Prototype modeling - how far can you take it?

[nkp_174]

Part of the beauty of prototype modeling in the 1880s is that my reporting marks are far more limited...sometimes not including capacity...just a car number and railroad initials.

1960s models argue about what shade was CB&Q red...1880s models argue if the reefers were white, yellow, or green

Many 19th century records were destroyed in the early 20th century...with major details being lost to history. Barney & Smith was the largest car builder before Pullman's day in the sun began. In 1878, they appear to have built 25 flat cars, 5 boxcars, and 3 passenger cars for the South Park...plus supplied hardware for 35 more freight cars. The actually B&S records were destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood of 1913. The South Park's records were destroyed in a fire around 1910. The newspapers did only a moderate job of recording the order...adding as many questions as answers. The C&S records seem to have confused the builders on them...and so we don't completely know. In order to create a plan for my B&S coaches, I studied photos and Ward Kimball's 1881 Barney & Smith coach that was delivered to the Carson & Colorado.

On the right is a photo of one of those models:


The other is a baggage car which is based on my modifications to plans drawn by John Maxwell from a photo. My modifications are based around the folio of the car as rebuilt after 1906 (Maxwell had a few of the dimensions wrong)...and my paycar is based on plans of its post-1911 business car configuration with detail changes based on photos of its cousin, the 1880s office car. Since these cars were built either by the South Park or UP shops, no records exist except the folios from 1916, but the real business car as well as a sister to the baggage car are left.

For my NKP stuff, I'll be narrowing it down much as Kevin has described...so that I get the locomotive rebuildings that I want, but not the diesels and Mars lights. Still, since I'm interest in the late '40s, it isn't anywhere close to as easy to nail.

I don't consider selective compression to be the same as freelancing...just as a model of an NKP berk doesn't run on steam, nor are there any real rivets in the tender. A town doesn't need to be modeled perfectly to scale to be prototypical.