I have 24" curves on my mainline and my branch will have 18" curves, so most of my passenger cars will have to stay on the mainline, but I have a shorty combine that could tag along on a mixed local up the branch for the few passengers going to the town of Priest River. However, the branch is a dead end line. I thought of putting a small turntable at the terminus to flip the engine, and then it occurred to me that even if I turned the engine, the combine would have to be backed down the branch, and I think it would look silly to have the coach end forward. So…
Have any of you ever heard of turntables being used to turn not locos but cars? My thought was, have two tracks coming into the turntable. The engine drops the combine at the wee station, then goes to the turntable, turns, and comes out on a sort of escape track – a second track out of the turntable – and after spotting and picking up cars at the industries around Priest River town, the engine comes back to the station with the empties, uses them to push the combine onto the turntable, the combine gets turned and brought back to the station headed in the home direction to pick up passengers again.
I guess a second question is, have any of you ever heard of combines running coach end forward, because if this is not a capital offense agains railway protocol I could skip the turntable completely – branchwork will be done mostly by road switchers anyway.
Wild guesses and rash opinions welcome. I only need the slightest justification.
If the combine is run as the lone passenger car on the rear of a freight, it doesn’t need to be “turned around”. Doing that would serve no practical purpose…
The reason to run combines with the baggage section forward is so that passengers can go between cars (from and to passenger section of combine and rest of train). If there is no “rest of train”, that reason evaporates.
I have a number of combines (often used as the caboose on mixed trains), and depending on where they’re going, they’ll be turned, if necessary, on one of my two turntables or on my wye, meant for turning locos or some freight cars (like the ones bearing a card like this…
Some combines…
I’ve based my use of combines on some books showing Canadian National lines in southern and southwestern Ontario, where the combine doubled as a caboose, and where locos and combines would be turned on the turntables which were at the end of most of those lines.
The turntables were sometimes man-powered, but some also ran using compressed air from the brake piping. In most cases, there was no roundhouse although a few lines might have had a shed. These trains usually ran to their end point, then, after turning, returned to their home shops on the same day.
In answer to your first question, Yes. Turntables were used to turn vehicles such as observation cars, automobile and “unload from this side only” freight cars, as well as in the early days of circus style loading, piggyback cars that arrived facing the wrong way for the ramp. Most yards operated with the cabs on the switch engines facing the most advantageous direction for their crews. They did not want to change the orientation of their locomotive, as would have occurred if they had used a wye. The answer was, if there was a turntable handy, shove the offending car onto it, spin it 180 degrees, pull said car off-problem solved, everybody’s happy.
A turntable at the end of a most likely marginal branch, simply for the turning of a lightly patronized combine at the end of the run? Nah! Not hardly, especially in the road-switcher era. One of the reasons behind the development of the road switcher and its overwhelming popularity, was the elimination of the need to turn it at the end of its run. This one fact led to the decimation of wyes and turntables, everywhere. Railroads in many locales are taxed on the extent of their facilities. Track is a facility, a turntable is a structure or facility. Remove them from the property, they get removed from the tax rolls=reduction in taxes paid=good for the bottom line!
Your question prompted me to consult an old book I consider to be a go-to title on mixed train operations on one of America’s most prolific operators of mixed trains ever- the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. The book “Coach, Cabbage & Caboose” by John B. McCall, Kachina Press, 1979, ISBN No. 0-930724-10-0, documents Santa Fe’s mixed train service, system-wide, from 1869 to 1971, when it all ended. Even in the steam days, there is no evidence photographically, that ANY effort was made to turn the combines at the
Note that the photo in Ed’s reply is a Railway Post Office car, not a baggage/coach combine. Passengers walking through a regular baggage section of a combine wouldn’t be great, but it could happen. However, no one (even railroad employees) would be allowed in a working RPO.
Whether or not there’d be a turntable depends a lot on your layout’s era.
I grew up along a branch line of a small railroad (Minneapolis Northfield and Southern Ry.). In steam days, they had a (manual I believe) turntable at the end of the branch for turning the engine. By the end of 1950, the railroad was 100% diesel, and the turntable was gone. The railroad just used a diesel and a run-around track at the end of the branch. This was pretty typical, many 1st generation diesels (GP-7, RS-1…EMD had the BL-1 and BL-2 diesel; BL stood for “Branch Line”) were marketed by the builders and purchased by the railroads to run on branch lines and eliminate the turntable at the end. (Yes a steam engine could run tender first, but railroads generally avoided it if possible.)
Also, where the passenger car would go in the train would - at least in cooler weather - be determined by how the car was heated. A car with it’s own stove (with a chimney sticking out the top of the car) could go on the end like a caboose. If the car was a newer car heated by steam heat, it would have to go right behind the engine to get steam from the engine (either a steam engine, or a diesel with a steam boiler/generator.)
I’m so glad I asked. It’s been bugging me and these replies provide a ton (many tons, I should think) of great information. NHTX, I’m modelling other roads, but your reply made me want to read that book about ATSF branch lines. I may hunt it down.
Ed, thanks for that first pic. Boom! I laughed when I saw it, and thought, “there’s my answer!” Although, as pointed out, that’s an RPO, and why would an RPO need to be turned? Hmmm… what was going on in that car?
David, thanks for your link and for introducing me to the word headshunt. I first read it as “head’s hunt” and found that disturbing. That’s a great way to get the engine back around if no turning is necessary, and I plan to have such an escape track at my Priest River station terminus.
