Does anyone have photos of the trains used to transport Boy Scouts to Los Angeles for the 1953 Scout Jamboree in Irvine, CA? There were several in the depot as we boarded buses to Irvine. Where did they store these trains for the week? I am especially interested in the Southern Railway consist that went from Atlanta to LA via New Orleans…it picked us up at Hattiesburg, MS. Our coach was an old green Pullman heavyweight…one of about 10 or 12. What was the motive power?
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Does anyone have photos of the trains used to transport Boy Scouts to Los Angeles for the 1953 Scout Jamboree in Irvine, CA? There were several in the depot as we boarded buses to Irvine. Where did they store these trains for the week? I am especially interested in the Southern Railway consist that went from Atlanta to LA via New Orleans…it picked us up at Hattiesburg, MS. Our coach was an old green Pullman heavyweight…one of about 10 or 12. What was the motive power?
It has been a few years since I posted the above. Time to refresh.
Google has grown since nine years ago, spend a hour there. Have you contacted BSA to see if they have any records? If Southern was involved, contact their historical society. And so on.
FWIW, Jamboree Blvd in Irvine and Tustin was named after the 1953 event.
Mike to the rescue!
Excerpt from https://www.ochistoryland.com/jamboree
Rail connections were the last stumbling block. About 75% of the Jamboree participants would be coming by rail. More negotiations followed with Santa Fe, the Southern Pacific, and the Union Pacific before everything fell into place…
The Jamboree officially began on July 17, 1953, but the first Scouts began arriving on the 12th. For the next four days they arrived at a rate of over 10,000 a day. 36,000 of them arrived by rail at one of four railroad stations – Santa Ana, Fullerton, East Los Angeles, and Puente. There they boarded buses for the Jamboree…
Appreciate your reply and info Mike. Wish I had taken more photos.
At 14:35 a MILW C-Liner comes into view - painted in UP Armour Yellow - I thought in 1953 CNW was still the UP passenger partner East of Omaha. I didn’t think the MILW association started until 1955 and MILW retained their orange and maroon until the UP association.
That’s not a C-Liner, the radiators are wrong. And the words “Union Pacific” can be read on its side.
It must be a earlier FM “Erie-Built”. Union Pacific had 13 of them, 8 A-units and 5 B-units.
They are not only certainly Erie-Builts, I can almost read the number on the B-unit. If I recall correctly, the trucks on the three original units are different from the ones on the ‘later’ ones and that might give us a little additional differential diagnosis. Don Strack has some additional material on these.
Some of you may find this page interesting.
These are the FMs you’ll read about in Kiefer’s 1947 survey of motive power, specifically called out for being relatively short in length per horsepower (!) in the same way the Baldwin Centipede was for a true high-speed design (!!). In the ‘bad old days’ before the unions accepted the idea of one MUed consist = one locomotive with regard to firemen, KCS rather famously ordered a “locomotive” – described and advertised as one – consisting of no less than A-B-B-A Erie-built units, 8000 traction-motored horsepower to, presumably, pull anything gloriously. (It’s still pretty glorious all these years later!)