# questions about historically-correct model cars



## jonmyrlebailey (Sep 3, 2011)

Imagine one were building a model train layout in a scale like HO or G. Imagine he wanted to ACCURATELY model a small town set in the American Pacific Northwest in a state like Oregon, Washington or Idaho with rural surroundings like pine forests, rivers, lakes and mountains. Imagine also the chief industries in the area were farming and ranching. Of course, the people and houses would have to be styled for the time: let's say late 1970's as the year 1979.

I will have to ask about the road vehicles that would be historically correct for the layout as model scenery. Let's say this fairly large layout had a combination of 200 scale automobiles, vans, light trucks, sport utilities and station wagons. 

There might also be some classic 1950s, 1960s and 1970s Kenworth, Pete, GM General, White, Ford, Chevrolet and Mack big rigs as well as well as the older Greyhound buses. 
Probably a good number of logging trucks. 

What percentage of the scenery cars should be:

American makes/models?
1970's vintage?
1960's vintage?
1950's vintage?
1940's vintage?

We could even throw in a scale Chevy Citation as well since it came out in the early half of 1979 as a 1980 model. 

Remember in rural America, older vehicles are a more common sight than in the suburbs and big cities. I suspect the vast majority of rural vehicles in the American PNW region in the later half of the 1970's were American makes and many were pickups, 4x4's and jeeps. For foreign cars, I suspect there were a lot of Volkswagen Beetles, Things and VW buses back then in those parts of the country.
As well as cowboys, lumberjacks, sheepmen and farmers I think a lot of long-haired hippy types haunted the Pacific Northwest in the 1970's as well. Of course, a PNW layout needs Bigfoot hiding in the woods somewhere as well. 

Why would I set my layout in the late 1970's anyway?

Well, all my favorite American d/e locomotives would have been produced and established on American railroads by then including SD40-T-2 and GP38's. One could model the 1950's or early 1960's but GM/EMD tunnel motors weren't yet invented. 
It would have still been too early for Amtrak which was well-established by the late 1970's. 

I am a fan of the classic GM/EMD spartan cab hood units and the F7's and similar GM car bodies as well as a couple of Geeps and SW-1500's. GM is my Favorite General when it comes to motive power for trains. For steam, its BALDWIN for me all the way! Consolidations and 2-6-6-2 mallets. I was born and raised in the American West where things were best!


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Well, a lot of folks like to accurately model, but it's really hard to say what the right mix of vehicles would be. I would have to say that there really isn't a "correct" answer to this one. For a railroad, you can often find out exactly what cars and motive power it ran over a given timeframe, not so with road vehicles.

For buildings, they often have a pretty long life, so while you don't want anything later than late 1970's vintage, you could well have buildings that were 100 years old or more.

A road vehicle that lasts more than about a dozen years is pretty rare. If you're going to model 1979, my own gut feeling is that about half of the cars should be '70's vintage, and another 1/3 1960's vintage. The balance would be older, a few 1950's with just a sprinkling of earlier models thrown in. Commercial vehicles tend to hang around longer than private ones, and trucks longer than cars.

If you can find some old photos of a representative area, that might help you get the right flavor for your layout.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

I think you would tend to see more older vehicles in a rural setting than an urban one....the farmers in the 50's and 60's were like the railways....they ran stuff until it absolutely had nothing left, then they ran them some more....


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## Eilif (Nov 6, 2017)

Tough to say, especially since you'd also want to take into consideration the economic level of the areas you're modeling. Additionally, if your layout (like most folks) attempts to model different areas then you might have a different proportion of vehicles in each area. A neat and tidy little neighborhood of new homes in a more affluent part of town might have a higher proprotion of newer model cars. Head to a more industrial part of town and you might have more working trucks and late model cars. If you model an area further out in the country where less well-off folks live, maybe you'd find alot of late model cars.

Luckily there is an a way to determine what you are asking at least aproximately. Find 1970's pictures of the areas you want to model and see what the proportions of cars are. You might have to do some digging but I don't imagine there's many kinds of locales that weren't photographed in the 70's.

If you want to do a very specific area and there are gaps in the chronology of photos taken, even older or newer photots could give you an idea of the proportions of older and newer vehicles.

Good luck and may all your prototypes be (already) well photographed!


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## jonmyrlebailey (Sep 3, 2011)

Eilif said:


> Tough to say, especially since you'd also want to take into consideration the economic level of the areas you're modeling. Additionally, if your layout (like most folks) attempts to model different areas then you might have a different proportion of vehicles in each area. A neat and tidy little neighborhood of new homes in a more affluent part of town might have a higher proprotion of newer model cars. Head to a more industrial part of town and you might have more working trucks and late model cars. If you model an area further out in the country where less well-off folks live, maybe you'd find alot of late model cars.
> 
> Luckily there is an a way to determine what you are asking at least aproximately. Find 1970's pictures of the areas you want to model and see what the proportions of cars are. You might have to do some digging but I don't imagine there's many kinds of locales that weren't photographed in the 70's.
> 
> ...


