NE railroading in the late 1800s*help*

[jadebullet]

Hey guys. I need your help once again with a logic question.


I have decided to restart my Mayburry Northern project for the 4th time. Once I am finished with my route building comp route, I plan on starting a nice sized layout for my fictional railroad.

I have also decided that I want to model the railroad in the year of its birth, rather than the 1950s for the time being. (And eventually evolving it for different eras) The year in particular is 1889.

The state that I plan on modeling this in is unknown at the moment, but it is going to be set in the New England states, possibly Vermont.

I fully plan on starting small, with other smaller shortlines in the area that will eventually be merged with.

My main problem right now is that I really don't know alot about railroading in the late 1800s. Heck, I don't know much of anything in the late 1800s. I was just wondering if anyone knew of some good informative websites on this particular era, or knew of any pictures that I could look at.

Things that I need:
Pics of eastern towns and cities in the late 1800s
Pics of eastern railroading
Types of locomotive wheel arrangements that would be available to me.
Freight cars. (Probably alot of boxcars since they were hauling most things up until the late 1950s.)
Just stuff like this.

Any and all help is appreciated. Oh, and yes, I am still working on my other projects, such as the Bethlehem branch.

 

[jadebullet]

Actually, a quick update. For sake of ease, I have decided to up the date to the very early 1900s. Basically pre WWI.

 

[westrain]

Would this link help
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/
John

 

[UP5521]

well if you are looking for steam locomotives there are 4-6-0 ten wheelers, 2-6-0 moguls, 2-8-0 consolidations and even some 4-4-0 americans that might fit this time period but I don't know,though!

 

[jadebullet]

I have figured out that I can see when various wheel arrangements were first used on wiki.

Fallenflags helps to some extent, but not much.

I am mainly looking for information on how towns were built, especially before cars. That and cities.

Especially if anyone has any pics of what Portland, ME looked like around the turn of the century.

 

[Mick_Berg]

At a very mundane level, you could go to a bookstore and look through some of the big "coffee-table" type books that have been published on American railroading.
Mick Berg.

 

[barn700]

Maybe a little before the time slot, but have a look at my British 1850's stock, look on the right hand side for North British, as a lot of locos etc were exported from the UK to US.

Things were much smaller then, locos and rolling stock (and houses)

Trackwork was much lighter too

 

[JCitron]

Check out the forums at www.railroad.net. There's lots of good historical information there.

Also try this link here:

http://photos.nerail.org/

http://transit.nerail.org/new99/

Hope these help.

In addition, you might want to try old topomaps of New England.

http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htmhttp://docs.unh.edu

John

 

[bl4882]

You might want to try the Catskill Archive Railroad Extra here

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/Page0002.Html

It is short on pictures but has tons of background information, diagrams, etc.

Good hunting.

Bernie

 

[jadebullet]

Yes, this stuff is exactly what I am looking for.

By the way, does anyone have any pics of old engine terminals, like roundhouses and sheds and stuff from around the turn of the century? Particularly smaller scale stuff.

 

[Pencil42]

Shorpy (http://www.shorpy.com/historical-railroad-and-train-photos) has quite a few high resolution photographs. Most seem to be after the turn of the century, but there are quite a few from before as well. Google books is also a nice source of information - they've republished quite a few books from before the turn of the century. One in particular is the Car Builder's Cyclopedia from 1895 http://books.google.com/books?id=0U...lr=&num=30&as_brr=0&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false - the first section of the book is just standard definitions, like as in a dictionary, but the second half of the book is full of drawings and photographs of railroad cars and car parts.

Hope that helps a little!
Curtis

 

[Dap]

Jade,

I have done exactly what you are beginning. I am modeling a railroad historically, starting with it's first 3-1/2 miles of mainline track and its first 2-8-0 locomotive. It began in 1893 and by 1904 had 103 miles of mainline track. I started with a DEM of the terrain. I found maps from the era at http://www.historicmapworks.com that showed exactly where the streets and country roads were as well as the tracks and industries.

Most areas of the country have a Historical Society that collects photos and documentation on the local history. A Google search should turn up several for the towns and/or counties on your route. Some have websites. Others can provide photo copies via snail mail. I have found doing the research is as much fun as building the route. Plus, I get a thrill creating a screenshot that duplicates a 100 yr old photograph.

Pencil42 has created a ton of assets that work for this period. I have paintshopped a bunch of his 34' boxcars that you will probably want to use. These are lettered for roads of that era.

And railroad operations from this era were quite different than today. Lots of short trains and most of them on a timetable. Railroads were the only transportation available except for horse drawn vehicles. Yes, some stage coaches were still running remote rual routes in 1900 delivering the mail and an ocassional passenger. One town on my route has a horse drawn delivery wagon that drives the local streets using invisible track, making stops at all three passenger stations, two hotels, and various other businesses.

Best of luck.

 

[JRT]

Maybe you two should work together.

JRT