Great Northern consist/freight cars/caboose pictures

[haddock57]

Morning all, i recently acquired a GN GP20 in Big Sky Blue and am looking for some pictures and info on what kind of freight cars were around in '68, the second year that the Big Sky Blue scheme was applied before the BN merger. This will likely be my last modeling project for a long while and i wanted to find something that i would be able to keep for a long time. If anyone has any slides/pictures/info on what the freight cars and cabooses were like in '68, especally reference and preferrably color slides or photos of the cabooses I would greatly appreciate any info or leads to where i could find the info.

thanks and happy Trainzing.

John AKA haddock57

 

[JCitron]

Hi John,

For the 1968 time period you are going to see freight cars from anywhere between the 1940s and 1950s up to the that year. So being a western route, the freight cars are going to be predominately western so you will probably get a bunch of DRG&W, UP, SP, GN, NP, SP&S, CNW, CGW, MILW, and many others I can't think of at the moment. I'm sure some eastern roads had equipment that would travel that way too, and since this is before the infamous PennCentral conglomeration you'll get plenty of NYC, PRR, and even NH&H cars along with CNJ, EL, Lackawanna, Erie (counting pre-1960s mergers), LV, and others because Conrail wasn't even a dream back then.

This is also a period when auto carriers were open so you'll have to have brand new cars and trucks exposed to the vandals and elements, and most box cars then still had roof racks and probably roller bearing trucks. Remember freight cars live a long life before they get scrapped so anything before is still good.

I went looking for pictures, but couldn't find anything on a cursory look. You might want to check YouTube for videos from GreenFrog Productions. They have a lot of videos from that time period and before.

John

 

[haddock57]

So 40' boxcars and hoppers would fit decent along with some more modern stock then. I already found a few covered hoppers, I know Conrail already had coil cars by then so hoping those will make a decent addition. I'm kind of at a loss as the style of hoppers for the GN, mainly coal hoppers. BLI's six-pack of GN hoppers is an attractive choice, but I've rather get single ones and split them a bit with others. Its the cabooses I'm after, as the steel center-cupola ones with the red paint and silver and black logo look nice with the Big Sky Blue colors.

 

[JCitron]

So 40' boxcars and hoppers would fit decent along with some more modern stock then. I already found a few covered hoppers, I know Conrail already had coil cars by then so hoping those will make a decent addition. I'm kind of at a loss as the style of hoppers for the GN, mainly coal hoppers. BLI's six-pack of GN hoppers is an attractive choice, but I've rather get single ones and split them a bit with others. Its the cabooses I'm after, as the steel center-cupola ones with the red paint and silver and black logo look nice with the Big Sky Blue colors.

Their covered hoppers are typical of the period and much smaller than their modern equivalents. The 40-foot and even 50-foot boxcars would fit right at home. As far as Conrail, no. You need to choose their original roads instead. Keep in mind that Conrail didn't appear until 1976. If you're going to run passenger trains, you'll also need to use the original railroads as even Amtrak wasn't on the scene until May 1971. By 1968 the railroads weren't running varnish the way they did before. The GN would have both the blue sky paint scheme mixed in with their green and orange on these trains. The caboose is about right too for the time period. They used cabeese that were similar to that used on other western roads at the time.

Check Green Frog videos. You'll see what I mean.

John