Colorado Midland Railway Engineering Report

[Dave V]

Decal problem solved!   

I got these through Rail Graphics by way of a company called Silver Crash Car Works that does Midland cars and decals in HO.  Not shown are the black circles and rectangles for the Pikes Peak Route and Horseshoe Pass logos, respectively.

[Dave V]

Ordered the first of the Midland's bridges...  The old Heljan/Walthers plastic kit for the large timber trestle.  I should be able to get one large and one small trestle out of the single kit.  Still debating whether I should do one of the Midland's big steel bridges too.

The good news is that I have enough decals between the new custom ones and some alphabet sheets that I can turn my D&RGW Flying Rio Grande stock car into a Colorado Midland Pullman Palace Stock Car.

Was able to confirm (as much as one can confirm these things using black and white photos and a CM historian) that the Palace stock cars on the CMRY were probably not black as the old MDC HO kit might have you believe...but were probably the same mineral red as the rest of the Midland's freight car fleet.  And so will mine be.

[davefoxx]

Still debating whether I should do one of the Midland's big steel bridges too.

Debate's over.  Do it.

DFF

[Dave V]

Question for the masses...

I don't need a huge roster for this tiny layout.  This represents, minus the locomotive, everything I have.  In addition, I plan on acquiring two flats and two gons from Fine N Scale Models.  I'm debating getting some of their boxcars too for variety.



Looking at the fleet...  Not much I can do about the reefer.  It's a hardcore foobie.  At some point I may get some decals, but the Midland didn't have single door reefers.  Its iconic Pikes Peak Indian logo went on double-door center-bunker reefers.  So, if I ever get around to decaling that reefer, it'll be for a different road (possibly the Denver, Texas, and Fort Worth).

I've already decided the D&RGW stock car will become a Colorado Midland Palace Stock Car.  As nice as the D&RGW stock car looks, it's an anachronism with extreme prejudice.  The only D&RGW truss-rod stock cars to survive to the Flying Rio Grande logo were on the narrow gauge...circa 1940 and after.

What I need to "crowdsource" is whether or not to also repaint that Standard Wagons boxcar.  It looks really cool and is approximately correct for the era.  I have no idea whether a CH&D boxcar would have wandered all the way from Ohio to central Colorado but it's possible.  Yet I'm also reminded of the "law of the mundane..."  I would have been orders of magnitude more likely to find CMRY boxcars (for which I have a stack of brand-new decals!) than a CH&D billboard boxcar on the Midland.  It is pretty cool, though.  It's also slightly cliche in that every turn-of-the-century layout in every scale seems to have one.

[Chris333]

I have a Palace Stock Car from MDC/Athearn (it's in the video of my 4-6-0) does that mean it is a CM car? I just thought it looked "regular" so I bought it.

Oh never mind Palace was part of Pullman Car Co. 

[Dave V]

I have a Palace Stock Car from MDC/Athearn (it's in the video of my 4-6-0) does that mean it is a CM car? I just thought it looked "regular" so I bought it.

No...  Pullman built stock cars for lots of railroads (AT&SF-affiliated railroads such as the CM seemed to be big customers) which they branded "Palace Stock Car."  The stipulation was that the purchasing railroad left the "Palace Stock Car" lettering on the side.  As far as my referencces indicate, the Midland owned its Palace cars outright.  I think some of them were also in lease or pool service similar to the Canda Cattle Car Co fleet.

Long story short, Palace Stock Car was a Pullman brand-name that showed up on lots of railroads around the turn of the twentieth century.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

What I need to "crowdsource" is whether or not to also repaint that Standard Wagons boxcar. ...  It's also slightly cliche in that every turn-of-the-century layout in every scale seems to have one.

Yep. Exactly. Because it's such a common car, it makes the layout scream out "model train layout", and so I think for that reason if nothing else, needs to go.

[Dave V]

Yep. Exactly. Because it's such a common car, it makes the layout scream out "model train layout", and so I think for that reason if nothing else, needs to go.

That was my thought.  It has a "neat factor" and I'd almost hate to paint over that cool lettering job, but once again the mundane and the day-to-day are the keys to realism.

That, and I'm just really itching to try out these new CMRY decals!

[mmyers05]

I have no idea whether a CH&D boxcar would have wandered all the way from Ohio to central Colorado but it's possible.

For whatever it's worth, I've spent the last few years researching and building a roster for the Denver & Salt Lake in the mid 1920s (so a few years after your cutoff?).

The more that I've researched, the more that I have come to the conclusion that one can realistically justify running almost any eastern/midwestern rolling stock in the Colorado mountains during that time period.

