[Accrs-ho] prototype comments

[ACCRS HO Scale]

In Lee's last e-mail, he mentioned that he was putting together a number 
of different trains.  They all sound good and should be interesting.   
He was saying that the hatches don't open or close per the prototype or 
they were the wrong style of car or paint.  Almost no one will know 
that.  If he is running 1940 era cars and using 1940 era locomotives, it 
will look protypical to almost every one.  Same for the 50's, 60's 70's, 
etc.

My large coal train use the DL600B locomotives.   They are correct for 
the coal train, but Santa Fe took delivery of two different orders of 
these locos.   The ones with the RCE transmitters were in the second 
order and the fuel tanks are different than the first order.   No one 
has made a unit with the second order fuel tank.  The units look 
prototypical and almost no one notices.  Only die-hard Santa Fe nuts 
would see the difference.  Santa Fe also changed the air intakes by 
enlarging them.   Again, no one has made a model with this feature.  
None of the cars are a match for the ones Santa Fe purchased but are the 
closest ever produced by the manufacture.  The train is a late 60s / 
early 70's era.

I would not want to use the DL600Bs to pull a big load of "billboard 
reefers" as the reefers were outlawed in the 1930's.  I wouldn't even 
want to pull them with a Big Boy as it didn't arrive until the mid 40's.

The  "nut and bolt" modelers have their place, but in our club, since 
the trains are not that close to the people and most people don't know 
the difference,  just a match of cars and locos creates a prototypical 
train.   My DL600B locos would not be correct for the stack train I am 
working on,   I need modern ATSF power (ie 20 years ago modern) in both 
the red and silver and/or the yellow bonnet paint.

It doesn't take much to come up with a prototypical train by matching 
the era of both the locos and cars.  I have a Santa Fe coal train that 
is appropriate to run with F3 / F7 type of locos.  I haven't run it in a 
long time and am planning on putting in decoders to do so.   Many of the 
cars, while they are the right era are not ones that Santa Fe ever owned 
but they look appropriate in the train.   It is a solid ATSF consist 
with some old Ulrich cars and a bunch of Accurail cars in two styles.  I 
know it is not absolutely correct,(same as the other coal train above) 
but it looks real and that is all that matters to the on-lookers (and me).

Dean