Just bought a pair of the new Athearn SP Daylight Chair Cars in the Sunset Limited paint scheme. The care are EXCELLENT all that is missing is running water. I recommend changing out the plastic couplers for real Kadee’s though. Both the number 5 and 148 should work. There are also some cars in the “Lark/Cascade” two tone grey scheme. Wonder if the folks at Athearn will make the City of San Francisco version?
Anyone know how to access the interior? I would like to add passengers to the excellent cars.
I got the two coaches with Blue seats first and saw the Red seat one and had to have it too. And they stay lit after at a station stop for over two minutes! (no track power). I need to open the car too for applying window shades. The instructions were not clear about that.
They are really impressive cars. I have no use for them, but they are almost falling into my “must have” catagory (along with the new Athearn turbine). I was really impressed that they even have the luggage rack and ceiling detail (lighting).
Thanks Left Coast. I cannot imagine why that did not turn up on my searches. All I got were Daylight painted cars and I didn’t even use ‘Daylight’ in the search query. I think it was the SP/GS (why GS?)Their search engine is almost as un managable as Walthers’ is at times.
“GS” was the Southern Pacific’s abbreviation for “General Service (originally Golden State?)” its title/description for its 4-8-4 locomotives. As in “M” for Mogul, “Mk” for Mikado, “Mt” for Mountain, “C” for Consolidation, “F” for “Freight” (2-10-2), and so on and so forth. These were used for the prefix of the locomotive class designations, such as GS-1, GS-5, C-9, F-3, M-6. etc.
But–no “Daylight” paint scheme yet? Or did I not access the right page? At least I hope that this means that Genesis is finally going to start releasing the other SP cars that we’ve been waiting for over 2 years. Like the articulated chairs and the 3-unit diner.
My Balboa GS-4 DESPERATELY needs a train to pull. [:P]
I am presuming these cars represent an investment in new dies, so why not make them prototypical length? Or did the SP have only 77 foot cars instead of 85 footers?
The cars for the SP “Daylights” were designed to be 77 feet in length. They also used 2-unit articulated chair cars, with a combined length of twice that, plus a 3-unit articulated club-kitchen-diner. The “Daylights” were exactly that–daylight trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles, about an 8 or 9 hour run, strictly coach and carried no 85’ sleepers. Those were reserved for the overnight “Lark” train.
Duckdogger: Definitely. SP used 85’ Pullmans in both standard and streamline versions on most of their trains. It was the all-coach “Daylight” trains that were designed specifically. The SP wanted an unbroken ‘streamline’ look to them from loco to observation, and they certainly got it, LOL!
I’m not sure–and I know that someone will correct me if I’m wrong about this–but I understand that the 77-foot coach cars came about because SP wanted to maintain a certain speed schedule on their Coast Line (80 mph average), and there are portions of the Coast Line, especially over the very mountainous Cuesta Grade between San Luis Obispo and Santa Margaruita that contain some very tight curves. With the ‘shorter’ cars, SP could maintain a more rigorous schedule during the 8 hour journey, even with the helpers needed for the 2.2% grade north in that portion of the run.
I know that the schedule for their overnight San Francisco-Los Angeles “Lark”, with standard 85’ Pullman sleepers was a tad slower (but not too much) than the Daylights. And the “Lark” was a very first-class train all the way during its glory days. Kind of the Pacific Coast version of the “20th Century Limited”, but without the 4-track mainline, LOL! I rode both trains as a kid during the early 1950’s, before SP decided to downgrade their passenger service, and I can tell you that the service on both trains was something just sort of incredible. Beautiful trains. And oh boy, did they MOVE! [:P]
Eighty-five-foot passenger cars aren’t “normal” length. Sleepers were typically eighty-something feet long, while coaches were typically in the sixty-something and seventy-something length.
SP’s pre-WWII streamlined coaches were 77-footers, and combines were 79-footers. Post-war-built coaches were 83-footers. Articulated car sections were 64 and 66 feet.
SP’s bi-level peninsula commute coaches were 85 feet.
SP’s heavyweight coaches were nominally 60 footers and 72 footers.
A model needn’t be a scale 85 feet long to be prototypical. It depends on the specific prototype.
I’m not sure–and I know that someone will correct me if I’m wrong about this–but I understand that the 77-foot coach cars came about because SP wanted to maintain a certain speed schedule on their Coast Line (80 mph average), and there are portions of the Coast Line, especially over the very mountainous Cuesta Grade between San Luis Obispo and Santa Margaruita that contain some very tight curves. With the ‘shorter’ cars, SP could maintain a more rigorous schedule during the 8 hour journey, even with the helpers needed for the 2.2% grade north in that portion of the run.
Tom, the “Daylight” schedule for the 471 miles between SFO and LAX was 9 3/4 hours giving an an average overall speed of 48.3 mph. Given the profile of the Coast Division, that’s not a bad average. The “Lark” was on a 12 hour schedule (39.25 mph average). A more leisurely schedule for a night train at that distaince makes a lot of sense since you don’t want to arrive too early in the morning nor depart too late at night to make it an inconvenience for passengers at the end points.
IIRC, the schedule for the “Shasta Daylight” for the 720 or so miles between the Oakland Mole and Portland was 15 1/2 hours. That gives an average speed of about 46.5 mph. That’s an even tougher profile than the Coast Line and a pretty impressive average speed given grades and curves.
Energetic hill climbing definitely was a hallmark of SP passenger time keeping, a fact that was remarked on in Baron Gerard Vuillet’s “Railway Reminiscences Of Three Continents”. However, I do have some reservations about attributing car lengths to the desire to maintain speed on curvy grades. Speeds are limited more by the curvature than the grades. If you have enough horsepower properly distributed, you could maintain 100 mph on a 2.2% grade that has curvature appropriate to that speed. Swiss Federal limits trains to 80 kph (about 50 mph) on the Gotthard’s 2.7% grade because of t
I’ll certainly go with your average speeds on the Coast run. I remember when I rode the Daylight (not the Coast Starlight) between San Francisco and LA as a young teenager and you could certainly tell when you were on the ‘flats’ or in the hills because of the difference in speed, LOL!
And reading what I wrote, I possibly gave the impression that we whizzed over Cuesta at 80mph. Oops! But except for a couple of stops, that train sure made short work of the Salinas Valley.
I never took the “Shasta” to Portland, but I would have given my eyeteeth to–that is one of the most spectacular rail routes I can think of. I remember taking the “Coast Starlight” to Portland some years back, and we hit K-Falls at daybreak. The journey over the Oregon Cascades was absolutely stunning! Would have loved to have been able to go up the Sacramento River canyon during the day, too.
An SP engineer friend told me he once asked a retired engineer that ran the Coast Daylight under steam how fast will a Daylight engine go? "The old engineer said,“I don’t know how fast they will go, but I know for a fact they’ll do 130 MPH.”