Yes, but I believe we’re talking freelance here. And it’s my opinion that this car would do well with the mods I mentioned.
And, before we chuckle about how many MU cars UP did or did not have, I will remind you that SP&S (a railroad the OP has expressed interest in) had at least one MP54 car, that they converted to a MOW kitchen car–X-502, I believe.
Correction: SP&S had three MP-54’s that they converted to outfit car diners: X-502, X-503, X-504.
My recollection is that SP&S operated a short-haul passenger service to shipyards during WWII using MP-54 cars–owned by the US Army, I think. Three obviously stayed behind.
Many railroads ran entire trains backward on branchlines including the engine. There are many pictures of steam engines running in reverse. When Amtrak abandoned North Philadephia station the Broadway Limited went around to 30th st. Station which put it on the line to Washington. The entire train was then pulled backward to New York where it went around the Sunnyside yard loop and went backward to Philly where the 30th st fiasco repeated the early move righting the train for the rest of the trip to Chicago
Some railroads (New Haven being one) ran their trains with the first class cars, (parlors) ahead of the diners and coaches. Running the diner with the kitchen to the rear accomplished two things: First, there were fewer first class passengers and having priority, were summoned from their seats, drawing rooms or other digs, to their meals. The riff-raff in coach simply showed up and waited in the aisle, alongside the kitchen, until there was table space for them. This and, the attempt to keep kitchen odors (aromas?) from disturbing the refined sinuses up front, made keeping the kitchen end of the diner closer to the coaches, an operational consideration when assembling a consist.
Ed:
Interesting to know that SP&S had more MU cars than UP. The SP&S MP-54s were not the only eastern MU cars to wind up supporting the WWII effort. Some former New Haven commuter coaches that were converted from MU cars originally built for the New York, Westchester & Boston Railroad also went west. The NYW&B was a robustly constructed electrified subsidiary of the New Haven, serving the bedroom communities east of New York City. Duplicating the route of the NH’s four track Shoreline, the NYW&B proved to not be as necessary as originally thought and it folded, making all of those MU cars surplus. To rescue their investment, the NH stripped them of their electricals and, sent them to the Boston area to do what they were built for-haul commuters.
During World War II, there was a crushing need to transport the large influx of war effort workers, some of these ex New Haven, former NYW&B MU cars went west to support the war effort. At some point in time, some of these (or other examples from this fleet) wound up transporting oil field workers in Saudi Arabia! All of this is documented in the &quo
Foobie? Pantograph? MU? Help me out here guys. My head is swimming. I feel like I’m sitting at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving while the adults are talking at the main table. (And this may actually happen.)
A foobie is something as far-fetched as to be totally fictional. Picture an SP&S GG-1 electric locomotive or a Conrail Big Boy-on Horseshoe Curve yet.
A pantograph is the electrical power collection apparatus on the roof of electrically powered rail equipment. When raised for power collection from the overhead wire, these devices formed a diamond shaped structure contacting the wire, atop their vehicle. In more modern applications, this structure is simplified to more closely replicate the articulation of the human arm, resulting in a “half-a-graph”.
MU= Multiple Unit. Just as it implies, it is multiple, independent, powered units, be they locomotives, light rail cars, or electrical commuter type equipment responding to the command of one set of control inputs. MU is usually by electrical control on today’s equipment but, back in the old days (1940s-1950s), Both Baldwin and, Fairbanks-Morse fielded diesels with pneumatic throttles. Obviously, they could not MU with the electrically controlled units. This made the pneumatics unpopular oddballs.
You never left the big table, as long as you wish to know and gain knowledge.
From the Winter 2021 issue of the SP&S HS quarterly:
“From March 1, 1943 until March 5, 1944 commuter trains were run between Portland and the Vancouver shipyards, using former Pennsylvania Railroad P54 commuter cars.”
Note that they were P54, rather than MP54. Thus they were unpowered. I MIGHT have seen a photo of these in use, but I surely don’t recall where or when.
Here’s a picture of the Kaiser shipyard, the biggest one there:
Note the 12 escort carriers under construction.
I don’t know what happened to the cars later, other than the 3 that SP&S received.
There’s a Wikipedia entry for MP54’s, and it notes that Santa Fe had some. That would be two (probably P54’s): T-103 and T-104, used as gas-electric trailers.
The P54’s were never on the SP&S passenger roster.
Ya know, a guy who had an HO gas-electric could maybe scrounge up a P54 and copy ATSF.
Depending on how bad that guy with the Santa Fe gas-electric wants a P-54, scrouging up one has just gotten easier. Con-Cor has Santa Fe P-54s in pullman green, available on their site for only $84.98 plus the usual s&h. These are truly ATSF P-54s. According to ConCor, ATSF acquired theirs from the PRR in 1949.
NHTX, thanks for filling in some information for me. I would be inclined to add yet a third reason: by placing the kitchen closer to the Great Unwashed, the odors drifting back would encourage them to come forward and wait to spend their money on food. T’wouldn’t probably have made or broken a railroad, this minor defrayment, but…couldn’ta hurt…? [8D]
Don’t have a calculator in reach, but in HO one inch is about 7 feet. So 9-3/8" would be about 65-70 feet, normal for a combine.
When you say it’s all wood, do you mean the model is made of wood, or it’s a model of a wood passenger car, or both? If the model is wood, it might be a LaBelle kit someone built. I’m guessing you bought it like a RR flea market or something, already built??
Both. A wooden model of a wooden combine, and yes, I got it at a swap meet.
