CNW/UP/SP Overland Limited

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Hello,

I have some questions about that CNW/UP/SP Overland Limited passenger train.

  1. When (which year) did the CNW/UP/SP start to repaint their (formerly pullman green) heavyweight cars for that train into the two tone grey Overland scheme?

  2. Was it ever a complete two tone gray heavyweight train? If so, during which years?

  3. When did the first leightweight cars appear in the consist of the Overland Limited? → this question is connected to question 4)

  4. Was that train ever reintroduced as a streamliner or was it just gradually upgraded with streamliner cars until the last heavyweight cars have been replaced? I know that the Overland Limited was renamed San Francisco Overland in 1947, so could 1947 probably be the year when that train was streamlined?

  5. http://www.thecoachyard.com/Pages/Equipment/Overland1946.html

On that website, it is mentioned that in 1946, the Overland Limited was still a full heavyweight train. In contrary to that this website

http://espee.railfan.net/overland.html

is showing that in 1946 the Overland Limited was a mix of heavyweight and leightweight streamliner cars. So now I´m asking myself which of these 2 versions is true.

  1. http://www.thecoachyard.com/Pages/Equipment/Overland1946.html

On that website too, it´s shown that by 1954, the San Francisco Overland was a fully streamlined leightweight train, but with mixed two tone gray and yellow cars. My question is: When (which year) did CNW/UP/SP start to repaint their two tone gray Overland scheme streamliners cars for that train into UP yellow? When was that transition from two tone grey to yellow complete?

  1. I know that beside this beautiful but expensive brass sets by Coach Yard, there are some heavyweight cars in two tone grey Overland scheme for SP and UP done by Walthers in HO scale. But what about two tone gr
2

DeLuxe:

I can only answer a few of your questions, and only from personal observations of the train as I remember it on the SP.

To my knowledge, and photographs I have seen of the Overland during the late steam era, it was pretty much always a mix of heavyweight and streamlined cars in the two-tone grey scheme. IIRC, the only two-tone gray ‘streamliner’ on the Donner Pass run was the short-lived “Forty-Niner” that ran from Chicago to San Francisco (Oakland) during the San Francisco World Exhibition of 1939-40.

The Overland was relegated to secondary transcontinental passenger service after the introduction of the streamlined “City Of San Francisco” in 1937, and to my recollection, was always a mix of Pullman standard and streamlined cars. In fact, when I first started riding the “Overland” between Truckee and Sacramento in the mid to late 1950’s, the cars were mostly UP/SP yellow and grey, and seemed like ‘hand-me-downs’ from the “City” service. In fact, by that time, the “Overland” was pretty much solely an SP operation, and was downgraded by the UP connection in Odgen, Utah, to mostly an eastbound mail train with the passenger equipment split up on the various eastbound “City” trains.

There’s an interesting book called THE OVERLAND LIMITED by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, that was published in the late 1950’s, that is more of a ‘social’ than actual ‘railroad’ history of the train, but if you can find it, it’s got a lot of valuable information on the Glory Days of the train, from about 1900 to 1950.

But after the introduction of the “City” trains, UP seemed to focus more on their “Streamliners”, and classic trains like “Overland”, “Portland Rose”, “Challenger” and others were relegated to secondary status on the various UP runs, recieving up-graded equipment as needed.

The real “Glory” years of the “Overland LImited” appear to have been from about 1900 to about 1939, when it was THE deL