RobertInOntario Wrote:The '50s transition era is popular for a number of reasons but I was noting a personal fondness of it apart from the steam-to-diesel aspect.
Well, some more reasons (besides steam, which I don't model on my layout
) for why I picked Minneapolis in 1957 as my modeling locale and era:
I wanted to create a layout based on an American prototype - I had a yearning for a layout based on fairly early diesels, freight, switching. Preferably Minnesota, preferably Twin Cities, preferably late 1950s or early 60s.
Why preferably Twin Cities/Minnesota ? I wanted a US location I am somewhat familiar with and would have a fair chance to do research on. Minnesota is my "adopted" US state - the part of the US I am most familiar with, since my wife is from the Twin Cities and we visit the cities every summer. There is also an excellent history center in Saint Paul, which also has a large collection of photographs - much of it also available online.
Why preferably late 1950s ? 1950s diesels and 40' boxcars are smaller than more modern equipment, and the 1950s had a *lot* more businesses that were directly rail served than these days. Both of those are better when designing a small switching layout, which is what I had room for if I was going to do a H0 scale layout in my home.
There were still a lot of very cool looking diesel engines in interesting color schemes from at least four builders (GM/EMD, GE, Alco and FM) and owned by quite a few colorful and interesting railroads in this region in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
So I cast around and tried various ideas - I tried for the Minnesota Transfer Railway in the Midway area of Saint Paul, and worked up a design for that. It was tempting, since the MTRY ("The Mighty Midget") handled interchange for a lot of cool railroads :
* Milwaukee road
* Rock Island
* Great Northern
* Minneapolis & Saint Louis
* Chicago Great Western
* Omaha Road/C&NW
* Northern Pacific
* Soo Line
but the design just got too big & complicated to build as a first layout.
Then I looked into a freelanced generic urban 2x7 foot shelf layout. Nope - I wanted to model something based on/inspired by a real midwest prototype.
Then I looked at the Milwaukee Road along the urban "canyon" of huge elevators down along Hiawatha Avenue in South Minneapolis - very cool scenery with the huge elevators, but not varied enough traffic pattern - too much grain, too little other things.
Then I found a prototype that had a cool track plan, an interesting operating pattern (no runaround, used two engines to switch cuts of cars from either the east or the west) and a lot of interesting industries - Progressive Rail ca 2000 in Airlake Industrial Park in Lakeville, to the south of the cities.
But as I expended the Progressive Rail layout plan from 2x7 foot until it was a shelf layout all around the walls of a 6 1/2 x 11 1/2 foot room, I finally realized that I kept wanting to backdate Progressive Rail from 2000 to the late 1950s, and transplant it from a suburban industrial park to an urban neighborhood, so I again went a-looking again to see I couldn't find a more urban prototype.
And then I stumbled upon pictures of the Omaha Road (Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad) in the warehouse district of Minneapolis. The Omaha Road was owned by Chicago and Northwestern, and was fully absorbed into the C&NW in 1957. C&NW is one of the roads I also like, and there is a lot of C&NW rolling stock available.
The icing on the cake was that the Omaha Road West Minneapolis yards was located right next door to the yards of the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road, and the Great Northern and the Minneapolis and St. Louis ran right past the yard. It wouldn't look
too jarringly out of place if I fudged a little to add a wee bit of interchange traffic with some of these other roads to my layout.
I had found a time and place to base my layout on - urban Twin Cities, late 1950s, variety in loads and industries, and a plausible interchange with other interesting Minnesota railroads.
The Midwestern roads I find fascinating have become fallen flags, among these:
* The Omaha Road merged into the C&NW in 1957.
* The "Tootin Louie" (M&STL) merged into the C&NW in 1960
* The Chicago Great Western was merged into C&NW in 1968.
* The NP and the GN merged into the Burlington Northern in 1970 - and 1996 the BN was merged with the ATSF to form the BNSF.
* The Rock went bankrupt for the third (and final) time in 1975
* The Milwaukee Road was merged into the Soo Line in 1986, after being in strong decline since the early 1970s.
* The C&NW was merged into the UP in 1995
* The Soo line is today owned by the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
As for engines, I have a weakness for small switchers from Alco and GE and Alco RS-3 road switchers, but also wanted a few samples of other builders. I presently have 7 diesel engines for my layout, three or four of which I expect to be on the layout at the same time.
* CMO GE 44-ton switcher #51
* CMO GE 70-ton switcher #53
* CNW FM H16-44 #1514
* MSTL Alco S1 #142
* MILW Alco RS3 #2475
* GN Alco RS3 #228
* NP EMD GP7 #569
So - sure. It takes an interest in the roads and engines and rolling stock etc of the era as well - chosing the 1950s as a modeling era isn't
just about steam to diesel transition, and it isn't just about engines and rolling stock being generally shorter in the 1950s than i e.g. the post-1970 period.
Grin,
Stein