USA Steam Transition Era Rolling Stock - make your suggestions.

F

frogpipe

Yesterdayz Trainz Member
Off the top of my head, rolling stock circa 1950, in general terms, would have been:

  • Boxcar - Presently using lilb's 40' boxcars from JointedRail
  • Flatcar - Presently using lilb's from JointedRail
  • Gondola - Presently using lilb's from JointedRail
  • Tank Car - I assume a 39ft or 40ft but I haven't found one yet
  • Trailer On Flat Car - JR has these in TS12 already
  • Coal Hopper - I assume the USRA 55 tonners were still in commmon use at the time
  • Covered Hopper - Got a few from JR but they look too modern I think
  • Caboose - I insist on an interior so I have one from RRMods, it's good enough, but I wish it matched up with JR's rolling stock.

Now, for me, lilb's freeware represents my "baseline" for the bare minimum. Not that his cars are bare minimum at all, just that in 2012 I feel like animated hoses, sounds, auto running numbers, etc should be on all cars.

Needless to say this makes finding matching rolling stock is a little hard. Of course I expect someone will pop in a suggest some car with no details, blury textures, and couplers that look like 2 cubes - but that's what I'm trying to avoid.

I'm largely asking because I don't have an FCT, otherwise I'd "audition" some cars myself.

Thanks in advance for your consideration, and special thanks to lilb for his awesome work creating the great freeware rolling stock he has already.
 
Fitz505 got some tankcars which you might like. Dricketts made some reskins of those, also recommended.

Coal hoppers were amass available at USLW, made by Simulatortrains. He also made a very cool caboose.
I´m sure that those assets will be available soon again!
:)
 
Ok, so I DID see some at USLW.... I thought so, but wasn't positive.

That sucks. The sites been down forever...

EDIT: Do you know the CDP name? I *might* have it somewhere in my backups....
 
Last edited:
"Of course I expect someone will pop in a suggest some car with no details, blury textures, and couplers that look like 2 cubes - but that's what I'm trying to avoid."

Wouldn't want you to be disappointed... :D

I use a lot of Majekear's stuff, many are a little blury but most of his newer stuff is pretty good looking IMO. And there is a lot of it! You have to be picky but there are some real gems and many are 1950's era.

hoppers.jpg


I'm still looking for square hatch covered hoppers.
 
I would like to see/have a Pennsy H21 saw tooth 4 bay open hopper. I know there are lots of open hoppers but I want an older one from 30's~50's

Edit: PRR had 10 of thousands of these from the early clam shell doors to the later saw tooth doors.
 
Last edited:
Here's what was in use as of December 31, 1946, from the I.C.C.:

Box..........................734,176
Stock.........................55,440
Refer........................135,758
Flat............................69,728
Gondola & Hopper......880,562
Tank.........................143,214
Caboose......................24,944
Other..........................11,561
 
In my experience, the 1950's era cars most needed in trains fall into three categories: boxcars, tank cars, and hoppers. There were covered hoppers around, the old small PS2's and acf cars converted en masse in the 1970s to ballast service. Tank cars are sadly lacking. When one finds an image or film of a train of tank cars up until 1950, there were a variety of sizes, by several manufacturers. They are sorely lacking in game. Also, box cars; there are some older models, but they are almost all the same height, and again, if one looks at old images of film, one sees cars that were 8 ft, 8 ft 6 in, 9 ft, 9 ft 6 in, and 10 ft high, with diverse style of ends, doors and roofs. Doors on single door cars included versions 6 ft, 7ft, 8 ft, and 10ft wide; double door cars had door widths 12, 14, and 16; in some cases the double door cars had the door openings directly opposite each others, in others they were offset. There were also a large number of hoppers, although up until 1950, many of the cars were rated at 50, rather than 55 tone. These too, are sadly lacking in game.

One car mentioned in frogpipes list that is probably not needed, is the Trailer on Flat car. There were trailers carried on flat cars, but these were generally new trailers being transported to dealers. And while piggyback service experiments started earlier than most people realize (in the 1920s!), they were not at all common until the early 1960s.

ns
 
Covered hoppers tended to be pretty rare in the early to mid 50s. Most commodities that are hauled in covered hoppers were hauled in boxcars instead.
 
My covered hoppers at JR are a 1950s design. Not all the skins are correct, check the dates on the cars to see which are good. I also have a P&WV gondola over there.
 
I know more about coal hoppers than any of the other stuff so I'll offer advice on that. You'd mostly be seeing 55 or 50 ton hoppers then, but 70 tonners were starting to come into service in large numbers through the late 40s and 50s. N&W, PRR, and maybe VGN (can't remember off the top of my head) used them before then. Southern was a pioneer in 100 ton cars, but those are more of a 60s thing. When you get towards the end of the transition era and into the 60s the 55/50 ton hoppers are being relegated to "yellow ball service", I don't know if that is a railroad wide term or just a Southern thing, where basically they were used to move stuff from the mines to large transloaders where coal would be placed into new larger hoppers to be shipped to the customer. Those hoppers come in many shapes and sizes, but unless you are like me and into Appalachian coal roads you probably don't want to worry about it and can get away with the most common designs. One thing I would like to see is the war emergency hoppers that soldier on after World War II with modifications made once wartime steel rationing ended.

I have wanted all these cars you've mentioned since I started Trainz and was disappointed to see that the bulk of them are ancient and not up to par with new rolling stock. The USLW offset hoppers and all of lilb's great stuff is changing this so I have hope for the future. I've slowly been learning Blender to build them some of them myself over the past 5 months or so, but it is a pain.

Oh, and before I forget, I think USLW's payware store is still up even when the rest of the site is down and they have some really great Northeastern cabooses in a good variety of roadnames with interiors. There is also a freeware one in a generic USLW paint scheme if you want to demo it before buying.
 
I think he means to check the build date on the side. I was just thumbing through them and found a couple with mid-50s build dates. Some of them have later dates for repacking, rebuilds, etc. on them though.

There is a NE caboose in the fictional NM&W scheme on the Trainz Forge page. It still has all the features on the payware ones though if you just want to preview it until USLW is back.

http://trainzforge.weebly.com/cabooses.html
 
Unknown Location: <kuid:156765:100171>
Unknown Location: <kuid:156765:100400>
Unknown Location: <kuid:156765:1816>
Unknown Location: <kuid:156765:1817>
 
Can't believe I forgot to add the old ice reefers. I don't know the model, but the PFE 40' reefers were pretty common in the transition era.
 
I'll look, I think I have the bobbers in an archive...

Thanks for that image too, now I know what to look for. The only good refers I've seen so far were from Pencil42 - so they were older wood boxcars, damn nice, but a little older then I'm shooting for. :D
 
Fitz505 has some wooden reefers on the DLS that are pretty nice. I believe that they are within the time period you're looking for as well. I have some reskins of his tank cars on the DLS too.
Search "GN 38' Tank" and there should be five numbers of them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Slugsmasher's 3ft loco's & rolling stock !!!
2
Replies
24
Views
2K
rick1958
R
F
Rolling stock for 18 inch gauge track
Replies
2
Views
585
JAGG
J
P
Aliasing Rolling Stock assets
Replies
12
Views
1K
pware
P
D
Renaming rolling stock
Replies
5
Views
806
RHKluckhohn
R
C
LMR South 1960's (Twilight of Steam) Rolling Stock (2021)
Replies
0
Views
495
car112
C
Back
Top