The Tinscale fleet is perhaps the most unique in all of railroading. Along with various scales and sizes of miniature replicas of real trains, Tinscale has some things that have no real prototype. They weren't there. Nonetheless, the influence of these popular items is such that they reappear frequently within Tinscale, and also show up on small-scale pikes with amazing regularity.
Tinscale's early years were devoted to making attractive toy trains. Most had some prototype, even if they were far from accurate models. The toymakers took many liberties with reality, from liveries to wheel arrangements. Amid the toys emerged novelty items. One classic is the Mickey and Minnie Mouse handcar. From that point on, toy train makers felt free to invent entirely new things which never had a real prototype.
In the Postwar years, Lionel led the pack when it came to filling in catalogs with unreal trains. Their #50 Gang Car is a perfect example. You'll not see anything like it on any real pike, but the little orange scooter is part of every serious three-railer's consist. Lionel added everything from cop-chasing-hobo cars to rocket launchers and exploding boxcars. It is no wonder that American Flyer and Marx produced some of their own whimsical pieces.
Perhaps the most prolific "never was" is the crane tender caboose. These are rare on real railroads. Most pikes used gondolas as crane tenders. They had nothing that resembled a "crane tender" caboose. The roles it might have filled were already taken by refitted cabeese, tool cars, box cars, old baggage cars and gondolas. Granted, the Erie had a boxcar which had been rebuilt into a tool car with an open platform and hoist at one end. Lionel produced many Lackawanna, Erie and Erie-Lackawanna crane-tender cabeese. Nonetheless, none of those roads used them. The closes was the refitted boxcar or an old gondola kitted out with a hand hoist.
While we're on the subject of cranes, most roads preferred to downplay the company name on wreck trains. The Lackawanna and Erie both avoided placing the company logos or initials on their crane cars. They and most other roads were content to paint cranes in dull work colors. The company livery rarely, if ever, ended up on a crane! You got your choice of basic black, boxcar red or engineer yellow. The only name seen was that of the crane's maker, Bucyrus Erie. On the Erie and Erie-Lackawanna, the Erie part was painted over. (A small E-L diamond appeared on three later diesel-powered cranes. The diamond was very small, almost there by accident.)
Despite its rarity on real pikes, the work caboose is a staple in O, O27, G, S, HO and N scales. Not only are the cabeese produced in almost every known road name, but a majority of cranes come kitted in company liveries, as well. Model train folks assume that the crane / crane tender caboose combination is prototype. They are sold by the thousands. Few realize that the true origin of the popular cars has more to do with Lionel than any possible prototype. Cranes and crane tenders are an institution carried over from a popular O gauge toy train.
On the subject of work cabeese, there are other variants. Many show up as searchlight cars, and others are fitted with tanks as "water carriers." Prototype searchlights come fitted on flat cars or gondolas. Water tanks are carried on flats. Once again, the institution originates with a toy rather than a genuine item.
In Tinscale, the crane tender caboose was manufactured by Lionel, Marx and American Flyer. K-line produces the Marx version, while MTH has adopted its own version. Marx had even made a track-cleaning car based on the work caboose. We have found examples in G gauge, as well as popular models in HO and N. (Bachmann and IHC tend to be the most prolific makers, although Athearn has cranked some into production.)
The Docksider is one of the most popular small locomotives. The originals were but four in number, built for the Baltimore and Ohio. They were originally wood-burners, converted later to coal. The Docksiders served on Baltimore's piers, where their short frames allowed them to handle the sharp curves and tight wharfside clearances. All four Docksiders were owned by the B&O.
Of course, Tinscalers loved the little Docksider so much that they appeared in other liveries, most notably Santa Fe and Pennsylvania RR. Thus were Docksiders found in many roadnames, serving roads which never actually owned them. Most recent is a black O Gauge Docksider bearing the Jersey Central Lines logo. Docksiders may not have been prolific in the real world, but the Tinscale world is rife with them.