This is interesting. I have been under the delusion that the passenger-carrying cars were ALWAYS put as far back in the train as possible, behind all freight and baggage and RPO, to reduce passenger’s inhalation of fumes from the power end and soot on their monogram’d hankies. Also, that’s an interesting fact about road switchers being marketed for the very purpose of killing off operational "turning’ overhead. That’s a dark stain on my otherwise mindless, blubbering love of early RS units.
S’like I always say, you learn something new every day if you’re not careful.
Thanks all for your input. If I have room, I may put a weedy, unused turntable pit at the end of the line, but it sounds like the concensus is that even rigorous adherance to prototype would not require that I turn my power or my combine.
Wayne, My consist for the branch was going to be loco, freight car or two, then caboose, then the combine, and maybe another shorty full-coach car if I can find one. I had not considered using the combine as a caboose. I’d never heard of that. Very interesting idea. Also, the idea of the Unload This Side card was new to me. Thanks for pointing that out. Intersting possibilities for complicating operations.
@Rich, I don’t have an ob car, but I might have room for a wye to turn a loco and an observation car (or the combine if it just makes my teeth hurt too much to have it go the wrong way down the branch), but a wye means complicated electrical so I’ve not seriously considered it. I’ve avoided reverse loops for the same reason.
SP&S, and later BN, had the last scheduled mixed freight in the country, lasting up until Amtrak (hope I got that right).
There were two cars used in this passenger service: SP&S 272 and 273.
Here’s 272, all gussied up:
And here’s a model of 273:
They were used as passenger accomodations on a daily (except Sunday) mixed train between Wishram WA and Bend OR. On the model, you’ll see an extended window–this car was also the caboose–and the conductor or brakeman would/could sit there. There was not a separate caboose–no need.
Heat was supplied by a propane stove in the passenger compartment, and one in the baggage section.
I believe the cars were turned at each end. There aren’t too many photos of the train, as it mostly ran in the dark. It was a pretty long run, and it was easy to turn at Wishram and Bend, as there were wyes at each place.
This is great info, thanks ED. I actually have nice models of 274 and 275 (Atlas and Branchline), but both are full coaches, not combines, and I don’t expect either of them will navigate the tight branch curves when that gets built, even though they are not as long as some other models. The shorty I have is an undecorated model, maybe an Athearn. I love that 273 model, and covet it deeply, but it would have to stay on the mainline with 274 and 275.
Your photo of 272 is probably taken up the road from me on the Snoqualmie Railroad Museum at the depot there, no? I’ve seen that car and we even rode in an observation car in a train that had 272 in the consist.
As I mentioned access to RPOs were restricted for security reasons to the RPO clerks (who were US Post Office employees) so some RPOs had a “blind” end (no diaphragm), so you could only enter the car from one end. In a car that was part Baggage / part RPO, it would be the Baggage end that would be accessible with a wall between that part of the car and the RPO section. You can’t rob the mail if you can’t get in there!
You would never see an observation car used by itself like that. Most railroads had relatively few observation cars compared to coaches and other cars, usually reserved for the better trains. Combines or Coaches were what they used.
Coaches and Combines normally had some variation of “walk over” seats, seats where the backs flipped from one side to the other (or the whole seat could spin 180 degrees) so the passengers would be sitting facing forward no matter, the train crew would just flip the seats at the end of the branch so the seats would face the other way. No need for a turntable. Unfortunately, not easy to flip the seats like that with model interiors!
I don’t think Athearn ever made a Combine car. If the car you have is a heavyweight car, and it scales out to 60’ it’s one of the Rivarossi/Walthers/etc. cars (it’s been made under a couple of names over the last 15-20 years) based on a real C&NW “Utility Combine” that really was only 60’ long. If it’s around 72’ feet, it could be one of the Bachmann Combin
I’m embarrassed to say that the conversion from real-life inches to HO feet is not trivial for me, especially after a workday before a holiday. The car is 9-3/8 inches long not counting couplers, and you’re right, it’s not Athearn because it’s actually made entirely of wood, so maybe considerably older, or at least of a different species. The trucks declare themselves to be of Central Valley make.
Ed, that looks a bit longer than my combine. As noted in my post a moment ago (which I wrote before I saw your last), mine is a wood model. It doesn’t have a black roof; it’s all pullman green. Four-wheel trucks, too.
The conversation about the turning of observation cars reminds me of the fact that in 1952, the Pennsylvania Railroad took delivery of stainless steel, Budd built, streamlined trainsets to outfit their crack New York-Washington DC, Congressional Limited and the Boston-Washington DC, Senator. A feature of each trainset was a square-ended observation lounge car. The Senator was a joint operation, with the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad handling the Boston-Penn Station, New York portion of the run.
The 1960s were hard financially, especially on northeastern railroads. As red-ink deepened, cost cutting measures came to pass that eliminated the turning of consists to keep the Martha Washington and Benjamin Franklin on the correct end of the Senator. One leg of the 458 mile trip was made with passengers in the observatioon car staring at the bucking headlight of the trailing FL-9 or EP-5 on the NH or, a Pennsy GG-1. As a matter of fact one of the first cars to be eliminated from a consist were observation cars. They were an operational headache and the use of the round-ended ones anywhere but the rear of the train, “ruined the symmetry of the whole thing”. A lot of roads were a little more astute and bought the square ended observation car that permitted other than end of train use. New Haven got their money’s worth out of the two round-enders it bought for the Merchants Limited. They put pass-through doors in the round end, hung diaphragms on them and ran them as bar cars on commuter trains out of New York’s Grand Central Terminal.
That “Union Pacific” combine is actually a Con Cor foobie. The prototype the car modeled after is actually a member of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s MP-54 electric multiple unit cars. This one has no pantographs so maybe it was supposed to be a Long Island Railroad car which, ran off of third rail power.&nb
