partisan ?

[jamesbrodie67281]

Gents,
In England railwaymen and railway modellers have often chosen a particular railway to follow or model. With my English models I favour the East Coast accepting that good did come from other regions as well ie Midland, Southern, Scotch, Western (spit) and even back to pre 1923 or post 1948.
I do have coaching stock from all the regions but that is because I try to emulate cross country trains with through coaches and engines from the big four.
LNER. LMS. SR. and GWR (spit).
When working on the footplate as an engineer we would think if it wasn't LNER or NER it was rubbish and of course others saw things from their point of view. When I became a Road Foreman of Engines or some title like that (Loco Inspector) naturally I rode on all the companies engines and soon learnt which were good and bad and so on and even realising not all the Eastern engines were all that good. What I am wanting to ask in a rather long winded way is did this partisanship apply in America as well ? My American choice is ATSF and UP SP and WP but as to where the most plausible central point to base my layout on I just don't know
James 67281.

[Spikre]

James,
the Los Angeles area gives You Santa Fe,U.P.,and SP.
the Bay Area[Frisco mainly] gives You Santa Fe,SP and WP.
this is Pre 1971.Pre Amtrak for both areas.
hope this helps.
have rode the "City Of Everywhere" across Nebraska at 89 MPH+.
loved the Dome cars at nite until a conductor would chase one out.
Spikre

[jamesbrodie67281]

Thanks Spikre...................Jim.

[WP 257]

Yes the partisanship applied here as well.

Some people don't like a particular railroad because it represented the end of "their" railroad, both in model form and in real life with regard to the employees of various railroad lines.

If anything, perhaps we here might have even more partisanship because we had so many more miles and so many more railroads than you folks across the pond.

Then there's folks like me who have trouble picking a railroad or a particular time period (even particular decade) because there's so much we like.

John

[Paul Cutler III]

While we certainly had rivals (most famously, the PRR & NYC), I'm going to disagree with John and say there wasn't as much of that as you seem to indicate over in England. I think the real difference is that we had so many "Class I" railroads...127 as of the beginning of 1950. These Class I RR's owned 81% of the total USA rail mileage back then. While there are certainly fans of one specific railroad, it's not usually to the extent of forsaking all others.

For example, while a PRR fan might dislike the NYC, they probably didn't mind the N&W or the UP. RR's that connected end to end with another were a good partner, not a competitor. It probably also had something to do with the investment and financial history of all these RR's, in that many RR's owned stock in other RR's (mostly connecting lines to preserve that good flow of traffic).

Successors, OTOH, tend to gather more negative reactions. Penn Central is mine, because they did their worst to kill off the New Haven RR (and I am hardly alone in that judgment). Another poster on the old Atlas Forum disliked the Chessie because it tried to kill off the Western Maryland. Some ATSF fans might not like the BNSF paint job. And so on. In the USA, our most partisanship attitude is almost entirely focused on successors, and not concurrent rivals.

However, I will say that there are very few non-North American-based modelers around here. Oh, there's some out there, but for example at my club here in the Boston area, there are 70-members and 1400 locos registered. None are anything but North American-based. So perhaps in reality our most partisan attitude deals with foreign (to us) trains.

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2015 19:52:29 GMT -8 Paul Cutler III said:

...for example at my club here in the Boston area, there are 70-members and 1400 locos registered. None are anything but North American-based....

Just curious, how many Mexican locos?

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2015 17:30:39 GMT -8 Spikre said:

James,
the Los Angeles area gives You Santa Fe,U.P.,and SP.
the Bay Area[Frisco mainly] gives You Santa Fe,SP and WP.
this is Pre 1971.Pre Amtrak for both areas.
hope this helps.
have rode the "City Of Everywhere" across Nebraska at 89 MPH+.
loved the Dome cars at nite until a conductor would chase one out.
Spikre

ATSF and WP operations in San Francisco (aka 'Frisco) were restricted to switching small areas and were accessed via car ferry from Richmond & Oakland. Stockton, California, about 65 miles east of SF, was the only place where all three railroads had "main line" operations.

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2015 13:49:27 GMT -8 jamesbrodie67281 said:

Gents,
In England railwaymen and railway modellers have often chosen a particular railway to follow or model. With my English models I favour the East Coast accepting that good did come from other regions as well ie Midland, Southern, Scotch, Western (spit) and even back to pre 1923 or post 1948.
I do have coaching stock from all the regions but that is because I try to emulate cross country trains with through coaches and engines from the big four.
LNER. LMS. SR. and GWR (spit).
When working on the footplate as an engineer we would think if it wasn't LNER or NER it was rubbish and of course others saw things from their point of view. When I became a Road Foreman of Engines or some title like that (Loco Inspector) naturally I rode on all the companies engines and soon learnt which were good and bad and so on and even realising not all the Eastern engines were all that good. What I am wanting to ask in a rather long winded way is did this partisanship apply in America as well ? My American choice is ATSF and UP SP and WP but as to where the most plausible central point to base my layout on I just don't know
James 67281.

