Did the SP Starlight use the same cars as the Coast Daylight?

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Hello,

I´ve never seen a photo of the Southern Pacific Starlight overnight coach streamliner train. Was it´s consist made up of the same cars like the Coast Daylight day streamliner? Have the Starlight cars also been painted into the orange, red and black “Daylight” scheme with “Starlight” logo instead of “Daylight”?

I thought about buying MTH´s Daylight cars and run my train as the overnight Starlight streamliner, so this is why I ask this…

2

With the exception of those assigned to CITY and Lark service, Daylight was the standard passenger colors until the economy measures of the late 50’s , chair cars assigned to the Coast Daylight comprised a general pool that were reassigned as needed, so yes go ahead a use them, but there was no Starlight logo.

Dave

3

In 1950 the most common assignments were:

  1. Daylight cars - Coast Daylight, Starlight (except for headend), San Joaquin/Sacramento Daylight, Shasta Daylight, Sunbeam/Hustler
  2. Two-tone Gray cars - Lark, Cascade, Overland, Starlight (headend)
  3. Red/Stainless Steel cars - Sunset Limited
  4. Red/Silver cars - Golden State Limited
  5. Yellow/Gray cars - City of SF
  6. Olive-Green cars - Secondary trains
4

The 1950s Starlight would contain several heavy-weight headend cars such as a baggage/mail-storage car, storage mail car, and baggage/express car. There would mostly be articulated chair cars, a coffee shoop car, and tavern lounge car, and some heavyweight sleeper cars. The Starlight looked much different than the Daylight trains. Running a Daylight train at night would not be a good representation of a Starlight.