I've been working on a little side project for about a year now...and its taking me quite a while. I have been working a series of spreadsheets for various railroads, cataloging at a high level, Steam Locomotives, Electric Locomotives, EMU's and Motor Cars, Diesel Locomotives, Freight, Passenger, Business Cars and MoW. Within each category, I have been collecting varying information, that would be helpful to a modeler, such as dimensions, Railroad Class, Road numbers, years of service, and available models in N and HO scale. Not surprisingly, it takes a long time to find most of this information and manually input it into the spreadsheet. Eventually, what I want to do is also use this list to see what models would be available for people to Commission from Out of the Box, and generate flat rate pricing for each commission, and offer the rosters to the community as a public service. If I could cut down on the data collection time, I think I could make more progress on completing these rosters faster.
Surprisingly, the fastest part of the process is comparing photos of the various prototypes to available models.
If anyone knows where I can find or has any roster spreadsheets of their own that they are willing to share, I would be very happy. So far the only railroad rosters that I have that are close to being complete are Amtrak, Alaska RR, and Chicago & North Western. Right now I am just focusing on Class 1 railroads and some select Fallen Flags. Please see my list below. I am also putting out some feelers to some of my software engineer friends on a way to automate some of the data entry process.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
Atlantic Coast Line
Baltimore and Ohio
Burlington Northern
Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Canadian National
Canadian Pacific
Chesapeake and Ohio
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific
Conrail
CSX Transportation
Delaware and Hudson
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western
Erie
Erie Lackawanna
Ferromex
Florida East Coast
Grand Trunk Western
Great Northern Railway
Illinois Central
Kansas City Southern
Lehigh Valley
Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (Soo Line)
Missouri Pacific
Missouri–Kansas–Texas
Monon
New York Cental
New York, New Haven and Hartford
Norfolk & Western
Norfolk Southern
Norfolk Southern 1942–1982
Northern Pacific
Penn Central
Pennsylvania Railroad
Reading Company
Seaboard Air Line
Soo Line
Southern
Southern Pacific
Spokane Portland and Seattle
St. Louis–San Francisco
Trailer Train
Union Pacific
Union Tank Car Company
US Military and Federal Government
Virginian
Wabash
Western Pacific