I plan on modeling a fictitious layout with a small town, perhaps 
the front of a farm and a ranch, a railroad yard where RR employees can park their personal vehicles and an industrial complex where employees there can also park their own vehicles and this is in the American Pacific Northwest in a small fictitious area that can be described as semi rural. 

I suspect the areas where blue collar employees park are going to have a lot of trucks, older cars, 1960's muscle cars and a few 1950's classics. Downtown and in residential areas probably more later-model 1970's cars and trucks and vans. The town minister is bound to have a blue 1960s-1970s Chevrolet larger-model car parked at his church. Remember some of these vehicles might belong to city slickers passing through so a 1970's Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II, a Porsche 911, a 1978 Cadillac Seville or a 1975 Lincoln Continental or a 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit would not look out of place there. Got to have a few Harley-Davidsons and a couple of Japanese model motorcycles and one classic English bike as well. Also a few hippy air-cooled Volkswagens. 

Older cars and pickups will dominate the farm and ranch areas.

here is a list I made up:

105 AUTOMOBILES (Passenger Cars: WIDE VARIETY OF FACTORY-CORRECT COLORS)

1970'S (55 UNITS)
1.	Alfa-Romeo roadster
2.	AMC Gremlin
3.	AMC Matador
4.	AMC Pacer
5.	Buick Century Custom wagon
6.	Buick full-size sedan (Park Avenue, Electra or LeSabre)
7.	Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham
8.	Cadillac Seville
9.	Chevrolet full-size sedan (Caprice/Impala
10.	Chevrolet Monza
11.	Chevy A-body, Chevelle or Malibu
12.	Chevy Camaro Z-28
13.	Chevy Citation, 1980 (came out early 1979)
14.	Chevy Nova, pre-1979
15.	Chevy Vega
16.	Chrysler Cordoba, pre-1978
17.	Chrysler Town & Country station wagon
18.	Corvette
19.	Datsun 240-280 series Z car
20.	Datsun B-210
21.	Dodge Coronet sheriff car (5 units)
22.	Dodge Crestwood wagon
23.	Dodge Diplomat
24.	Dodge full-size sedan (Monaco) police car
25.	Dodge Swinger or Dart
26.	Eldorado convertible
27.	Ford Country Squire wagon
28.	Ford full-size sedans (LTD, Custom 500 or Galaxie 500)
29.	Ford Granada
30.	Ford Maverick
31.	Ford Mustang II
32.	Jaguar
33.	Javelin
34.	Lincoln Continental
35.	Lincoln Versailles
36.	Mazda sedan
37.	Mercedes-Benz sedan, classic model with vertically-stacked quad headlights
38.	Mercury Capri
39.	Mercury Colony Park station wagon
40.	Mercury Monarch
41.	Monte Carlo, pre-1978
42.	Mustang, 1979 Fox body
43.	Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser wagon
44.	Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme coupe
45.	Oldsmobile full-sedan (Delta 88 Royale or Ninety-Eight)
46.	Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon
47.	Plymouth Valiant or Scamp
48.	Pontiac Catalina or Bonneville
49.	Pontiac Trans-Am, black, 1977
50.	Porsche 911
51.	Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II
52.	Toyota Celica
53.	Toyota Corolla
54.	Volkswagen Beetle or Super Beetle convertible
55.	Volkswagen Rabbit
56.	Volkswagen Thing

1960's (35 units)
1.	Buick Riviera, 1963
2.	Buick Skylark
3.	Buick Wildcat
4.	Cadillac Fleetwood, 1965-66
5.	Chevelle SS-396
6.	Chevy full-size, 1965
7.	Chevy Nova, 1968-1969
8.	Chrysler Imperial, early 1960’s
9.	Chrysler Town & Country wagon, 1966-1967
10.	Corvair, 1st Gen.
11.	Corvette 427
12.	Corvette Sting-Ray, 1963
13.	Dodge Dart, 1963
14.	Dodge SuperBee, yellow/black
15.	Eldorado Biarritz convertible, black, no skirts, 1964 only
16.	Falcon, 1st Gen.
17.	Ford Galaxie, 1965
18.	Jaguar
19.	Lincoln Continental convertible
20.	Mercury full-size wagon
21.	Mercury Monterey
22.	Mustang convertible
23.	Mustang Fastback
24.	Oldsmobile Cutlass 442
25.	Oldsmobile Toronado
26.	Plymouth Roadrunner
27.	Pontiac Catalina
28.	Pontiac Tempest
29.	Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III (non-Chinese-eyes version)
30.	Shelby GT-500
31.	Sunbeam Alpine Tiger
32.	T-Bird
33.	Volkswagen Beetle
34.	Volkswagen Karmann Ghia
35.	Volkswagen station wagon

