Nickel Plate Road

[sour rails]

     I'm new to railroading, therefore I only know the histories of a few railroads.  What I am asking about is "What are some of the railroads that would be in conjunction with the Nickel Plate?"  Simply speeking, on the side of my GP30 there is a N.Y.C. & ST.L, which means New York City & St. Louis.  With this in mind, the N.P.R. would be somewhat "alongside" the New York Central.  If so, what would be some others?  I've already purchased a Conrail, whether or not it fits, I'm going to put it there.

Suggestions would be thankful.

[SteamGene]

Let's see:
NYC
PRR
Monon
Wabash
C&O
IC
N&W (which absorbed the NKP)

I believe the NKP went out of existence before Conrail came into being.
Gene

[MrMunchkin]

actually I think that N.Y.C.&St.L stands for New York, Cincinnatti and St. Louis, I bought my first Nickel Plate Berkshire when I was 12 with my X Mas tip money from my paper route and for years I thought that it stood for New York Central and St.Louis   P.M.

[sour rails]

N&W (which absorbed the NKP)

That would have been my second question.  But also what would be a good combination of different cars to use on my train?
Thank you

[Elmore Yard]

The NYC&StL stands for New York, Chicago and St. Louis RR.  Its major lines ran from Buffalo to Chicago, Sandusky, Oh. to Peoria, Il., Toledo to St. Louis, and Toledo and Wheeling, WV.  It was merged into the N&W in 1964.

TRM

[Atlantic Central]

The Nickel Plate Road is:

N.Y.C. & St.L which actually stands for:

New YorK, Chicago & St. Louis Rail Road

AAR reporting mark NKP

[MrMunchkin]

I stand corrected

[SteamGene]

Sour Rails,
On a mixed freight, you can have any standard gauge car you might imagine.  However, with a normal train, most of the cars will probably be home road.  After that, yu will have cars from roads close to it.  Finally you will have cars from distant roads.  So, using Nickel Plate and a 20 car model pike train, ten cars will be NKP.  Six or seven more will be from the list I gave you earlier.  There are those who say any freight train should have at least one NYC and one PRR among them.  The remaining three or four might be Maine Central, Western Pacific, Milwaukee Road, FEC, Southern, Rutland, etc.
Gene

[sour rails]

      Thanks guys,

[Orsonroy]

Sour Rails,
On a mixed freight, you can have any standard gauge car you might imagine.  However, with a normal train, most of the cars will probably be home road.  After that, yu will have cars from roads close to it.  Finally you will have cars from distant roads.  So, using Nickel Plate and a 20 car model pike train, ten cars will be NKP.  Six or seven more will be from the list I gave you earlier.  There are those who say any freight train should have at least one NYC and one PRR among them.  The remaining three or four might be Maine Central, Western Pacific, Milwaukee Road, FEC, Southern, Rutland, etc.
Gene

Actually Gene, that line of thinking about freight cars really doesn't work.

Freight cars are around for one reason: to make money. "House cars" (boxcars) were the most common single car type in the steam era, with over 600,000 in the USA and Canada (in 1950). Boxcars made the most money when they were OFF home rails, so railroads endeavored to load their cars up as quickly as possible and fling them at another railroad at interchange. Other roads were doing the same, and at the same time were getting empty foreign-road cars off their rails as fast as possible due to per-diem charges. So all of these boxcars rolling around the country were in a constant state of flux, where they could go anywhere (the quickest path off your own rails isn't necessarily towards the road that owns the boxcar).

Boxcar fleets weren't consistent. Some roads had five, some road had tens of thousands (66,000+ on the CN alone). The 25 largest railroads in the USA and Canada owned 80% of the boxcars (out of 250 common carrier roads), so the logic that "half of your boxcars should be home road" doesn't wash. With cars from everywhere being sent everywhere, the basic statistics state that the bulk of the cars on your layout should reflect the fact that some roads completely dominated the boxcar pool. If you're modeling the Morristown & Erie, an eastern shortline with a whopping seven boxcars, a 10 car freight shouldn't contain five M&E cars. It should have maybe one, with two Pennsy, two NYC, one Erie, one CP, one ATSF, one B&O, and one Southern.

Trains also performed specific jobs. On a mixed general merchandise train it WOULD be common to see cars from everywhere behind the engine. But L&N coal drags show endless strings of L&N-only hoppers. Fast reefer strings from Chicago to Buffalo should be made up of only two or three meat packers. Texas gulf trains on the Katy should be dominated by GATX tank cars. A proper mix of cars on a model railroad should try to reflext BOTH the national house car pool and the specific "jobs" some of the trains performed on the chunk of railroad you like to model.

In the case of the NKP, a road that I'm "fairly" well acquainted with, most house cars that rolled on the NKP were NOT home road cars. The NKP had an overall freight car fleet of 35,000 cars. 22,000 of which were boxcars. These cars were "encouraged" to haul merchandise around the country, hitting home rails as infrequently as possible. The NKP was a bridge road: it made more money hauling loaded cars from one railroad, across theor own rails, to a second railroad, than they did by moving "originating loads" from an industry on their rails to a foreign connection. Because of this VERY few cars rolling across NKP mains were NKP-lettered.

Got all that? 

[SteamGene]

Orsonroy,
I did forget that the NKP was a bridge route and doesn't follow the rule like others might.  The operative word is "car" and not "boxcar."  I totally agree that the boxcar was the single most common car on the rails, but a mixed freight is just that, and might well contain every possible kind of revenue car. 
Yes, a small road, like the one you mentioned, would have its own cars overshadowed by cars from larger roads.
BTW, I believe there also was a rule that when given a choice of cars to load, the car that was furthest from home was loaded first, if going in the proper direction.  So a C&O boxcar sitting empty in Los Angeles would be loaded and shipped east before a Santa Fe.  In Fulton Yard in Richmond, the Sanfa Fe would be loaded and sent west before the B&O.
Gene

[r.cprmier]

Gene;
Norfolk and Western absorbed the Nickel Plate in the sixties, along with the Louisville and Nashville, the Wabash, and the Monon.
While stationed at Bunker Hill AFB, I went to a train show at Purdue University there in Lafayette.  NOW...Here was a very strong Monon, AND Nickel Plate enclave!  Tony Koester would beam with pride, methinks!!  These guys were hard-line militants who threw castigating looks at this "uppity nor'easterner" who dared mention New York Central"-much less New Haven.  "N&W...Nickel Plate and Wabash"!, This one guy shouted out.  I kept thinking about how similar he sounded to George Wallace  on the steps of the "Birmin'ham" state house in his "wonderful" segregation speech...
The guys at Purdue had one bodacious layout though-and this was my first encounter with a pneumatic turnout system-now THAT was cool!!

I will say that I saw the last of the Wabash blue and gray Alcos-and they were beautiful...I think PA1s were like Harleys...Never saw one I didn;t fall in love with!

RIch

[Elmore Yard]

The Nickel Plate, Wabash, P&WV and the AC&Y along with the Sandusky Line of the PRR became part of the N&W in October 1964.  The L&N and Monon are part of CSX and were never controlled by the N&W.

[sour rails]

     So the NKP went out in '64 to the N&W.  Another question would be "When was it started?"

[Elmore Yard]

According to the Nickel Plate Road Historical & Technical Society webpage, the NYC&StL started in 1881.