--- On Tue, 2/17/09, Brian J Carlson <brian@...> wrote:

From: Brian J Carlson <brian@...>
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Box cars on your layout
To: STMFC@...
Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2009, 11:56 AM






Mike: That someone was me and I have the data for all the Large Steam RR's
from the ICC Bluebook, and some selected (I.e. Ones that interested me)
smaller railroads from the July 1957 ORER. I did as you described looking at
the railroad (or region first) then looking at each class. In my case I have
not been able to fine wheel reports, switch lists or other primary souce
material for my prototype, so I used the Nelson Gilbert theory to distribute
the boxcars as the basis for my fleet.

If you model 1950 your data would be different.

Brian Carlson.
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:44:16 -0800 (PST), Mike Aufderheide wrote

Tony,
 
This is good information.  I wonder if we are able to put a finer
point on it.  I had an idea that using Larry Ostrich's 1950 ORER
spreadsheet, one could determine specific cars which should be
"essential" based on pure numbers and percentages of the national
fleet.  This doesn't preclude me building more unsual cars for the
fun of it (i.e., the RI 50 foot Westerfield I'm working on now), but
it informs me of what the real baseline of the national fleet was,
and how it should be represented on my layout.     For my
proposed boxcar  fleet of 200, I know that every car that represents
1/200th of the national fleet must be modeled.  For the 714,637 cars
listed on that ORER this would mean any class of car with more than
about 3,500 cars (1/2% for my 200 cars). As a rough example, if
there were 29,000 odd X29s then my fleet would have 8 on the layout.
For the 6,600 A31As I'll need 2 cars.  I've rounded the number in
this case, which will happen often.  The goal is not to hit exactly
200 cars, but for the fleet to be generally representative.   Of
course, the many caviats about freight cars fleets that you and
others have mentioned apply, but this is an important starting
point.   I understand that someone presented this same idea at Cocoa
Beach, so maybe the information already exists?   Regards,   Mike

Aufderheide

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