Just a quick question- how common was it to see different lengths of passenger equipment together in the early 1900s (or at all)? I have some 40’ cars and some 47’ foot cars and was debating if I should lengthen or shorten some so they are all uniform in length. If it was a common enough practice I probably will just leave them alone. Thanks.
The cars you’re mentioning are awfully short - by the 1870’s-1880’s new passenger cars were generally in the 50’-60’ range, and 80-foot wood Pullman cars were being built by the early 1890’s. (Roundhouse’s “Pullman Palace” cars for example.) What you may have are something like “Sierra” cars that were built for a specific line but weren’t used by the mainline railroads of the time.
But anyway, yes, cars of different lengths wouldn’t be that uncommon. “Head end” cars like RPOs, Baggage, and Combine cars (and some coaches) were often 10’-20’ shorter than Dining cars, Pullman sleepers, or Observation cars. So in your era a train using say a 50’ wood baggage car followed by a couple of 60’ coaches and a couple of 80’ Pullman cars wouldn’t be that uncommon.
I figured they were kind of short. I’m using them to squeeze in a little more operation on my planned layout in a small space. Might wind up extending the short ones the extra 7 feet. Thanks for the reply! It’s a little hard to dig up info on that era sometimes.
Here is a web site that discusses HO scale passenger car lengths versus their prototype counterparts.
http://myweb.msoe.edu/~westr/hopass.htm
Rich
White wrote a two volume set on the history of N American passenger cars. That ought to have everything you might want to know. Google books has several cyclopedias and other books on passenger cars from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
Thanks for the info, guys. I’ll be sure to take a look on Google books for anything useful.