Passenger v Freight?

[Iron Horseman]

In fact of the 4 roads I model in Centralia in 1955, none of them exist today

Centralia MO or Centralia Ill? I can only find 3 RRs in Centralia MO. Since you said Illinois Central I assume Ill. I can see two abandon grades coming in from the west. One from the north and along 7th and another from the south along 10th. Were those from the same railroad road?

With that I am guessing Centralia MO had the Missouri Pacific and Wabash. Don't know what the third one (going straight south) would be.

 

[Bruette]

My first choice is freight. I do have two passenger trains, a GG1 led Amtrak in O and the Acela in HO. That is not counting my Christmas trains. I am only 53 and the glory days of passenger trains had already passed before I was born.

 

[scldispatcher]

This will sound silly, but it depends on my mood... Sometimes I feel like psgr trains, other times I feel like "rollin the coal" and run strictly freight trains.

 

[Boris]

This will sound silly, but it depends on my mood... Sometimes I feel like psgr trains, other times I feel like "rollin the coal" and run strictly freight trains.

Not silly at all, makes perfect sense to me. The beauty of model railroading, is that one is not locked into one mode. My other favorite is a 60s-80s era Pig train, with trailers and containers, Technically freight, but operated as the preference equivalent of a passenger train.

 

[JWhite]

Centralia MO or Centralia Ill?

Centralia, IL. Town was laid out by the IC in the 1850s. In the year I model (1955) it was home to an IC Division Point roundhouse and locomotive shop, had a large freight car shop where they built cars for their own use and for other railroads. The IC had a double track mainline running north/south through town. The CB&Q entered town from the south, ran parallel to the IC main through town then turned west for a few miles before continuing north and had a large yard and roundhouse west of the the IC main. The Southern entered town from the east, and met the CB&Q east of the IC main where they both crossed the IC main and ran parallel together through town. it turned west and ran next to the CB&Q till the CB&Q turned north, the Southern continued west to St Louis.

The M&I had trackage rights on the IC through town. It met the IC north of Centralia at Branch Junction where M&I trains ran on the IC tracks through the center of town down to about 7th street where they continued west. Both abandoned lines you see in that area were M&I tracks. The M&I served a lumber yard a couple oil dealers and a gas power plant in Centralia.

There was a lot of railroading crammed into about 5 square miles back in the day.

Jeff White
Alma, IL

 

[Iron Horseman]

The M&I had trackage rights on the IC through town. It met the IC north of Centralia at Branch Junction where M&I trains ran on the IC tracks through the center of town down to about 7th street where they continued west. Both abandoned lines you see in that area were M&I tracks.

It is amazing what one can still see of railroad grades of the past (some times over 100 years old) in current satellite photos.

 

[goscrewyourselves]

Hi Beady and a good question!

It really is a personal preference when all's said and done but for me I like both. My layout was setup double mainline so I could run a fright train in one direction with a passenger train in the other. The passenger train was for movement and something always happening while I could "play around" with the freight train if I wanted to. I had a pretty "non typical" layout though running steam for pax and diesel for freight.

I do think fright trains provide more "user involvement" though with many options for hands on runs giving running a freight consist more interest. A full passenger layout would depend on the size of the layout I think. Pax trains stop and start and need places to stop at so as to have some resemblance of reality. I think to have an effective pax only layout, the layout would need to be huge so as to have the stations to stop at.

In short, I like a passenger train running around the layout all by itself with freight trains being the focus and hands on train.