The four railroads, ATSF, UP, SP and WP, never operated in a common area.

The following areas were served by three of the four:

The San Francisco Bay (including Stockton)- SP, ATSF, and WP.
The Los Angeles-San Bernardino- SP, ATSF, and UP.
Ogden/Salt Lake City, Utah- SP, UP, and WP.
Portland, Oregon- SP, UP, and some WP run-through power via the SP&S/BN.
Denver, Colorado- SP (only post 1988 DRGW merger), ATSF, and UP.

[Paul Cutler III]

Mexican RR's in our club number in the low single digits. There might be a couple NdeM locos, but that's about it. Up here in the Northeast, the Southwest doesn't get much attention. I'm sure it's no different down there regarding Northeast prototypes. Heck, I went to Chicago about 5 years ago, hit several hobby shops, a train show, and a big club, and only saw a handful of New England roads.

[Spikre]

Paul,
Cotton Belt GP40s showed up at Waverly/Newark NJ in the early 70s.
not real common,but more common than ex-NYC or NH power on PC.
maybe an exception ?
but what about CB&Q/GN/NP/BN power on EL from 69 on ?
not all went to Croxton Yard,but many sets did.
and then there were the 1st 2 U.P. U50Cs that were stuck on EL
for several weeks because of a Strike at GE about 1970 .
Spikre

[hhr]

Oh gosh James, partisanship is a long running thing on American and Canadian railroads.  Back in the 70's you could almost guarantee a shouting match at the very least when a former New York Central man got within sniffing distance of a former Pennsylvania Railroad man.

Setting aside all the other factors that lead to the bankruptcy of the Penn Central, you had a "Green Team" vs. "Red Team" mentality that lasted long into the days of Conrail.

I seem to recall a saying in England that there were two ways to do things, "the wrong way, and the Great Western way", and that it carried on long into the days of British Rail.

And I suppose there are still those Train Spotters who burn Dr. Beeching in effigy.

[jamesbrodie67281]

HHR I would burn him myself the harm he did to us railwaymen but that was politics for you.
Each or most times we got a chairman who was going to beat us with a big stick----somehow he came to be on our side.
I'm glad I was one of the last steam men in my railway time.
Don't forget to spit if you mention the (GWR spit).............................I jest as some of the spit engines I rode on I was very impressed especially the Castles but a foreign engine that amazed me the most was the LMS Princess Elizabeth....honest no leg pulling and credit where credit due. I last rode her as a loco inspector in 1975. James Brodie.

[WP 257]

Due to politics that occurred during the Penn Central and Conrail era relating to union and crew seniority issues, who got bumped where (ie lost a job assignment they had held and in some cases were forced to relocate their home) etc., in addition to outright hatred between the Red Team (PRR folks) and the Green Team (NYC folks), there was outright hatred between the Red Team (PRR folks) and the Erie Lackawanna folks (sometimes referred to as Erie Lackamoney)...

The partisanship is very well remembered by the railroad employees of that particular time period, including my sister's father-in-law. Some of those guys always thought of themselves as PRR men. Since my relative started out washing steam engines at Renovo, PA, and fired them a few times, then became a conductor, he always thought of himself as one of the PRR guys, till the end of his career during the 1990's.

Some of them never thought of themselves as Penn Central or Conrail guys. It was PRR to the end, in their minds, and that's just how they think, to this very day.

John

[railmodeltroy14]

A CSX mainline runs through town so those locomotives are what I see most and what I have purchased several of over the years but all types of motive power show up now, in various road names and run through on a daily basis so I have added CN, CP Rail, NS, UP, BNSF units and plan on picking up some Intermountain ES 44 AH's in Kansas City Southern, NS and Citi Rail as they are released.

For me, the most interesting locomotives are the rebuilt GP 40/38-3's and the newly painted road slug/mates that work the local industries, especially the grain elevator.

Also...several mixed freight trains a week are powered by sets of the rebuilt GP 38's and SD 40-3's.

There are CSX unit coal, grain, iron ore and coil steel trains with all CSX markings on the cars that move on this line but everything else is a mixed bag with unit coal from different power and leasing companies, potash, tanker, slab, container, Canadian grain, auto rack and mixed freight trains rolling through town on a regular basis pulled by all types of locomotives.

You get to see it all,

High ball,
Lee

[valenciajim]

Heck, I like all the western railrods. My layout depicts California to Colorado and I run pretty much anything I want in the western region. When I run earlier eras, I run SP/UP ATSF/WP and D&RGW. When I run modern stuff it is UP, BNSF, Amtrak and Metrolink. It's my railraod, so I get to make up my own rules!!!!