1950's (10 units)
1.	Bel Air convertible, 1957
2.	Cadillac convertible, black, 1959
3.	Chevrolet Bel Air sedan, 1953
4.	Chrysler Imperial, 1957
5.	Corvette, Roman red, 1958
6.	Ford Crown Victoria, 1954
7.	Ford Fairlane convertible, 1958
8.	Mercury Monterey sedan, blue, 1959
9.	Oldsmobile Holiday 88, pre-1955
10.	T-Bird, pink, 1955


95 PICKUP TRUCKS, SUV’S AND VANS (WIDE VARIETY OF FACTORY-CORRECT COLORS)

1970’S (50 UNITS)
1.	Chevrolet full-size pickup 2WD (4 units)
2.	Chevrolet full-size pickup 4WD (4-units)
3.	Chevy Blazer (2 units)
4.	Chevy Luv pickup (2 units)
5.	Chevy Suburban (2 units)
6.	Chevy Van (2 units)
7.	Dodge 4WD pickup (3 units)
8.	Dodge van (2 units)
9.	Ford Bronco (3 units)
10.	Ford Courier pickup (2 units)
11.	Ford full-size pickup 2WD (4 units)
12.	Ford full-size pickup 4WD (3 units)
13.	Ford Van (2 units)
14.	GMC 4WD pickup (3 units)
15.	International Scout (2 units)
16.	Jeep CJ-5 or similar models (2 units)
17.	Land Rover (2 units)
18.	Plymouth Power Wagon (2 units)
19.	Plymouth van ( 2 units)
20.	Toyota Land Cruiser (1 unit)
21.	Toyota pickup (2 units)

1960’S (35 UNITS)
1.	Chevy 2WD pickup (3 units)
2.	Chevy 4x4 pickup (2 units)
3.	Chevy panel truck (2 units)
4.	Chevy Corvair van (2 units)
5.	Dodge 2WD pickup (3 units)
6.	Dodge 4x4 pickup (2 units)
7.	Ford 2WD pickup (3 units)
8.	Ford 4x4 pickup (2 units)
9.	Ford Falcon van (2 units)
10.	Ford panel truck (2 units)
11.	GMC 2WD pickup (2 units) 
12.	International 4x4 pickup (3 units)
13.	Volkswagen Bus (5 units)
14.	Volkswagen pickup (2 units)

1950’S (10 UNITS)
1.	Chevy Nomad sedan delivery, 1957 (1 unit)
2.	Chevy pickup, 1950-1953 (2 units)
3.	Ford panel truck (1 unit)
4.	Ford pickup, pre-1958 (2 units)
5.	GMC pickup (2 units)
6.	International pickup, pre-1954, (2 units)


5 MOTORCYCLES (WIDE VARIETY OF FACTORY-CORRECT COLORS) 
1.	1970’s Honda CB series (1 unit)
2.	1960’s Norton (1 unit)
3.	1970’s Harley-Davidson AMF Super Glide
4.	1960’s Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide
5.	1950’s Harley-Davidson Panhead


[UNDETERMINED NUMBER] COMMERCIAL TRUCKS and RVs (WIDE VARIETY OF FACTORY-CORRECT COLORS) (AMERICAN TRUCKING COMPANY NAMES THAT WERE IN BUSINESS AT THE TIME AND OPERATING IN THE REGION MODELED AND APPROPRIATE COMPANY LIVERIES FOR THE VEHICLES)

1970'S
1.	Flatbed semitrailer
2.	GMC General day cab tractor
3.	Greyhound bus
4.	International day-cab tractor
5.	Kenworth conventional day cab tractor
6.	Kenworth conventional sleeper tractor
7.	Peterbilt cab-over sleeper tractor
8.	Peterbuilt cab-over day cab tractor
9.	Semitrailer, cattle
10.	Semitrailer, diesel tanker
11.	Semitrailer, dry van
12.	Semitrailer, flatbed w/ hay load
13.	Semitrailer, flatbed
14.	Semitrailer, gasoline tanker
15.	Semitrailer, logging
16.	Semitrailer, milk tanker
17.	Semitrailer, moving and storage
18.	Semitrailer, reefer
19.	Uhaul moving van, Ford, Dodge or Chevy
20.	White Freightliner cab-over tractor
21. Winnebago motor home
22. Fleetwood motor home
24. Jamboree motor home
26. couple Airstream travel trailers
27. a horse trailer
28. couple of camper units mounted in some of the pickup trucks

1960’s
1.	Ford medium-duty flatbed
2.	International cement mixer
3.	Mack dump truck
4.	School bus
5.	Water tank truck for road constriction

1950’s
1.	American LaFrance fire engine, pumper
2.	Kenworth day cab tractor


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## Eilif (Nov 6, 2017)

That's wonderfully complete.
I wonder though if it might be better to start with what's currently available in HO scale rather than a list of historical vehicles?


