5. Equipment Roster

I think people would be surprised by how much equipment has rolled along BR&W rails during its lifetime. The challenge—perhaps my greatest challenge building the layout—will be determining what was around during my modeling era of 1975-1985, because I've yet to find a roster that includes dates of acquisition/operation for everything. And so, for the sake of running the layout, I'll have to allow myself lots of wiggle room in this respect, or else I'd drive myself crazy.

The most comprehensive roster I've found so far seems to be the one at Wikipedia, although it's far from complete. I've been using it (and others) to select commercial rolling stock to serve as proxies for some of the actual equipment. So, while the BR&W had tons more than what's listed here, only those pieces I own are included. Obviously not all of these models can appear on the layout at once—most will be cycled through for photo ops. Plus, I'll probably run a few "pure foobs" on occasion, just for kicks.

Full disclosure: I've deliberately included some out-of-era pieces in the roster (yellow rows) simply because I really want them on the layout. That, and the roster would be a lot thinner without them—especially cabooses. It would seem the BR&W wasn't much interested in them until the late 1990s, when all of a sudden they started stockpiling them like there was no tomorrow...

Locomotives

Passenger Cars

Passenger cars are kind of tricky. I prefer to focus on the Atlas 60-footers because they look better on tight curves, which means all of the steel cars are foobs. I've also been debating on whether or not to leave them in their original schemes, simply because I'd really prefer not to repaint everything. But it's early days, so we'll see...

Cabooses

Maintenance of Way

Also See

• Period Consists
• Transient Freight Equipment

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