Copyright 2002 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
Popular locomotives and cars that everyone loves, but just didn't exist on the real railroad!
Most folks in N and HO assume that they are buying scale models. They believe that the trains they buy are accurate representations of real trains in realistic liveries. Many of the same people laugh at O gaugers who run trains that never actually existed in the real world. Wouldn't our two-rail friends be shocked to learn that some of their favorites are just as improbable as the O gauge missile car?
It is true. For instance, both Rivarossi and IHC used to make MANY locomotives in liveries that just didn't have them. A few years ago, IHC offered FM C-liners in HO for a slew of roads. In actual fact, only a very few roads had any of these locomotives. Nonetheless, you could find C-Liners in almost every classic livery. There were Lackawanna and C&O and Penn Central versions, to mention three of about twenty such misnamed locomotives. Another IHC faux Pas was the offering of GG1s in Milwaukee Road colors. Who could forget the memorable E units, among which was a Jersey Central set in tangerine and blue? The colors were right - for an F3 or Baldwin babyface. Seems the Jersey Central never had E8s. Yes indeed, my friends, a host of neverwas trains in perfect HO scale!
There are some that are so popular folks don't even realize just how "neverwas" their trains are. The all-time favorite is that charming little 0-4-0 tank engine known as a "Docksider." The Docksider was an original with the Baltimore and Ohio. There were exactly four of them,, and they burned wood originally. Some were converted to coal, and one was sold to an industrial pike. Four Docksiders. True, there are many other 0-4-0 tank locomotives out there, but the Docksider is unique. No other tank engine looks quite like it.
Varney introduced the first HO Docksider kit in the 1950s. It caught on like wildfire, and the flames have not dimmed. Today they are made by LifeLike, IHC and several others. What is most striking in that Docksider in HO show up in a variety of road names. Along with the B&O, you will very likely find Pennsylvania Railroad and Santa Fe versions readily available. Both IHC and LifeLike made them in those liveries. As far as I know, LifeLike is still making them. Neither the Pennsylvania nor Santa Fe had Docksiders. They may have used tank engines, but theirs were different from the peculiar four B&O locomotives.
How about those Maintenance of Way rigs that include a crane and a work caboose. The caboose is actually a small shed mounted on back of a flat car, with toolboxes on the front end. Other versions have searchlights and water tanks and...well, they have them. The problem is that those cabeese were not common. Most cars which looked like them were not cabeese at all, but reworked boxcars. They were NOT used as crane tenders. Some had a simple hoist on front. The Erie had one made from a boxcar. The Lackawanna has one in its plan book, but it is unlikely they made more than one. Cars with searchlights or tanks are likely to be gondolas or flat cars. As for crane tenders, railroads use gondolas. Ditto for cars fitted with hoists.
The "crane tender caboose' owes its place in your HO or N consist to a model made by Lionel in the late 1950s. It was gray and had D. L. & w. markings. Lionel packed it with a crane. Folks loved it, it sold like hotcakes, so Lionel made more of them. The HO people liked them. Lionel made some. Look around and you will find them from several HO makers. Bachmann's in perhaps the most common in both HO and N. Popular, yes. Prototype, NO!
How many companies have made steel cabeese with the rear-mounted cupola or extended vision type? If your rear-cupola caboose has the livery of a railroad that was from the Northeast, you're non-prototypical. Northeastern cabeese were mostly center-cupola. Only the Erie had a slightly offset cupola on a few cabeese. Slightly offset: not rear-mounted. The rear cupola was popular out west, especially with the Southern Pacific. It is even called the SP type. though the NYC had a rear-mounted woodside caboose, it was limited to the NYC until steel versions replaced it. How did the SP type make it all over?
Lionel's first Postwar illuminated caboose was the SP type, and they used it in most sets made between 1947 and 1950. Thus was the SP forever associated with railroading in general, and accepted asa realistic model of "everycaboose."
The same goes for bay window cabeese. Very few roads used them, and these were mainly a few of the Northeastern roads. As for the extended vision caboose, it appeared late in the game. Bachmann's Erie-Lackawanna extended vision caboose is a beautiful model, but it just isn't right. The Erie-Lackawanna never had them.
Now we come to passenger cars. How many streamlined sets include the ever-popular Vista Dome car? Too many. The Vista Domes were used on very few Western railroads. They could not come East because of low clearances in Eastern tunnels. Likewise how many passenger sets include cars which the particular railroads did not have? Rivarossi made CNJ sleepers. The CNJ never had them. You could go end-to-end on the CNJ in under four hours!
Be it locomotives of cabeese or boxcars or crane tenders, the number of neverwas trains floating around HO and N scale are more than you might suppose. That "realistic scale model" you have might be an unrealistic one. And for at least half of these neverwas trains, the whole thing started with Lionel.
Maybe you like your neverwas trains. That's okay, because it is your railroad. I'm not put off by them, since I also do O gauge and have a lot of never was trains. O Gauge is art, not science. We have many trains that, though they never were like that in the real world, should have been. For scale, though, those who insist on prototypical realism should be alerted to the possibility of getting neverwas trains.
A serious scale modeler cannot rely on manufacturers to be correct. Our brief list of common neverwas trains is proof of that! Manufacturers get it wrong. Some make occasional errors, and some make them all the time. The best way to assure that your cars are prototypical is to know your roads. Acquire books that tell you what they had, when they had it and how it was decorated. Only you can prevent neverwas trains from entering your consist.
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