Building A Fleet

Last month's Model Railroader article on freelancing made me think the topic of freelancing a fleet might be of interest to period modelers.  Over the last year or so, I have been working on developing a fleet that looks like a fleet.  It's proverbially the case that most equipment on a railroad belongs to that railroad, and that was even more the case a century ago than it is today.  When traffic was mostly short-haul, the cars stayed closer to home, and to give a freelanced layout the look of an actual railroad, it's important that you should have a lot of cars that carry your railroad's name and logo.

You can certainly slap decals on cars, but one thing to remember is that every railroad changes its presentation over time - so no fleet is completely homogeneous.  Railroads vary their liveries, logos, mottoes and color palettes over time, so even a fleet of home-road cars can be pretty varied.  Here's my take on how I tried to capture the look of a fleet over time.  One caveat: still at the stage where equipment comes on and off the layout fairly frequently, so nothing yet has been weathered, just painted, lettered, and covered with a protective lacquer layer to preserve the paint.  

Beginning (mid-1870s)

Early equipment markings were sparse, to say the least: usually just reporting marks and a car number.  These two cars were built from BTS USMRR kits with Rio Grande Models 5' trucks.  The decaling is reflective of the practices of the Central Pacific and other western carriers of that pre-1870 era: very minimal markings, and little or no guidance to the shipper or operating crews about things like load and capacity limits or clearances.  With a monochromatic scheme (Scalecoat Oxide Red), MicroScale Railroad Roman decal sheets provided most of the individual lettering for these cars (and most of the others on this page).  Applying individual letters is a time-consuming process and demands care and concentration, but if done properly, it can give a very good look on a sheathed wooden side.  Key to the process is the finish: I start with Scalecoat paint, which gives a glossy finish, always essential for decals.  I use a decal softener (usually something heavy on the vinegar, like Micro-Set decal softening solution, and use Walthers Solvaset (which is the strongest solvent I have found) to dissolve the decal film and hold the decal in place; a good absorbent cloth to blot the excess fluid is essential.  Once all the decaling is complete, I put on a flat coat (Testors Dullcote or a similar product) to remove the sheen and cover the decal film.  

Maximilist and Minimalist (late 1870s-early 1880s)

These two cars have liveries that are typical of the late 1870s-early 1880s.  Boxcars tended to be simpler, because they were built in large numbers, so the lettering on this one closely follows elements of that in this sample model on the website of the kit maker, also BTS.

Refrigerator cars, on the other hand, were individually built at a cost that would have bought multiple boxcars, so they got the fanciest schemes that the Gilded Age could devise.  The car itself is scratchbuilt roughly to a set of diagrams for a 28' refrigerator car in the 1879 "Car Builders' Dictionary."  The livery was applied one laborious letter at a time, and closely mimics a D&RG scheme from the early 1880s that is featured in Bob Sloan's "A Century Plus Ten Years of D&RGW Freight Cars."  Only the font is different, since I used Black Railroad Roman decals from Microscale.  The arched lettering was applied with a template, the rest was done with a ruler and great care.  The lettering is not identical to the D&RG car, but it is very close.  I would love to have two or three of these, but one is probably eye-catching enough, even apart from the time consideration - when you're applying this many decals by hand, it is a laborious process!

Faint Glimmers of Branding (early 1880s)

These two cars are sisters to those in the preceding section - a BTS PRR XA 28' boxcar on the left, and the second of two refrigerator cars I scratchbuilt using the 1879 plans (the side on this one was resin-cast using a mold that was made from the side of the white refrigerator previously shown, which was built up from wood, castings, and strathmore paper).  All told, I used three schemes for five 28' boxcars of the same type; this was meant to reflect the application and reapplication of liveries to the fleet as they changed over time.  In addition to the basic railroad name and car number, each car 28' boxcar comes with a capacity marking and a build date.  

The paint schemes reflect a pair of early 1880s refrigerator cars, one a DSP&P refrigerator and the other a D&RG car.  I did not originally intend to lay out similar schemes for a reefer and a box car, but I liked the "eyebrow" look, and so I experimented with it on the boxcar after doing it on the reefer - obviously, I used different fonts and templates, which accounts for very different looking curves.  I liked the "eyebrow" look, but not enough to settle on it as "the look" for the fleet.  Like the text-heavy reefer, a very few cars are enough to be eye-catching, and they make a nice and prototypical variation from the "standard look" that you should aim for with the fleet - once you find it.

Finding a Look..... (early 1890s)

After the eyebrow experiment, I decided to letter the last three of the BTS cars with an "arched" scheme, using a smaller lettering font, that mimicked a pattern used by the Northern Pacific in pre-WWI days.  The "sunset" look was perfect - and when I found a good picture of an NP reefer in Schenk and Frey's "Engines of Growth," I felt like I had the look I wanted - eye-catching, but not too elaborate, and with plenty of extra space for the extra legends that cars acquired as the years went on - capacity markings, build dates, safety compliance markings, etc.  I adapted the NP scheme to fit a freelanced 30' scratchbuilt reefer that was loosely based on the car in the photograph- albeit with some physical changes to make it look like a Tiffany patent car.  This car is a little cruder than most, as I tried out some techniques to replace castings with fabricated components (strathmore door hinges, a wire door lock system, handmade queenposts, etc.  The elaborate paint scheme helps to draw the eye away from some of the less successful elements of the job.

The NP car dated from the early 1890s, and one of the elements of the scheme that really attracted me was the diagonal "air brake" legend on one end of the car.  I first saw this years ago in a woodcut in "The American Railway," a volume originally published in 1888 to commemorate the first anniversary of national railroad regulation in America, and a great source of "period" information.  Before air brakes were universal, marking the side of an equipped car was a great aid to crews, since air braked cars had to be blocked together at the head of a train for the brakes to be usable.  I liked this scheme enough to decide that eventually, I wanted to use it when I painted and lettered new equipment in a post-1900 scheme.  

.....And Sticking To It (post-1900)

These cars exemplify the post-1900 look I wanted, and the two box cars were built from 34' Labelle Soo Line kits.  Each came with a full set of decals for the smaller data markings, so I only needed to hand-decal the company name, number, reporting marks, and the "air brake" legend.  I had some Tuscan Red I wanted to use up, and that color went on the center car, here; the left hand car was done as most of my boxcars are, in red oxide.  The Tuscan Red makes the lettering "pop" a bit more, and although I will probably do most of the boxcars in red oxide, the Tuscan Red cars look great.  The Soo Line cars are marked as built in 1888, and are small for their length, but the grabiron positioning in the kit diagrams is right for the post-1911 era, and they include a little decal (lower left hand corner of the car in these pictures) stating their compliance with the 1911 Act, so they're perfect for 1913.  

The yellow reefer is a good example of an old 36' Roundhouse car, bought second hand for less than ten dollars, painted but unlettered.  The lettering was the hardest part of the kit, but a pair of these added color and modernity to my refrigerator fleet, adapting the lettering scheme used on the other cars.  Taken as a whole, these cars give me about fifteen cars clearly marked for my home road, which (when combined with ore cars, gondolas, log cars, etc) is a sufficient number to give the "home road" feeling.