For example, the folks at the Colorado Railroad Museum's library have a collection of daily car weighing reports for outbound traffic from the MacGregor Coal Mine along the D&SL from October-December 1917 (including the reporting marks of each car). Cars from larger eastern roads are represented (NYC, PRR, B&O, GT, L&N for example) sometimes in substantial numbers, but so are some short lines like the Montour, the Gilmore and Pittsburgh, the Grand Rapids and Indiana, and the Hocking Valley.

Surprisingly, the D&SL moved as much coal from this mine to Denver during those three months using Jersey Central gondolas as they moved using Rio Grande gondolas...
     

[Dave V]

Very interesting!  That's good to know.

At the moment, anyway, I have an infinitely larger CH&D roster than I do CMRY.   

The argument that the Standard Wagons car has been done to death is a cogent one, though.  Should I desire some more esoteric roads at a later date, I could go for the Clover House decals.

FWIW, in my Midland book, the majority of the foreign road cars I see are D&RG, C&S, RGW, and AT&SF.  There's a neat photo from the teens of a CMRY freight on a collapsed bridge with a Wabash boxcar.

[wm3798]

First I'll apologize first for the comment.  But as an old school East Coaster, a fan of gritty urban scenes and heavy Appalachian mountain railroading,  to me Colorado gold mining lines, a contrast like our own dear Maryland and Pennsylvania, were put on this earth to be "cute" and "Model Railroady".  The Wagon car should stay.  Perhaps heavily weathered, but it should stay.

Think Malcolm Furlow.  Think Georgetown Loop.

You're talking about a small fleet.  Keep the Wagon car, because, as you say, you pretty much have to to keep your Turn of the Century Era Modeler card.  (And somewhere in the deepest recesses of your psyche you really think it's cool) Then go to Caboose Hobbies and buy another more mundane car to replace it in the roster when Ed comes over to run trains so he doesn't whine so much. 

He'd be too busy drooling over the JD circa 1980 anyway...

Lee

[GimpLizard]

The Wagon car should stay.  Perhaps heavily weathered, but it should stay.

You're talking about a small fleet.  Keep the Wagon car, because, as you say, you pretty much have to to keep your Turn of the Century Era Modeler card.  (And somewhere in the deepest recesses of your psyche you really think it's cool) Then go to Caboose Hobbies and buy another more mundane car to replace it in the roster when Ed comes over to run trains so he doesn't whine so much. 

Lee

Ditto

[Dave V]

First I'll apologize first for the comment.  But as an old school East Coaster, a fan of gritty urban scenes and heavy Appalachian mountain railroading,  to me Colorado gold mining lines, a contrast like our own dear Maryland and Pennsylvania, were put on this earth to be "cute" and "Model Railroady".  The Wagon car should stay.  Perhaps heavily weathered, but it should stay.

Think Malcolm Furlow.  Think Georgetown Loop.

You're talking about a small fleet.  Keep the Wagon car, because, as you say, you pretty much have to to keep your Turn of the Century Era Modeler card.  (And somewhere in the deepest recesses of your psyche you really think it's cool) Then go to Caboose Hobbies and buy another more mundane car to replace it in the roster when Ed comes over to run trains so he doesn't whine so much. 

He'd be too busy drooling over the JD circa 1980 anyway...

Lee

Lee,

Interesting perspective.

I would pass on a comparison to Malcolm Furlow's work.  In 1905 the Midland was modern and in good repair by any standards--including the PRR of the day--in every respect but roadbed.  That choice--to do the roadbed on the cheap--would haunt the Midland for the rest of its short life.  Equipment, on the other hand, included the most modern engines of the day and large fleets of well-built and nicely painted rolling stock from Pullman, St Charles, Barney & Smith, and its own fleet.  No sway-backed rolling rot here.

The Midland sank so much money into its tunnels, rockwork, and some of the bridges (the big steel ones at Aspen, Buena Vista, and Manitou Springs) that they decided to go without real ballast or tie plates.  The railroad was forever plagued by derailments and wrecks, and when in 1917 the USRA declared all wartime through-traffic should be routed across Colorado by way of the CMRY, the railroad fell flat on its a$$.  Shortly thereupon, the USRA declared all through-traffic would go by way of the D&RG's Tennessee Pass route, and the CMRY found itself with insufficient online traffic to survive.  This in spite of having the shorter route (by rail miles) between Colorado Springs and Grand Junction.

But I get your point!   So...  That's 3 votes for the CH&D car and 1 against.   

[PRRATSF]

+1 for the CH&D Boxcar.

[Dave V]

+1 for the CH&D Boxcar.

LOL, fine...  But it'll be carrying sacks of gold and silver ore, not wagons!