I recently aquired some Roundhouse Harrimen type passenger cars. Are these cars based on a real railroads cars and if so whose. Also who made these cars and why are they called Harrimans?They were orginally lettered for the D&RGW but now are PRR Tuscan Red.
Here’s a link
Harriman was a rail mogul around the turn of the century. By 1910, he owned controlling interests in the UP, SP, IC, Alton, and few smaller roads. To economize, he introduced standaredized equipment designs which were ordered for all the roads. This resulted in many roads having similar or virtually identical engines, freight cars and passenger cars.
The Harriman passenger cars were an attempt to reduce the weight of heavyweight car design, and were used a lot by the SP and IC (and to a lesser extent, the UP). The easy way to recognize a Harriman car is by looking at the “turtle back” roof.
Unfortunately, the models you have (whether they’re Model Power or MDC) aren’t very good representations of real Harriman cars. Only spme baggage cars and RPOs were ever built to that length. But, they are inexpensive, and make great candidates for a kitbash (to add 10-18 feet in length)
Actually the RH Harriman cars are fairly close to SP. The baggage can be used as is. The coach is about 1 window short of the SP 60’, coaches. Most of the SP and UP later Harriman cars (baggage and coach) were around 70’ w/ 6 wheel trucks but he RH will do for the 60 footers. SP actually had 40’ Harriman RPOs and I think a credible 70’ baggage RPO could be bashed from half of a 60’ baggage and 60’ RPO (or, more accurately, 30’ of the 60’ RPO and 40’ of the 60’Baggage)
I posted the following on the related “trains” thread:
E.H.Harriman controlled the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Illinois Central and some other roads. The UP and SP were large users of Harriman arch roof cars, but most of these were longer than 60 feet, most 80 feet.
I recall seeing Harriman cars on commuter trains in 1973 - 1980, but I think these were about 70 feet long. The Athearn arch roof coach would represent these best, but I don’t think it is available ready to run in plain SP grey with white lettering. These trains were hauled by SDP45s, FM Trainmasters, GP40P-2s and SD9s and GP9s.
The Roundhouse 60 feet baggage could be used with the Athearn cars for non-commuter trains. These cars were usually mixed with clerestory roof on long distance trains, but SP and UP had 80 feet Harriman diners.
E.H Harriman was credited as the person who chased “Butch Cassidy” and the “Sundance Kid” out of the , at least in the movie!
The 1919 Car Builder’s Cyclopedia illustrates UP Harriman Mail cars (60 feet) and Baggage cars (69 feet), both built by . So we have a builder and an approximate date (pre 1919). We know the coaches lasted until 1980, and the baggage cars were painted for the D