More days than not the mainline Georgia Railroad super-mixed freight trains and Macon branch trains which operated up to 1983 were examples of passenger cars in non-revenue service on freight trains. The main purpose of this service was to help keep a tax exemption in effect for the railroad.
I rode these trains frequently in the late '70’s round trip between Thomson and Camak, a distance of 11 miles each way. The trains averaged around 120 cars. Westbound the mainline thru Thomson had a slight up hill grade which made the engineers reluctant to stop the train, so we were instructed to make a running boarding. There was(is) a broad road crossing by the depot that we would use while running alongside the coach. The brakeman or conductor would grab our arms to help pull us up on the steps. Never failed though, the train would stall out 100 yards after the running boarding. I still have the cash receipts from these rides–all this excitement for $0.35.
If we were lucky, one of the two very dusty Budd coaches would be in the shop which allowed us to ride in Pullman luxury on the substitute Alabama River sleeper. This West Point Route car was kept cleaner since it was used by the railroad to host guests during the nearby Master Golf Tournament one week of each year.
Rules required one of the crew members to be on the coach with the riders. Since the cars did not have operating A/C the crew members would often ask/allow us to ride in the caboose. Some cabooses had a couple of coach seats installed but the crew woul
Heavy water is Deuterium Oxide (D2O). The difference between Deuterium and Hydrogen is that Deuterium has a neutron as well as a proton. This compound is a better stopper of radiation than plain water, as I recall.
A month or so ago I spotted a private car called Mount Vernon in a NJ Transit yard near Newark, and Googled it when I got home. The car is available for private charter, and according to their website, as others have stated, the major freight carriers curretly do not haul occupied passenger cars for private individuals or organizations. Freight lines will deliver a car on a “ferry run” to set up it’s next revenue trip, likely on an Amtrak train. (The person hiring the car does pay for this.) On the other hand, local short lines might be willing haul and occupied car in a “mixed” train, especially if they have their own pasenger excursion service.
On local and regional railroads, you may also see the railroad’s own office car on the end of a freight, carrying officials on an inspection trip. (The big guys have entire trains for this purpose.)
I once saw a number of PRR passenger cars, not only in a freight train, but being humped at Elkhart, IN. I was visiting the Trainmaster in the hump tower at the time and, noticing that he was occupied with something else, I innocently asked why the Broadway was going over his hump. His double take about sprained his neck. [:D]
We checked the way bills; those cars had been sold to NdeM and were being “Moved On Own Wheels”. This would have been a non-revenue move on Penn Central but not on the connecting roads to Mexico. I don’t recall the routing though.
When I lived in Vermont I’d occassionally see new Amtrak Superliners, among other passenger cars, which were built at the Bombardier factory in Barre. I’d see them interchanged with CV, later New England Central, at Montpelier Jct, moved with regular freight (but I presume unoccupied) on their own wheels. Transit/commuter equipment usually was shipped on flat cars.
To railfanjohn; hmm, sorta a picker-of-nits, eh what? Dave said ‘or thereabouts’ and after 40 some years, it becomes a bit hard to pin point exactly when something happened. I know that the years all melt together for me! Is the exact year critical to the experience?
CP sold a number of pre-streamline era cars to Mexico in the late 1960’s.
There was an earthquake in Mexico City in 1985.(?) On the newscasts of the event, I was astounded to see that they had never repainted those cars. They had used roughly matching paint to cover the original lettering. There was a scene on screen of a slowly passing train and you could count the blotches of paint on several cars, and there were enough of them in the right spacing to spell out C-A-N-A-D-I-A-N P-A-C-I-F-I-C. [:O]
The Chicago & North Western Historical Society North Western Lines magazine news section reported in its’ 2010, volume numer 1 issue that “Blommer Chocolate on the track elevation for the Chicago passenger terminal is provided by jobs CA07 and CA08, often while ferrying commuter cars between the terminal and California Avenue yard, which resuts in what appear to be mixed trains”.
Note: Service is provided to Blommer Chocolate from two different levels. Service to the lower level, when needed, is provided by UP local YNO68 (North Avenue Yard, Chicago). Not only are there spur tracks on two different levels, the spur tracks are located on two different sub-divisions.