I grew up with BNSF, not Frisco. One spot in particular made me want to begin this project. My grandfather lives in St. James, MO along the ex Frisco. During visits, I enjoy walking a few blocks to the station and filming the 1-3 daily BNSF trains. The Cuba Sub doesn’t see much traffic these days. Not many people document the line anymore. There aren’t many photos (and zero videos) of St. James from the Frisco days, so I’m going to reconstruct it on a personal favorite game of mine, Trainz. It will be set sometime after the St. James downtown beatification project that took place in the mid 1960s. I encourage anyone who has photos of St. James anytime between 1950 and 1990 to drop them here. I’m working off only 5 reference photos right now! I will try and post an update every month until completion.
Update to this, progress is much slower than I hoped, but I aim to provide some more pictures at the end of January. Stay tuned!
End of January update to St. James. I have spent lots of time searching for prototypical buildings, and so far I’ve found a few good matches. I will need to either find or create purina logos for the elevator. The central plaza is nearing completion, and my goal is to work on extending the tracks before adding more buildings.
This project is really looking good. I tried to do something similar with Pittsburg, KS several years ago. I got the tracks all laid out, but the project never went beyond that. At one time, there was a pubicly available file for Frisco F units in about every paint scheme the Frisco employed. If it's not still out there, I may be able to dig it out of the cobwebs in my computers harddrive. You mentioned a mid 60s feel, so these units would look right at home.
Trainz 2012 compatible F units include "Cigar Band" (simplified black and yellow) A units 19 (<kuid:473973:1062>), 22, 28 and 33 by "n8phu" and B units 119 (kuid2:45324:50022:2), 121, 130 and 136. "Dricketts" who was (is) on this forum re-skinned a couple more of those to "Cutworm" (original full-stripe black and yellow) A units 5014 (<kuid:135229:100416>), 5019, 5031 and 5035 as well as B unit 5125 (<kuid:135229:100420>). A quick look shows these are not on the Download Station. My records show I downloaded them from "The Erecting Hall." Be aware, they may not run in later versions of TRAINZ like TS19 or TS22. I do not have any orange and white F-units; I think I have seen them, though.
I first noticed the term "cutworm" on this forum. It described the yellow-striped black scheme first applied to the EMD F units. Jeepers! I would not know where to find it right now. I think the passenger units were called "redbirds," of course. If memory serves, the same post mentioned the term "cutworm."
BTW, Erecting Hall shows the n8phu "cigar band" and dricketts black and yellow stripe Frisco F units are available for download. They also show some orange and white Frisco F units. As noted previously, they may not work in all versions of TRAINZ.
Understood. I really don't see "cutworm" in the F unit full stripes scheme. I've always felt the Frisco's F freight scheme to be one of the classiest freight schemes going, certainly not on par with some worm LOL!
FWIW: What he probably meant was the stripe had a round end and separated by the porthole's resembled a "cutworm" to him, anyway! As the saying goes. "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder".