tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post7879269215743913787..comments2024-02-02T03:23:11.768-05:00Comments on Randy's Layout Blog: Building a Roster: What is Rare?Randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08691379750144833461noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-25205440544306164132018-06-04T20:31:35.124-04:002018-06-04T20:31:35.124-04:00I handled this in the following way for boxcars: T...I handled this in the following way for boxcars: The top 90% of roadnames rounded up to whole numbers. 90-95% - I used about every other name, favoring the Northeast. Beyond that I picked one name from each remaining 1% bracket. This wound up being LV, AC&Y, WAG, BCK and P&E. P&E is home road, as I model NYC; the other ones have a regional bias. Not saying I was right or wrong, just a way to include some of the little guys.Mike Clementsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-6238606600968560602017-05-05T07:09:25.870-04:002017-05-05T07:09:25.870-04:00Hi, Simon -
Yes, absolutely. There was a lot of ...Hi, Simon - <br /><br />Yes, absolutely. There was a lot of CN traffic coming off of the CV onto the New Haven too. For CV, CN traffic is almost home-road. Via the CV, CN was almost a direct connection to the NH.<br /><br />The mix is also different within a certain road, depending whether you're on a mainline with through traffic - in my case I'm not quite a mainline, but in terms of Maybrook to Hartford it's very similar to an actual mainline - or a terminal branchline where the specific industries will have a different, more specific mix.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I don't have the sort of data for the NH that Marty has for the CV. But photos confirm that CN traffic was very common on the NH - both destination traffic and through traffic.<br /><br />I don't have the data (or the skills) to assess WHAT mix is appropriate for a given line on a given railroad. That's the sort of research that each modeler has to do for themselves. Like so many things, specific information (that is, data from your road) is always better than general data (that as the nation, or continent, as a whole.<br /><br />But whatever the data set you've got, not using the whole data set skews the results.Randyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18392489035115793196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-85388582682880388212017-05-05T04:32:58.752-04:002017-05-05T04:32:58.752-04:00As some who has used statistics professional - whi...As some who has used statistics professional - which includes a period of teaching the subject - I have to say that a general ("national") survey is a good starting point, but you have to adjust for the locality. As Marty shows, there was a lot of CN traffic on the CV. This is no surprise, given the history and heritage of the CV. But it also means that a non-CN line in New England would see less CN trafficSimon Dunkleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14524485143477411155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-9247306607575053932017-05-04T09:13:47.203-04:002017-05-04T09:13:47.203-04:00Thanks, Bill!
Yes, budget and modeling skill are ...Thanks, Bill!<br /><br />Yes, budget and modeling skill are always factors for all of us. It's going to take me a while to pick up all I need as well.<br /><br />I definitely agree that as you get to individual trains (especially when we have to reduce 100+ car trains down to 20 cars) that you have to take into account the regional impacts to get the right "feel." <br /><br />There are plenty of approaches to getting the right mix, of course, and as you know I'm pretty familiar with all the research you've done (which continues to be quite helpful to me!). I just think that Marty's post highlighted one of the common pitfalls I've seem modelers run into, by setting an arbitrary cutoff, for both major car types, and smaller roads.Randyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18392489035115793196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-89724997407878569212017-04-27T21:55:18.944-04:002017-04-27T21:55:18.944-04:00For most of us having multiples of rare cars is so...For most of us having multiples of rare cars is somewhat of a luxury, especially for prototypes which would have to be kit built. It would certainly be a good thing to do this, but not that practical. I know in my case, it will be a long time before I get close to obtaining the cars I have determined ought to be in my roster, never mind coming up with extras.<br /><br />Another issue to consider is the distance a foreign road is from your layout's locale. If ATSF had 50,000 boxcars and the PRR also had 50,000 boxcars as a NH modeler I would not want nearly as many ATSF boxcars as PRR boxcars.<br /><br />I generally agree with your results, but have gotten to a similar place by a way I find logical and yields a mix of cars which would allow someone observing those cars to conclude that they are on the NH.Bill Chapinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-76885904826080837672017-04-09T22:36:56.257-04:002017-04-09T22:36:56.257-04:00Yep, it's already there:
http://model-railroad...Yep, it's already there:<br />http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/29578<br />Randyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18392489035115793196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-47065894675221329982017-04-09T00:05:31.130-04:002017-04-09T00:05:31.130-04:00A really thoughtful, detailed post with lots of fo...A really thoughtful, detailed post with lots of fodder for additional discussion. We should get Marty to weigh in. And maybe cross post to MRH - would love to see how the resulting thread would evolve!Chris Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18052818057825432279noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-21214122468787353042017-03-24T22:03:35.826-04:002017-03-24T22:03:35.826-04:00Yes, but there's a difference between a rare c...Yes, but there's a difference between a rare car, that is one that has been documented as having run in a given location, and a car that never made such a movement.<br /><br />So if your data shows a 0% occurrence, that's not a rare car, it's a nonexistent car. I suppose I should have said anything less than 1% but greater than 0%. The threshold might be greater than 1% for the ceiling, depending on the locale and prototype, and on Marty's pie chart the threshold was 1.5%. <br /><br />Eliminating the rare cars creates a non-prototypical mix. If Marty had lumped everything less than 1.5% as rare cars, the data would show that roughly 25% of the roads/cars are rare, and the CN cars in the chart would have been 50%. So in that data set, the number of rare cars is about 50% of the most common cars. For every 2 CN cars, you'd have a road that accounts for less than 1.5%.<br /><br />So let's say your railroad has 100 cars on the layout in an operating session and you decide you only need 100 cars on your total roster. Everything is on the layout all the time. For one of your rare cars, you're going to pick a New Haven hopper because you have a photo of one in southern California. If you had such a photo, it was probably a very rare occurrence. But if the same hundred cars are on your layout all the time, and that's one of them, it gives the impression that it was relatively common since it's there every session. <br /><br />My point is that rostering more rare cars helps balance your mix, provided that you have a large enough roster that you aren't running a particular rare car every session. In the data Marty provided, MKT cars accounted for .3% of cars. In other words, you'd see one for every 300 cars or so. So if you have 100 cars on your layout during an ops session, you would expect to see an MKT car every 3 or so sessions. If you have a frequent group of operators, though, at some point they might notice it's always the SAME MKT car that runs through every 3 or 4 sessions. That might be relatively accurate (maybe MKT auto cars accounted for 90+% of MKT cars through White River Junction, for example). Or it may not be, if the mix should be greater, meaning you would probably do well with a couple, or even a few MKT cars, to avoid that sort of pattern from occurring. <br /><br />So yes, that N&W hopper would look out of place. But if you have documentation of such a movement, you can show that such oddities existed and it's a lucky day that you happened to be railfanning the layout on that day!Randyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18392489035115793196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6866440360591370825.post-92187769473202032532017-03-24T20:51:53.063-04:002017-03-24T20:51:53.063-04:00Devils advocate....if I model the Southern Pacific...Devils advocate....if I model the Southern Pacific in Southern California during the 1950's, a fleet of PFE wood and steel reefers and a ton of tank cars would look right. A Norfolk Western coal hopper would be out of place in Los Angeles.Johnhttp://sopacincg.comnoreply@blogger.com