Greetings,
Just wondering what the likelihood of such a thing would be? I have 1 Great Northern N scale Kato coach, brown scheme and a CB&Q E7 with a few passenger cars. My setting is generally the 50’s midwest. I’m reasonably sure it would not be right in my other roads consists.
Thank you in advance,
Bob
Until a Q expert arrives, I’ll start with “extremely unlikely”. That would be leaving off the Chicago-Minneapolis main line. Ask yourself WHY would a GN coach be in a Q train. I think it would have to be either a leased car (and how likely would it be that the Q couldn’t scrounge up some ratty old thing FOR FREE rather than pay the GN), or a through coach from a GN location to a Q location. Somewhere? Maybe. But mostly coach passengers were expected to get up out of their seats and use their dainty feet to propel them to the other train.
Now sleepers? There’s more of a maybe there. I can’t think of an instance where it happened in reality, but there were many more through sleepers than through coaches. And there were always chartered sleepers, when you might see a Yellowstone Park bound C&O 10-6 in service in the Pacific Northwest.
I am looking forward to the possibility of my speculation being overturned by facts.
Ed
It happened . The ‘Q’ was jointly owned bu the GN & NP. The GN Western Star & NP Mainstreeter were combined with the CB&Q Blackhawk for the overnight run between St Paul and Chicago. By the 60’s, the Blackhawk was mainly made up of GN/NP cars. Since the CB&Q terminal in the Twin Cities was basically the ‘end of the line’ for the ‘Q’, GN and NP cars many times were added to trains if there was an equipment shortage.
Jim
Jim,
Thank you, that is what I was hoping to hear. I knew when I bought it that it was not within my “normal” rail lines but the price was low and I liked the look of it. If the answer was no I could have stripped it and repainted it to a RI or SP Golden State coach even though the window pattern isn’t quite right.
Thanks again,
Bob
When did Great Northern have a brown paint scheme?
Bob …
First of all, it is your railroad, and you should be encouraged to operate it your way. Including a GN car will add interest to yopur passenger train. My layout is a freelance division of the Burlington, and accordingly I do not always follow the prototype practices. My goal is plausible realism. I mix the passenger cars when I want to do so. .
I grew up next to the CB&Q near Chicago, and as already stated, the trains to connections in MN with GN and NP did have cars from those roads. Burlington could sometimes use GN and NP cars for other CB&Q routes, but not normally. Some cars lettered for NP and GN were actually owned by CB&Q for pool service in certain trains. The overnight train combined the Blackhawk with NP’s Mainstreeter and GN’s Western Star including cars from each of the 3 railroads.
Railroads did pool cars for long-distance trains. Also, railroads would sometimes “borrow” other railroad’s cars to handle peak traffic periods. Tour companies sometimes chartered a train with mixed car ownership. A special train for a big football game may mix cars from different owners, too.
After the Burlington Northern merger, cars from the “fallen flagg” railroad were intermixed. Not long afterwards, Amtrak was created, and then you could see a variety of equipment in the trains until cars were repainted or replaced.
Of course, have fun!
http://viewlinerltd.blogspot.com/2009/11/bn-western-star.html Here are some post merger examples from the 70’s
Funny thing, I was thinking to myself that I had seen an image recently that was sort of applicable. Just looked up from my keyboard at the September photo in the BRHS calendar and sure enough there is a pair of CB&Q E8’s at the head end of the Empire Builder train in 1967. Silver on the front, brown/orange trailing behind.
Don,
I could be wrong but it looks brown and orange to my eyes.
Bob
Pullman Green and Omaha Orange
Simon & Garry,
Thank you both. The pictures really helped. As you may have noticed the Rock Island is my primary line. CB&Q passenger service operated in my home town from Peoria Union Station, although the Q passenger service was probably gone a few years before I was born. However elsewhere in the midwest RI and CB&Q operated the Zephyr-Rocket. That’s how the CB&Q ended up on my layout.
Now that I know CB&Q operated with mixed consists I’ll feel more prototypically correct. This may open up a new direction as the RI did not own any domes either. Hmmmm…
Thanks again,
Bob
Hmmm, the other way around was very common. In fact the CB&Q owned several of the cars in both the Empire Builder and North Coast Limited sets. The cars were painted in the train colors and only had a tiny CB&Q initials over the door but they were there in the trains daily. Likewise the CB&Q locos were always used on the Builder and NCL from Minn/St. Paul to Chicago.