A New Day in Large Scale

A Guest Editorial by John Sipple

Large Scale model railroading began with models of quaint German meter gauge trains and adorable little Colorado slim gauge equipment. On the surface, this made complete sense. To model a large railroad with yards filled with coal hoppers and three mainline tracks wending through verdant fields would be prohibitive for large scale in both space and expense. Conventional thinking said that if you wanted to model large railroads, use a smaller scale such as HO or N. It did you little good to wish for anything else; the rolling stock on the market ten years ago was mostly old-fashioned, truss-framed freight cars and little 34 foot Overton coaches with clerestory roofs.

Today, all of that has changed. While I like adorable narrow gauge just fine, I also have an interest in big, standard gauge railroading. I have discovered that I am not alone in this respect. There is an impediment to modern, mainline, large scale modeling we might call the Proto Trap. Modelers, afraid to face scorn from others in the hobby, are nervous about building a small garden railway out back and populating it with fairly modern diesel locomotives and steel freight cars. In their minds, they have a smallish shortline, and what would a shortline be doing with big, new diesels? Worse, they already have some old steam-era stuff and are worried that new diesel-era models just won’t fit with it.

That defines the Proto Trap, and I have found a very nice way out of it. I have a copy of American Shortline Railway Guide, 5th Edition, Edward A. Lewis, 1996 Kalmbach Publishing. Just when I thought I knew what contemporary railroading in America was, this book changed my perspective. In the US and Canada, there are more than 500 shortlines ranging in length from less than a mile to a few that are thousands of miles long. Beyond the truth that none of them are large enough to number among the seven or so Class 1 railroads, there is just about nothing that you can state as a rule about them as a group.

Modern North American shortlines are survivors, and this they do in any way they can. Some haul only freight, while others are little more than privately-owned museums with excursions. Some belong to conglomerates, while others are owned by local governments. Of great interest to me is the number of shortlines that own steam. Most of the operating steam locomotives today are found on shortlines.

Thumb through the pages of Lewis’ book, and you’ll see diesel locomotives ranging from GE Dash Nines and EMD SD70Ms, down to some of the very early SW1 switchers dating from before WWII. Santa Fe’s CF7 rebuilds of their old F7 units are found everywhere. Old GP7 and 9 locomotives are as common as meadow larks. GE 44 Tonners, old Alco diesels, and virtually anything else you could wish for are stirring around some shortline somewhere.

Look up the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern RR and you’ll find it owns a Baldwin 4-6-2, a Reading 4-8-4, a quad of SW8s, a threesome of NW2s, a pair of SW7s, a CF7, a trio of U23Bs, and a brace of E8 units. They handle some 8,000 freight cars a year and run excursion traffic as well. Now take a look at the New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railway, known by its middle name. They have everything under the sun from a Tang Shan 2-8-2 Mikado made in China in 1989, as well as a GE 70 ton, an Alco C-420, a couple of C-430s, a GP38, a couple of E9As, a pair of F45 passenger cowl units, a quartet of SD45s (though they may have gone to Montana Rail Link by now), a quartet of GE Dash 8s, a trio of SD70Ms, and a host of other things.

While some of these roads have very well-established paint schemes for their units (check out the Wisconsin Central, for example), others actually restore their rolling stock to the original paint job of the fallen flags where the cars and locomotives originated, as a sort of museum memorial. So if I want to equip my own Oregon Pine Belt Railway with an AristoCraft U25B in Chessie paint and run it with a USA Trains GP7 in SP Bloody Nose, I can do that, right?

What about mixing old truss-frame cars on arch-bar trucks with modern steel boxes on Bettendorfs? Try this: maybe those old cars just look old but really have steel frames and roller bearings, having been built to FRA standards for use in a movie. If you don’t like that scenario — keeping the shortline idea in mind — think up your own clever reason why your shortline mixes cars of different eras. Perhaps your old stuff stays at home (restricted service) and the new stuff is exchange traffic. Best of all, your non-railfan friends don’t know and won’t care.

If you don’t want to model an entire division of Santa Fe or Conrail but want to own units painted that way and run them together, America’s shortlines have sprung you from the Proto Trap. It’s a good time to be free, too. Aristo, in addition to their FA and FB Alcos, also has its RS3 and U25B on the market and is ramping up to release an SD45, a Dash 9, a USRA Heavy Mikado, RDC 1 & 3 Buddliners, an E8, an SD9, and an astounding 2-8-8-2 Mallet! USA Trains has an existing line with a very nice GE 44-tonner, an NW2 cow and calf, a GP7, a GP38, their F3A & Bs, and now their wonderful SD40-2; you can expect more from them in the near future. In the Large Scale world of steam, various manufacturers are making Shays, Climaxes, 4-4-0 Americans, Moguls, Consolidations, Ten-Wheelers, and Pacifics, to name just a few.

Of course, this same theory applies to all scales. Hey, it’s your shortline and, like the real things, you get to decide what you buy and how you run it. The Shortline Railways of North America have given you permission!

— John Sipple