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Like most model railroaders starting out in the hobby, Fred Headon didn’t have a lot of disposable income. Yet he wanted a large fleet of rolling stock to fill out his trains, and enable good operation. What to do?
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Fred hit on an ingenious solution; put different roadnames and numbers on either side of cars. This had two effects: First, it doubled the number of cars on the layout. Second, since Fred’s layout was loop-to-loop, when SOO 45397 traveled west it came back as CPR 241001 going east—a simple and instant reversal.
Today, Fred has a more money to spend on trains, so cars with different numbers and road names on either side aren’t needed anymore. He was selling them at the recent Winnipeg Model Railroad Club train show, where I took these photos.
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Hi John,
ReplyDeleteThey say if someone has an idea, there are already 10 other people who have had the same idea...
So I, and likely others, have had and acted on this same idea. In my case, it wasn't lack of disposable income as much as it was short attention span. Unlike modellers who have huge fleets of identical cars, such as coal hoppers, I sometimes didn't have a long enough attention span to decal both sides of the same car. Plus, I thought it was a good way to 'expand' my car fleet.
I did my version of a CPR minibox (grain and Service versions) and a CN baggage car (green passenger scheme and B&W MoW scheme). You could call it flipside modelling!
Thanks for sharing, and if I get around to photographing these cars the way you did, I'll share them on Trackside Treasure - always need more modelling posts!
Eric