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Eilif said:


> That's wonderfully complete.
> I wonder though if it might be better to start with what's currently available in HO scale rather than a list of historical vehicles?


I agree. Good luck finding most of that list. Or are you planning to custom-build or kitbash them?


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## jonmyrlebailey (Sep 3, 2011)

Eilif said:


> That's wonderfully complete.
> I wonder though if it might be better to start with what's currently available in HO scale rather than a list of historical vehicles?


I am still not decided what scale I would build in yet or if I would even get into my own model RRing. But it is fun for me to theorize about it for now. 

Most likely all those cars would have to be custom built on special high-dollar contracts for whatever scale I want, much too rich for my blood.

If I were a billionaire, I would have a G scale layout built in a special building the size of a football field up on bench-work around the walls and every piece of rolling stock and road vehicles custom-built, scratch-built, piece by piece, by the world's-best master hand craftsmen on contract, likely from Europe.

All those scale road cars, buses and trucks would be radio-controlled, autonomous and navigated by sophisticated technology similar to GPS. All the railroad trains, signals and switches would be 100% autonomous too! Trains would operate on schedules with pre-programmed commands like Trainz in the AI mode. All the train couplers would be autonomously power operated. Train wheel flanges and couplers would be of correct scale. So would the railroad track rails themselves. The road vehicles as well as the autonomous boats and scale flying helicopters, would have all authentic lighting, authentic sounds and authentic scale people figures in the seats. I have a TEXAS size imagination when it comes to all the possibilities of scale-model transportation. All the electronics to make all this work would be special-made on special contacts as well. Perhaps, I would even start a company that builds all this fanciful stuff for the world's most discriminating hobbyists who are well-to-do, of course. It would be a robotic train layout modeled like the film Westworld in miniature. 

Did I say operational boats? Yes! My layout would have scale bodies of real fluid water: a lake, a functional dam with a working spillway and a river with real water current. Electric pumps would furnish the movement of the stream. 

Next for fun, I will research the G scale scenery vehicle market and see exactly what's out there right now and pick and choose from those.


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## Gramps (Feb 28, 2016)

Old_Hobo said:


> I think you would tend to see more older vehicles in a rural setting than an urban one....the farmers in the 50's and 60's were like the railways....they ran stuff until it absolutely had nothing left, then they ran them some more....


Not necessarily, in working class neighborhoods people use mass transit, walk and/or drive only short distances and older cars were common because they never got many miles on them. In the NYC borough of Queens there are many low mileage older cars that people own. Higher income neighborhoods in the suburbs would be more in line with your assumption.


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## jonmyrlebailey (Sep 3, 2011)

Gramps said:


> Not necessarily, in working class neighborhoods people use mass transit, walk and/or drive only short distances and older cars were common because they never got many miles on them. In the NYC borough of Queens there are many low mileage older cars that people own. Higher income neighborhoods in the suburbs would be more in line with your assumption.


Well, Gramps, we were talking about the American small towns of the Pacific Northwest in the mountains, forests, canyons, valleys and high deserts. More or less like the mid-west. My roommate is a young New Yorker stationed here in the Air Force and claims many people in that Big Apple don't even own cars. I have lived out here in the American west all my life where things are BEST and cars, SUV's, vans and light-duty trucks here are more highly depended upon for personal transportation. We have a transit bus system here in hick Boise, Idaho and the drivers are horribly rude to people. The nicest bus drivers in my experience were in Greyhound uniforms. Amtrak service was cut out here in Boise, ID about in the 1990's. You have to catch a Greyhound to Winnemucca, Nevada to get to the nearest Amtrak station. We have a commercial airport here, though. Occasionally, a Union Pacific special excursion train will come to town at the historic train depot with big, yellow UP Budds or Pullmans in tow by a Big Boy steam loco. There is a black 1924 ALCO UP consolidation complete with Vanderbilt tender parked on a siding at my hometown's depot as it has become somewhat of a museum. Freight train service still runs regularly through Boise. I have even come close to being hit by a MOW truck on rails in my car at a crossing here as they give no warning and the grade crossing signals are not activated by them.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

Gramps said:


> Not necessarily, in working class neighborhoods people use mass transit, walk and/or drive only short distances and older cars were common because they never got many miles on them. In the NYC borough of Queens there are many low mileage older cars that people own. Higher income neighborhoods in the suburbs would be more in line with your assumption.


Good point, which re-enforces the fact that older cars would not be out of place....


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