Select an era

As somebody can have guess, I like steams, and consequently to the Bay Area selection I've made, and the fact that I love GSs ( see the above sidings) , the spread of time I have available is very short.

• 1930 : first 10 GS-1s are delivered
• 1947: The first diesels enter mainline operation on the SP.

Depression era "feelings" for me are "too sad" , and this shorted the time for another tens.
War years limit a lot on rosters and "colors" ... so, what can be my choice?
During the end of '30s depression was mostly gone, just surviving in some old buildings, a new "dream" is shining on the horizon, but at same time war again is knocking on the door. What a "dramatic" era !

I want set my railroad story in the 1939-1940

The years between 1930 and 1940, despite the economic conditions, was a time of many transitions and innovations for America's railroads

• Two-way train telephones were used for the first time in 1937, by the Pennsylvania Railroad.
• Fluorescent lighting was first installed in U.S. passenger equipment in 1938.
• New designs and types of freight cars were being developed to cut cost and increase carrying capacity.  Notable among these were covered hopper cars and the B&O's famed "wagontop" box cars.
• Although still investing in conventional steam power, many of the major railroads were beginning to give serious consideration to Diesel-powered equipment, with its dependability and economy.
• Whether Diesel or steam powered, the major railroads were going in for streamlining in a big way.
• The colourful "billboard" refrigerator cars of the early to mid 1930s began to disappear in the late 30s.  The U.S. Government, in response to an outcry for fairness, ruled that allowing the lessees of freight cars to advertise their products on the cars' sides amounted to an illegal advertising rebate.  After July 1, 1938, any car with the lease’s name in lettering over 12 inches high could be rejected by any railroad unwilling to take it in interchange. (Reference: Burlington Bulletin #28, several pages.  Other sources say the deadline was July, 1937.)
• Arch-bar trucks were outlawed, but extensions to the deadline for their replacement delayed their actual demise until July, 1940.
• The old type K brake equipment was being replaced by type AB.
• Although still much in evidence, 36-foot boxcars were being replaced by newer, all-steel cars, forty or fifty feet long.  The New Haven had only 36' cars until 1941, although some were of "modern" construction.
• May 1939: UP, SP and Santa Fe passenger trains in Los Angeles are united into a single terminal as Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal is opened

As I researched for background, I found a lot of the things I thought I knew weren't exactly accurate.
This being the Great Depression, I had expected to find things pretty stagnant. 
As I discovered, however, there were a lot of things going on in a lot of fields. Just a few samples:

• J.R.R.Tolkien's book The Hobbit or, There and Back Again was published in 1937.
• Action Comics, begun in 1938, introduced Superman, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
• Walt Disney produced the first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937.
• Calypso music, folk music of Trinidad, became popular as a form of jazz music in the U.S. in 1938.
• On the evening of October 30, 1938, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a one-hour dramatic series produced and directed by Orson Welles, presented a dramatization of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, about an invasion of Earth by Martians.  The production was done as if it were a series of news flashes and on-the-spot reports.  In spite of repeated announcements that it was a play, millions of listeners, no doubt already edgy from the recent war news from Spain, Czechoslovakia, and China, panicked, with many taking to the streets to fight or flee.
• The first radio telescope was built in 1937 by American electrical engineer Grote Reber.  Its 31-foot reflector was made of wire screen, rather than polished glass or metal.
• Nylon, discovered in 1935, was introduced commercially in 1938.  The first nylon fibres offered for sale were bristles in toothbrushes.  Nylon stockings became available in 1940.
• The United States automotive industry continued to make engineering progress throughout the 1930s. Window defrosters became available in 1936, and automatic transmissions in 1937.  The automotive industry was also close on the heels of the railroads in introducing streamlining.
• The National Cancer Institute was created in 1937 by an act of Congress.
• The first blood bank was set up in 1937, inCook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
• Transpacific airmail service, begun in 1935 between San Francisco and the Philippines, with stops at Hawaii, Midway, Wake, and Guam, was extended to Hong Kong on April 21, 1937.
• Plastic contact lenses were introduced in 1938.
• The hallucinatory drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was synthesized in 1938 by Dr. Albert Hofmann in Basel, Switzerland.  I twa s used to treat terminal cancer patients.
• San Francisco's Golden GateBridge was completed in 1937.
• Ford Motor Company produced the first Mercury in 1938.
• Hewlett-Packard Corporation was founded in 1938 by William Hewlett and David Packard, engineering graduates of StanfordUniversity.  They produced an audio oscillator that was used by Walt Disney studios in the sound system for the film Fantasia.
• The first instant coffee, Nescafe', was invented in 1937.
• The Railroad Retirement program was enacted in 1937.
• Samsung Group, a conglomerate based in Seoul, was incorporated as Samsung in 1938.  It was founded as a rice mill in 1936
• In 1937, the nation's gold reserve was moved to Fort Knox for safe keeping.