I thought I’d give the saw and drill a rest for one night and do some scene planning and research. One scene I’m including on my HO railroad is this relatively simple river crossing. At first glance it looks like nothing more than a typical freight train crossing a river on a simple bridge. But study the pictures further and you’ll see lots of little details. Notice how the old stone abutment has concrete extensions – obviously added when the original bridge was replaced with this steel one. Take note of how the telegraph pole lines cross the river, and the stacked corn stalks indicating these pictures were taken in the fall, after the harvest but before the leaves had fallen from the trees.

I don’t know for a fact, but I’m fairly certain, these two pictures are of the same train, Extra (note the white flags on the lead locomotive) 471.

A fun exercise is to identify the freight cars in the pictures and build models to match – in fact it’s probably the aspect of the hobby I enjoy the most and I can’t wait to get back into rolling stock building mode.

So, what freight cars are in these pictures? I scanned a couple of close-ups to help. I’m also going to invite some of the folks on the Steam Era Freight Car List to take a look at these photos and see if between us we can identify the prototype car AND the closest HO scale model.

Here’s a list, starting with the locomotive:

1. PRR GLa class twin hopper (Westerfield or Bowser)

2. Wabash 40-foot boxcar:

Speedwitch Media kit KC105.3 (http://www.speedwitch.com/Models/) kc105.htmOR

Intermountain 10'-6" AAR boxcar with 5/5 ends. (Tim O'Connor)

3. Lehigh Valley hopper

The second overall picture shows what I assume is the midtrain helper.

Here are some closeups:

4.  Single-sheathed boxcar

5. An L&A or L&N boxcar

6. Illinois Central single-sheathed boxcar (F&C kit 6720)

Spotting feature is the asymmetrical bracing and 7/8 Murphy end (Ted Culotta and Stephan Parachuk)

7. CV N-5a 2-8-0 no. 474

8. PRR X29 class boxcar with welded “patch panels” running the length of the car (Red Caboose)

9. CP 1937 AAR boxcar (Intermountain OR Red Caboose 1937 AAR 10'-0" boxcar body with Detail Associates 5/5 ends. (Stephan Parachuk)

10. Hard to tell, but since this is the CV and the ladder has the stirrup step attached I’m going to assume this is a CV single-sheathed car. The lighter shade on one of door corrugations indicates that iit s a white stripe designating this as a car equipped with auto-racks. That makes this a 42000-series boxcar.

I'm going to dig through some photos and see how close I can get to these cars in HO scale. In the meantime, I welcome any prototype information or suggestions on modeling them. I’m planning on covering how to duplicate the scene itself in an upcoming article in Model-Railroad-Hobbyist magazine.