dave1905

Stored engines. Several places like this across the system.

Options would be a roof from Bethlehem Car Works, a chunk of Northeastern milled wood roof material or modifying the roof from a couple Athearn round roof coaches.

Nice job. Being a Reading Co. Modeler, I always like to see the RBMN or R&N.

Since Jack's area of focus is the 1950's in upstate New York, I pointed my answers that way. Yes, in the more suburban, upscale homes in the 1960's and more commonly in suburban homes in later years would have "decorative" wood fireplaces, and then possibly a wood pile. Over the years we had some "suburban homes" that had wood fireplaces but never had a wood pile, we never used the fireplace that much.

Addition: If it is a more rural home with a wood burning fireplace (typically a home from the 1800's or earlier) it will have a wood pile. More urban homes in cities and towns will be less likely to have a wood burning fireplace unless they also date from the 1800's and haven't been converted to coal or oil by the 1950's.

Yes

In the 1940's, 1950's propane wasn't a thing in the rural US. Heating and cooking in cities and towns was mostly coal in the east, often anthracite coal, and oil in the west. Coal was later replaced by oil and then after that by natural gas or propane. Often homes and businesses had a bunker in the basement under the house or porch with a small metal hatch that coal would be loaded into or they had a coal box in the back. Obviously in a very poor or rural area, if they couldn't afford coal they would use wood. You mentioned the "Waltons", since they owned a sawmill, it would only be logical for them to use wood . In 6th through 9th grade, I lived in a house in Pennsylvania that had a coal bunker under the front porch, with an oil tank in it and the furnace was a former coal fired furnace with an oil burner installed in the side. Conditional answer. Yes, cordwood was used. No it wasn't universal. The more urban an area the more likely to use coal, the closer to a railhead the more likely to use coal. The closer to the 1960's the more likely to use oil. Propane in the 1940's and 1950's would be relatively rare.

When the automatic air brake applies, it also applies the independent. The "2nd" hose is used to release the independent without releasing the automatic.

Yes, newer and bigger power was cascaded down to branchlines. The rail wasn't as much of a problem as were bridge capacities. As bridges were upgraded, bigger power could be used. Even today, SD40's and SD60's have been cascaded to branchline power on runs that saw GP38's 30 years ago and GP7's 50 years ago and smaller 2-8-0's and 4-6-0's 100 years ago. Conversely, railroads would retain some of the older power to operate on light branch lines as long as they could. A lot of small engine's last gasps were as branchline power.

The C&EI car is Athearn. NYC 165298 is a model of a rebuilt USRA single sheathed car. You can see the bottoms of the steel truss framework below the car sides.

Don't know what you mean by "straight air". They are main reservoir, independent application and release and independent actuating. Main reservoir connects the main reservoirs on all the engines (which supply air to the whole air brake system on the train.) Application and release apply and release the engine brakes. Actuating allows the independent brakes to be released while the train brakes are applied.

The black hose in the center is the automatic air brake train line (all engines). The three black hoses on either side are the engine brake hoses (almost all engines). The big red cables are multiple unit control (MU-electrical control connections between consisted engines) and the head end power supply (lights and power in the trailing cars). Almost all engines have a MU cable connection but only passenger engines have a power supply cable. The small cables on the sides are most likely signal, auxillary power and control lines to the passenger cars (only passenger engines).

The UP engine would have never been used outside the roundhouse/shop area. It would not have been used for commercial switching.

Pretty much anything that could be loaded on a flat car or gondola, and can fit through a narrow door, can be shipped in a gondola. I use mine to ship pig iron.

Do you have an idea where you want to enter the US and where you want to end up? If you also want to visit New York, riding the Sunset limited will be less convenient.

I would suggest using #6 switches for the yard. Real yards use #10 or larger but that will be waaaaay overkill for a model railroad. Most of the coal to California was going for export, we used to have a few moves to LA but the stopped in the 1990's. Modern ties are larger than those in the 1950's. They don't use 8 ft ties very much anymore, most main track ties are 9 ft and yard ties are 8'6" on 24 in or so spacing. Standard UP main track rail weight is 136 lb. The UP was part of a run through intermodal service between Atlanta and LA. It operated over the NS to Mississippi, then over the KCS to Shreveport and the UP to LA. LASER service.

