Liberty Industrial Spur

[FCIN]

I have been wondering what difference in operations there would be for a container plant in the early 70's, what freight cars would it receive?

If we're talking early 70's (prior to 1976) you wouldn't see any RBOX or short line IPD cars and no pressure differential type covered hoppers, but your corn starch might be delivered in Airslide covered hoppers or at least pneumatic discharge type covered hoppers similar to what plastic pellets are transported in. They would just be smaller cars (like the old Athearn Centerflow model). A few of your cars would still have full height ladders and roof walks on them. I certainly remember seeing cars with full height ladders and roof walks well in to the early 70's. Any tank cars you might have would also be of an earlier design than what you see now.

Also, no CSXT, NS, BNSF reporting marks on cars - to name a few that didn't exist in the early 70's.

As for your NW-2E; other than the headlights and the mid-hood mounted number boards and no foot boards on the pilots, I don't see any big modifications that you'd have to make to your model, if you chose to do so. After market headlight parts should be easy to get, along with the number boards and it should be easy to remove the foot boards from the pilots.

As GEC suggests, you might be able to locate a few photos of cars on spot at such a facility or aerial views in the early 70's to give you a better idea, but you might spend a heck of a lot of time hunting.

Personally, I'd set the time period to be the late 70's and not worry so much about the NW-2 having been rebuilt. You'd have a lot more variety in the box cars that you could spot at your facility and modifying the NW-2 could make for a nice rainy afternoon project.