1950's era freight cars.

It can be frustrating to try to model later time periods with little space. I just tore down a 10x18' round the walls layout and I could run 20-25 car trains of 50 and 60' box cars, but it seemed like it was just a glorified tail chaser. Granted I could run those trains into a big staging yard and back out gain, but only rail fan at best.


> So as my kids get closer to finishing college and
> the possibility of a bedroom (or two if I punch a
> hole through the wall) becomes available for a big
> layout I'm looking to be moving away from the transition
> era into the 70's and 80's where I had the most fun
> train watching. Maybe I should be spending my time modernizing
> 40' cars so they will be at home on a new layout.

My daughter just finished college and with that financial burden over with my wife and I moved to a larger basement so I'm also looking forward to a bigger layout. Actually the basement isn't huge but I should be able to squeeze in a decent layout with a longer run if I keep my bench-work and isle fairly narrow. I could use some modernized 40' box cars myself as I have very very few of them - but there were actually a fair number still running around in the late 1970's from what I've seen. I've added a few Accurail 40' box cars that I've found are decent matches to some real GN and NP cars for example.

So punch a hole in the wall and build a bigger layout. Make it happen! It isn't hard to patch walls if need be some day! I've had some practice with drywall and mudding and found it isn't that hard - good thing cause I have a lot of drywall to hang in the new basement which is only framed in but otherwise unfinished.

Cheers, Jim

I asked a similar question a while back.

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?3,4312797,4312797#msg-4312797

I have to say that even since then I backdated my era of main concern to the early 1980's. Since then I thought of another reason for the Transition Era to be so popular. Even by the early 1980's loose car railroading was in decline and being replaced by trucks or piggyback or simply the industries that generated the loose car traffic were no longer there. The Transition Era has an unlimited amount of loose car traffic. Model railroading in general has shifted away from trains making endless laps around a layout and more toward operations. Add in JMRI or other computer programs that can generate switch lists and now your railroad has a purpose and the cars actually feel like they are going somewhere for a reason. Although any era can do this the Transition Era still had the spur into every industry that makes operations.

No I am not going to the dark side, er I mean Transition Era.

Jim

I model that era because I lived it.
And because passenger trains had character, not a monotonous sameness. I model the SP and Santa Fe, because they both came through Mojave, and the UP because I like their passenger trains!
(And a California Zephyr because I rode it a couple times and it once detoured through here).
That's what is so great about this hobby - its inherent freedom!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Because that's the era, we few living, recall.

Loose car railroading, billboard box cars, LCL, huge variety of lineside customers, first gen diesels, steam, interlocking towers, freight houses, colorful passenger trains--many with enroute switching such as set-off sleepers and express cars--it's all there.

I wouldn't consider any other era.

And as many have said, it's the era in which railroading first grabbed my attention. You can keep you graffiti-laden 60 and 80 foot long freight cars. I love my traditional 40 footers (and can fit many more of them in a train).

Art House

aehouse Wrote:
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> I love my traditional 40 footers
> (and can fit many more of them in a train).
>
> Art House

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the two. The cool thing about 1979 is all of the colorful 50' per diem box cars that joined the ranks of the many fallen flags still common, along with 40' box cars still in service.

That said, transition era has a lot of cool features and characteristics. Hard part of that period for Rio Grande modelers is lack of affordable/accessible standard gauge steam engines. It's basically brass or nothing, save a couple of plastic exceptions which were very uncommon on the D&RGW anyway (UP challenger type steam engines which were short lived and second hand mallets acquired from eastern roads.).

Cheers, Jim Fitch

Ironically some of the models coming out from the top of the line model companies (Genesis, Moloco, Tangent) focus on the late 60ies and cover the 70ies.

Rick

rschonfelder Wrote:
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> Ironically some of the models coming out from the
> top of the line model companies (Genesis, Moloco,
> Tangent) focus on the late 60ies and cover the
> 70ies.
>
> Rick

Which is why Genesis, Moloco and Tangent are among my top favorite brands. Some have more or less coined the 1960's and 1970's period the "second transition" period, and it seems to be gaining popularity as the classic transition period is slowly fading. I don't think the classic transition period will go away however.

Cheers, Jim

Rick,
Good point (and don't forget Rapido). I think what you are seeing there goes back to what happened in the 1980s-1990s boom of model railroading - when the manufacturers concentrated their production on the transition era and the modern cars (of that time). With some exceptions they shied away from the 1960s cars. Now they are going back to do those cars and capitalize on the multiple owners and 4+ decades of paint schemes.

Another factor involved was with roofwalks on boxcars... Although not quite correct there were many who associated boxcars with roofwalks to being transition era cars, and boxcars without roofwalks as being "modern".

These days manufacturers doing boxcars are more likely to be thinking about multiple versions, both with and without roofwalks, which allows them to more accurately do more of the 1960s and early 1970s cars... Even Kadee has offered some cars sans roofwalks.

BTW, 60' and 86' boxcars were common by the early 1970s, some 25+ years before any graffiti (other than the simple small chalk monikers) was common... (Many of the Big E videotapes shot during the late 1990s show entire trains without any graffiti at all, and I think 2006 was the first time I saw a train with every car having been vandalized) I refer to post-2006 as the "graffiti era" of railroading.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/18 10:30 by CSX602.