It changes with the origin and evolution of the railroad. If it's a branch or short line that has had part of it abandoned, the "terminus" will probably be at a runaround or just short of a bridge (less expense to maintain). Since before the abandonment that was just a station in the middle of the run, the "new" terminus won't have any facilities more than what it had as a station in the middle. If it was a branch or short line that was built and intentionally had a terminus at the end, then it might have turning facilities, a yard, engine facilities, etc. If it's a branch line of a railroad that was spun off as a short line, it might not have any engine facilities at all anyplace on the line because the larger railroad that it was part of, kept its facilities at a larger location, not on a branch. In that case the short line might have minimal facilities created or recycled from previous tracks. Most likely the facilities would be closer to the connection with the larger railroad than further away. If you put the critical facilities at the end of the line then every day, every train has to operate the entire line. If you put the facilities closer to the connection then you only have to operate over the portion of the line that has traffic on that day. A modern short line will have minimal capital investment, so they won't add any new facilities above what they absolutely have to and will try to minimize fixed facilities. In other words, rather than build a fueling rack, they will fuel direct from a truck. Rather than building a run around, they will use two engines, one on either end of the cut. Depending on which scenario you are modeling, the terminus could look very different and which one you choose, can be used to support the backstory of the layout.

A lot of it depends on what you mean by "terminus". Minimal is just a pile of dirt over the end of the track. No depot, no nothing. When I hi-railed the Texas-New Mexico Sub back in the 1980's, it just ended in the middle of a pasture. Never actually saw the end of the line, we just hi-railed until the grass was over the tops of the wheels and we couldn't see the track anymore. No wye, no depot, there was a spur to an industry a mile or so back and a runaround another 5 or so miles further south.

Actually that type of looting has been going on for decades outside many intermodal terminals across the US (and probably the world). It's just that LA is the biggest terminal in the US and a news crew finally woke up and noticed it. As the railroad has explained, they can catch the looters, but they have to turn them over to the city to prosecute. Most of the crimes are low level so involve a relatively small fine and little or no jail time. I know in Chicago looters were stealing jet skis out of containers. I have seen intermodal terminals with double 12 ft chain link fences with the space between them filled with concertina wire around the perimeter. More fencing than some prisons. And stuff was still stolen from cars.

The signal number, typically a 4 digit number, the first three being the milepost and the last the signal number. Here is a picture of an SP semaphore signal. It would be near milepost 507. Picture from : Railroad Signals (USA): Explained, Meaning, Examples (american-rails.com)

Red - Stop and proceed - Stop and proceed at restricted speed Yellow - Approach - Reduce speed immediately to 30 mph and be prepared to stop at the next signal Green - Clear - Proceed This is normally an intermediate signal, so there are no switches or rail crossings or derails involved. It's just a signal alongside the track. It doesn't give authority to operate on that track, something else does (train order, schedule, track warrant, CTC signal, etc.) All it's doing is relaying track conditions, is something happening in the two intermediate blocks ahead of it. On a real railroad, it can be red for any number of reasons. There could be a train (which would require a failure on the part of another train or the dispatcher), it could be a car rolled out of a track, it could be a switch open on the main, it could be a broken rail, it could be a "bond" wire connecting the individual rails broken, it could be there was freezing rain and the ice broke a signal wire on the pole line, it could be the wind was really strong and caused the wires on the pole line to wrap around each other, or even somebody has stolen or cut a signal wire on the pole line. Yes, individual railroads had their own take on signals, but then engineers were hired on one railroad and tended to operate on that railroad their entire career. When you pass the same signals every day for a 30 year career, it's not too confusing. Modelers tend to look at a bunch of sources (often not even one for the railroad they are modeling) and get confused. There are also signals for higher speed operations that some railroads didn't use because frankly they didn't operate at those speeds. As mergers happened railroads had to absorb the signal systems of the railroads they acquired, so the signal rules became more complex. However, from the standpoint of the crews, if their territory only used 10 aspects before the merger, they will only use 10 of the now 20 aspects after the merger. The complexity comes when crews run over new territories (change working areas) or get trackage rights over other railroads. But they have to get qualified on those territories before they can run on them. That entails making several student trips (or in the modern world, runs in a simulator) over the new territory.

Correct, the convention is that the colored side faces the oncoming train and they are generally (but not always) placed to the right. By the way, in the majority of US rule books, the signal shown above cannot display a "Stop" signal. The most restrictive it can display is "stop and proceed", the number plate makes it a stop and proceed signal, a train would stop at the signal and then proceed at restricted speed, prepared to stop short of train, engine, obstruction or switch not properly lined, looking out for broken rails. Generally they are intermediate signals, that is signals between sidings.

Don't think its Athearn. More like a AHM/IHC car. It has "pizza cutter" flanges on the wheels which is typical of a European produced model not an American made one. I has a roof and roof walk design that no Athearn cars used. There should be clues on the bottom.

There were some routes that normally had through cars between the western states and the eastern states, or between the Northeast and the South. many of the cars were exchanged at union stations at major interchange cities (Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, New Orleans). They were also common where railroads jointly operated a train (CNW-UP, MP-DRGW-WP, CRIP-SP).

One has to realize that that bad track is in industry tracks, industrial leads or branchlines/short lines that are one step above abandonment. For every mile of that looks like that there are dozens of miles of higher speed (50-60-70 mph) main track.