The only identifying branding on it is the name Central Valley on the trucks (well… and the Kadees). I don’t know if that means that Central Valley made just the trucks or made the whole car.
That car is a model of a Boston and Maine RR combine made by the Ambroid Company in the 1950s/early 1960s. The prototypes lasted until the mid-late 1950s when B&M killed steam and most locomotive-hauled commuter trains with a huge (108 cars, the world’s largest) horde of Budd Rail Diesel Cars.
Ambroid was a highly respected manufacturer of basswood kits for passenger and freight rolling stock. Their prototypes were drawn from mostly eastern railroads, B&M in particular, because they (Ambroid) were located somewhere in eastern Massachusetts, north of Boston. They were respected as makers of the best cement available for any type of wood model you wanted to build-land, sea or air.
I built their one-of-5000 kits for a Pennsylvania/Fruit growers Express reefer based on the Pennsy X-23 boxcar, a two car kit for a pair of Bangor and Aroostook/Maine Central 70 foot pulpwood cars and wish I had back all the hours I spent trying to make the wood in the first kit to build an ACF Center Flow 5250 cubic foot capacity covered hopper look like steel. I was not able to make wood pass for steel and, moved on beyond models stuck in the past, into the world of plastic.
At the same time Ambroid was ruling the wood kit world, Central Valley was the cat’s meow in HO trucks. They were all metal, had reasonable flanges at a time many thought the answer to derailments was deeper, sharper, “pizza cutters” running on code 100 brass rail, afixed to fibre tie strips with simple staples-pulled by our Santa Fe F-7 with warp speed rubber band drive-on 12 volts of DC from a rectifier-controlled by a rheostat! MY how things have changed.
What you have there sir is, a piece of model railroading history from 65-70 years ago.
I doubt that Central Valley did the car, as there were lots of manufacturers making kits for wooden passenger cars. When the Central Valley trucks first appeared, they were widely accepted due to both the good detail and particularly for their fine rolling qualities.
Whenever I’d have a little extra cash burning a hole in my pocket, I’d spring for a pair or two. I occasionally see them at train shows, too.
I’m currently working on a bunch of wooden headend (baggage) cars, both for myself and a couple of friends, both of whom have donated some CV trucks for the project. I have enough of them for my own 5 or 6 cars, and those others will be enough for my friends’ cars.
I’ll be using Evergreen passenger car siding, in styrene, to represent the wood, though, as it’s “board” spacing is more prototypical.
Here are a few that I kitbashed from Athearn coaches…(photos will enlarge if clicked upon)
On my branchline, I run a mixed train with a single combine for passenger service. Since it isn’t coupled with other passenger trains, I run it coach end forward on the return trip. I don’t know how prototypical that is, but this is where I invoke"my railroad, my rules". If it is part of a pa
I’m very gratified to learn about this car. Picked it up for a sawbuck, which I thought was high for the venue, a swap meet where I was finding things like a scratchbuilt GN caboose with no bow- or aftdecks but instead doors on the side for $2, and normally $65 Branchline heavyweights in SP&S livery for $5. I’d like to paint the roof of this car black and possibly find a way to get some SP&S lettering on it, although in my mostly freelance world the Priest River and Western – now a branch of SP&S – will have hand-me-down cars from NP, GN, and any number of other roads. Thanks NHTX.
Other things I found interesting in your replies:
Funny you mention that, Wayne. I was looking at my model and thinking how much I like the feel of wooden models, the way their surfaces hold paint and light, but at the same time they sometimes don’t look scaled correctly, a job that styrene often does better. It bothered me that I was having impulses of preference for plastic. Hey, when I scrolled to your second photo I thought I was looking at the prototype. Nice shots, as always.
[quote user=“John-NYBW”]
On my branchline, I run a mixed train with a single combine for passenger service. Since it isn’t coupled with other passenger trains, I run it coach end forward on the return trip. I don’t know how prototypical that is, but this is where I invoke"my railroad, my rules". If it is part of a passenger consist, it would be problematic in that passengers moving from the combine to other cars would have to go through the baggage section.[/
Thanks for your kind words. I always liked the look of the wooden cars, too, as I had a few of them on my first HO scale layout in the mid-'50s.
The only remnant of them that’s left is this Silver Streak caboose…
I don’t think that the siding is wood, though, as the board detail is fairly tight…probably cardstock of some sort, impressed to create the “boards”. Your newly acquired car prompted me to dig it out.
The running boards, cupola, window frames, end decks and steps, along with the toolbox are all cast metal. I’m tempted to fix 'er up, although I’m also planning to scratcbuild 10 or 12 wooden cabooses,in a variety of styles, as I have four freelanced roads operating on my layout, along with connections to both Canadian National and the TH&B. The latter was jointly owned by Canadian Pacific and New York Central, along with the TH&B itself.
Here’s one of my early scratchbuilt boxcars, built using styrene…
…probably should have used wider boards for the sides, and smaller strip material for the reinforcements on the doors. I built three similar single-door cars (with similar faults) and gave two of them to a couple of close friends.
This one is one of four scratchbuilds representing my version of what might have been an early covered hopper. It’s meant to represent a dual-se
I have a 3 car set of Nickel Plate boxcars that look very similar to this. I’m wondering if they would still be in interchange service in 1956 when my layout is set.
Wood underframes were banned in interchange in 1940. (There WERE truss rod cars with steel underframes.) (The sample car does not look to me to be one of those–just intuition though.)