It didn't end there! So great was the appeal of the flat-faced tank engines that they appeared in small scales in various road names. Certainly, the B&O markings were present, but so were ATSF, PRR and others. The variety is so great and so common that many small-scalers believe Docksiders to have been in widespread use. Rarely does a model company make docksiders in only one livery, be it HO or N. The Docksider is an institution among train fans. Prototype or not, Tinscale has taken a rare locomotive and made it commonplace. The model Docksider's many road names is but another case of whimsy over prototype.
A specialty among toy train folks is Maintenance of Way vehicles. These include Jordan Spreaders, snowplows, flanger, ballast tampers and other cars designed to maintain track. Anyone who wishes to investigate track maintenance vehicles is sure to encounter an interesting assortment of cars that seem more "Rube Goldberg" than prototype. Prototype they are, no matter how outlandish they seem. Well, most of them.... With Maintenance of Way, reality is often stranger than Tinscale.
Of course, some Tinscale has managed to upset the MOW applecart. The Track Cleaning car is pure fancy serving a genuine need. Real railroads do not clean track. They will clear away debris, snow and other obstructions. They will regrind rail. They will spray roadbed to eliminate foliage. But clean track? No, real railroads do not send cars out to wash down the rails. Clean track is an issue for toy and model trains, since current passes through rails to the wheels and center-rail pickups. Dirty track can break the flow of current, creating a barrier between rail and wheels. The toy and model train folks have to keep their track clean.
Enter the track cleaning car, a staple of the model pike that has no re4al-world counterpart. Lionel introduced the classic: a weird speeder that held two tanks of track cleaning fluid. Marx joined in by making a track cleaner based on its work caboose. Since then, track cleaners have appeared in all gauges. Some are designed to look like a special car, others are disguised and something else, and a few don't look like anything you might see on any railroad. The track cleaner is usually supplied with cleaning fluid and pads that rub along the rails. One type is pushed or pulled around by a locomotive. The other is a motorized unit operating under its own power.
Lionel's track cleaner looks like a Maintenance of Way vehicle. Marx's is but a specialized use of the work caboose. Aristocraft's is disguised as a flanger or caboose. Others may be hidden within boxcars, and Centerline's is not railroad-like at all. Most track cleaning cars have the look of something you might find on a real railway....but no prototype railway has a special track cleaning vehicle. Once again, Tinscale dictates the standard.
Weapon cars: railway guns have been around for almost 140 years. The idea was simple: mount artillery on a mobile railway carriage. They worked quite well during the American Civil War. In World War I, massive guns were mounted on special, extra-long carriages for use on the rails. The trend continued during World War II. Railway guns were massive things, too large for normal artillery tractors.
Smaller guns were emplaced on armored trains. However, the toy train designers set aside prototype military cars to make a new style all their own. These were simple heavy artillery guns, such as the 155mm Long Tom, mounted on an open flat car. They look military, but have no real prototype. Serious railway guns were much larger, and required special track. Smaller guns were simple armaments protecting armored trains, and rarely got larger than medium anti-aircraft cannon. The flatcar-mounted field piece is pure hokum. Nonetheless, these types of guns show up in O, O27 and HO with alarming frequency. It's Tinscale all the way.
For the modern era, missile-launching cars have become standard in model and toy trains. Lionel, American Flyer and Marx pout forth their firing missile cars. The most popular were disguised at boxcars. Push a button and the roof splits, to reveal a rocket. The missile rises and fires. Both open missile launchers and concealed ones have shown up in O, O27, S and HO. Real cars like that never existed. That never stopped Tinscalers from having them, nor from making them as small as HO scale.
Finally, there's the king of targets: the exploding boxcar. You can find them in several scales, from HO on up. Exploding boxcars are spring-loaded, and tend to explode when hit with sufficient force. It doesn't take much to send them into action, ejecting walls, bulkheads and roofs onto the layout in a simulated blast.