Woodies or Steelies?

[lajry]

Don't be "stuck" on just 40' cars. There were many 50' cars in the 50s. These includes boxcars, flat cars & gondolas. Exactly what kinds depends on the industries on your layout. Being a Santa Fe modeler, have you looked for track charts &/or CLIC books for your modeling area? Also look at aerial pix on Bing, Google &/or historicaerials.com. In the 50s many steam locos were being replaced by diesels on Santa Fe. In fact by 1956 most Santa Fe steam engines were gone & the few kept around were just for company excursions or railfan trips. According to Worley the last 2-8-0 was scrapped by 1954. So you might want to push your era back about 10 years. Also on a few branch lines, Santa Fe used doodlebugs to pull short freight trains (<7 cars).