Armand,

                Unless I am mistaken, you have a very nice collection of Rutland wheel reports / conductor’s books.  So perhaps your problem is really one of “how do I selectively compress my fleet”?

                Others have written about how to select the ROADNAMES for a fleet, and I think you should also have no problem selecting the ratio of reefers to tank cars, etc.

                The problem gets a lot more complicated when you want to maintain a ratio of single-sheathed boxcars vs double-sheathed vs steel.  How many of the steel cars are PS-1’s vs X29 “clones”?  In this case, I personally would err on the side of “what is easily modeled”.  If I need a single Maine Central boxcar, I’m going to see which of their cars is most easily modeled, which may not be their most common car.

                I also happen to know that Armand is a much better modeler than I am, so perhaps he’ll pick the most obscure MEC boxcar, just for the challenge of scratchbuilding it.

Regards,

-Jeff