Graffiti was still pretty rare in the early 1990s. I saw a few graffitied cars at that time but they were unusual enough to be noteworthy. I saw my first tagged locomotive in California in 1992, and graffiti has long been worst in southern California.

My collection, and modeling intention, is targeted toward 1990, which is just a couple of years after my interest in trains went beyond, "Look, a train, that's pretty cool" to actually developing an understanding of rail operations. By the early 1990s the only place one was likely to find traditional 40' boxcars in revenue service was handling Canadian grain from prairie branchlines with track too spindly to accept 100-ton hoppers. A few of those cars made their way to Vermont feed mills served by CP, which is where I saw them in 1991. Since I don't intend to represent anything in northern Vermont, I won't be adding any 40-foot boxcars of that style. I'd certainly buy a few, though, if somebody made the modern SP ones that were used well into the 1990s to haul copper anodes out of Arizona, since many of them made their way to a Phelps-Dodge plant in Yantic, Connecticut.

SPDRGWfan Wrote:
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>
> I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the two.
> The cool thing about 1979 is all of the colorful
> 50' per diem box cars that joined the ranks of the
> many fallen flags still common, along with 40' box
> cars still in service.
>

I model 1980 and one of the things that has struck me about photos from that era is just how many 40' boxcars were still in service. The roofwalks may be gone, but they were still very useful cars.

-Jason

rapidotrains Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SPDRGWfan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the two.
> > The cool thing about 1979 is all of the colorful
> > 50' per diem box cars that joined the ranks of the
> > many fallen flags still common, along with 40' box
> > cars still in service.
>
> I model 1980 and one of the things that has struck
> me about photos from that era is just how many 40'
> boxcars were still in service. The roofwalks may
> be gone, but they were still very useful cars.
>
> -Jason

Back in the 1980's I knew just enough to be dangerous. I assumed since roof walks were something I didn't see in California and had heard box cars stopped being made with them in the mid 1960's, and removed from the rest, that all box cars should be without them. So I made it a point to remove roof walks from all my models. I had a similar perception about 40' box cars for the late 1970's thru early 1980's time so I avoided 40' model box cars save a couple of baby hi-cubes.

During the past few years I've been re-visiting both the subjects of roof walks and 40' box cars, as well as fallen flags. Photo research and discussion with modelers I'm finding that while roof walks were being removed after the initial date set for compliance in 1974, quite a few box cars were still roaming around with them into the 1980's (the compliance date was pushed back until 1983).

OTOH, I don't recall there any rules regarding 40' box cars other than efficiency and age putting the steadily out of service. However, with photo research I am finding 40' box cars were still mixed in around the 1980 time frame. With those things in mind, I'm not avoiding box cars with roof walks (such as Moloco) and I am filling in some 40' box cars bit by bit to try to have a roughly prototypical mix. I do need to get some decal sheets so I can add the ACI plates and COTS stencils etc., wheel dots etc. that would have been added to the box cars missing them, and weathering too - a skill I need to develop.

Cheers, Jim Fitch

While there may have been a compliance date of 1983, a handful of boxcars snuck through later than that. I remember seeing one at a lumberyard in Connecticut around 1990, and it was definitely still in revenue service.

On the 40' boxcars... Whereas I do recall seeing some normal height 40' boxcars in the late 1970s and early 1980s most were in yards (stored) or MOW service. (One favorite was a Chessie MOW green 40' boxcar that had a basketball backboard and flip-down hoop on the side) Perhaps in some areas of the country 40' boxcars were in captive service in duties they had been assigned for decades, but the general poor condition of the 1950s and 1960s built general service 40' and early 50' boxcars is what prompted the per diem boxcar revolution, and once that started the 40' boxcars were pretty uncommon to see (but because of that uniqueness did draw the attention of photographers).

CSX602 Wrote:
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> On the 40' boxcars... Whereas I do recall seeing
> some normal height 40' boxcars in the late 1970s
> and early 1980s most were in yards (stored) or MOW
> service. (One favorite was a Chessie MOW green
> 40' boxcar that had a basketball backboard and
> flip-down hoop on the side) Perhaps in some areas
> of the country 40' boxcars were in captive service
> in duties they had been assigned for decades, but
> the general poor condition of the 1950s and 1960s
> built general service 40' and early 50' boxcars is
> what prompted the per diem boxcar revolution, and
> once that started the 40' boxcars were pretty
> uncommon to see (but because of that uniqueness
> did draw the attention of photographers).

Maybe Jason's reference to 40-footers still being common in the early 1980s was based on his own experience in Canada? They survived there in grain service much longer than in the US because of light-rail branches serving rural elevators that couldn't handle heavier cars.

CP Rail used 40' boxcars with the roofs ripped off in captive wood chip service in northern Ontario into the 1997 at least.

Jim

Regarding 40' box cars, some regions were probably varied from one another. I am using photo's of freight trains in my period of interest as a rough guide to my roster and model trains. Prior this research, I had essentially no 40' box cars and now only have a handful. I imagine they were pretty rare by 1079 or so in average freight trains so I don't plan on loading up too much on them.

Cheers, Jim

Yes, I'm aware of the use in Canada... and that there were 40' boxcars converted for Manitoba service even in 1986-87.

But down here in the US the per-diem 50' fleet put the 40'ers out to pasture earlier...