In recent weeks I’ve began to assemble an N scale Great Northern Empire Builder passenger train as it might have appeared in the mid 1950s - Yes, just like the one at the top of the page here… The problem is I’m not really sure about it all due to my limited access to research material. So far I’ve been piecing the train together car by car - some of which are made by Walthers and some by ConCor and am using Kato F-7 A,B,B units to pull it around with. My layout is kind of small so I’m only able to run a shortened version of the train which includes an RPO, baggage car, sleeper, coach, dining car, dome lounge and observation car. All of that said, my questions are; Was the actual train from that period made up of a mix of old and new cars that were from earlier versions of the train and may have been fadded in color and did they use 72 foot baggage cars ?. Not that it has anything to do with the passenger train but I was also wondering what type of cabooses were in use on their freight trains at that time ?.
I think you’ll find it has much of the information you seek. In 1955 the Great Northern was still putting it’s best foot forward in its passenger service. The Builder’s cars would have been of relatively recent construction, in good repair, and repainted fairly often. You shouldn’t expect heavy fading or weathering beyond a single trip’s worth of road grime. That website also has a page covering GN cabooses.
GN tended to hand down older streamlined cars to other trains as they modernized the Builder. Many of the cars from the 1st streamlined EB from 1947 were handed down to the new Western Star train when newer sets of cars arrived in the early/mid fifties for example.
The GN was pretty adamant about wanting all the cars to say “Empire Builder” (rather than “Great Northern”) so sometimes you would see EB cars on lesser trains - if the Builder needed a temporary replacement for a car, they would take one of the cars from one of the lesser trains.
GN did rebuild a lot of heavyweight cars that had once been on the Builder. They had streamline style roofs and orange-and-green paintschemes, so did blend in pretty well with streamlined cars. I know the Gopher / Badger between Mpls-St.Paul and Duluth-Superior had a couple of cars like that in it’s normal consist.
BTW I’m not sure if an A-B-B or A-B-A set would be more accurate for the mid-fifties?? I know the NP originally used A-B-B F unit sets on the North Coast Limited, but found that A-B-A sets worked better at St.Paul Union Depot. The depot is/was on one leg of a wye, and when swapping Burlington engines for NP ones, they had to back down a leg of the wye to the depot with the engineer on the inside of the wye, so he couldn’t see where he was going. NP found A-B-A sets allowed the crew to run the engine from the “back” F unit to couple up to the train, then go back to the “front” one to run the train. I’m not sure if GN had similar issues or not, but they had to cover the same tracks to get to and from the depot. (I think Seattle had similar issues?)
“Official” diesel Builder power started out as two E7A’s. That soon went to ABA sets of F’s. When GN added the domes, they also added another B unit (to ABBA) and eventually ended up with various assortments of SDP40’s, SDP45’s, and/or F’s (mostly B’s, as I recall) in the Big Sky Blue era. When the Builder split in two at Spokane, I’m not sure what pulled the remaining Builder to Seattle. My first guess would be that the same loco set stayed on all the way through. So, for the mid-century domed Builder, it’s an ABBA set of passenger F’s with boilers in all four units.
For the OP, I would consider changing that last B unit for an A and doing an ABA–this would be for the shortened train specified–an ABBA set would look a bit much pulling only 7 cars. The full Builder would be, by the way, 16 cars not counting the usual added full baggage. In the summer, GN might even have added a flat top 48 seat coach (or two). In the winter, the consist was shortened from 16 cars as appropriate. GN did have some streamlined baggage cars about 70’ long, so you’re set there.
Cabeese: GN, in the mid-fifties, was running quite a few steel cabeese on mainline freights. They still had quite a few woodies, too. While they were very characteristically GN, you could probably substitute some generic caboose painted in GN’s bright red caboose scheme. The cupolas were offset, not centered, and the body itself (excluding the platforms) was 30’ long except for quite a few of the earlier woodys at 25’. I’m not an N scaler, so I can’t say whether there are any n scale GN cabeese; but I doubt there are. But painted substitutes, probably.
The GN had several versions of the streamlined Empire Builder: The ‘1947’ EB was the first with the classic orange/green paint scheme. The ‘Mid-Century’ EB in 1950 was completely new equipment. The old ‘47’ trains were moved over to the Wester Star. In the mid-50’s GN bought the dome cars for the EB, and reworked the original ‘47’ observation cars and they went back to the EB.
Motive power started out with pairs of EMD E7A locomotives(4000 hp). These were soon replaced by ABA sets of F3 and F7 locomotives(4500 hp) due to overheated traction motors on the E7’s on Marias Pass. With heavier trains(EB got domes, and the Wester Star was combined with the Fast Mail), the standard power became ABBA sets of F’s(at least in the summer).
Head end cars varied with express/mail contracts, but there was always a crew dorm/bagg car at the head end, and a 64 passenger ‘shorts’ coach for local riders. Add 3 dome-coaches, the ‘Ranch’ car, diner, full length dome-lounge, and sleepers - it was a big train!
The NP went with ABB sets of F3’s - they needed D/B’s and that cut into the boiler water capacity. This gave them 3,000 gallons of boiler water. The GN did not order DB’s and got 3,000 gallons as well. The NP also was big on ‘water baggage’ cars with addition boiler water that could be pumped forward to the engines. GN had a similar arrangement, but was not as heavy into it. When the NP bought the F7’s, they came in ABA sets. They also bought enough F7A’s so they could re-configure the existing F3 sets into ABA sets.
Interestingly, due to a backlog of manufacturers of streamlined cars, from 1945-47 the Builder was a Pullman-green heavyweight train pulled by E-7 diesels. Although the green and orange scheme is often called the “Empire Builder scheme” it had actually been introduced (IIRC) with the first GN FT diesels in 1941. It wasn’t until 1947 that the Empire Builder wore the “Empire Builder scheme”.
NP used to use A-B-A sets from St.Paul west to the Rockies, at some point in Montana they often added another unit creating an A-A-B-A lashup.
Many people find the old MDC/Roundhouse 3-window caboose to be “close enough” to GN wood cabooses, with a few added details they’re fairly close. I believe craftsman wood kits are available for accurate GN wood cabooses.
Didn’t the EB have reporting marks from different roads on their passenger cars? I can remember seeing SP&S on some of their cars plus the names of one or two other roads as well as GN.
First of all, I want to sincerely thank all of the folks that have contributed to this thread. I appreciate the info VERY much!. Secondly, I know very little about this train - except that I’m obsessed with it… But to answer Ray’s question, So far all I’ve seen is HO scale cars with CB&Q markings on them but have no way of knowing for sure if they’re true to prototype. Hopefully someone will come along that can answer this better.
Part of the reason the cars said “EMPIRE BUILDER” instead of “GREAT NORTHERN” was that the train travelled over more than one railroad. The Great Northern and Northern Pacific only went as far east as St.Paul Minnesota. Both railroads owned a share in the Chicago Burlington and Quincy, so at St. Paul Union Depot an eastbound Builder would back into the station and cut off the GN power, to be replaced with Burlington power (in the fifties, usually a couple of silver E units). This woudl be true for all GN passenger trains going to Chicago - and NP passenger trains too.
Similarly, the EB split out west, with part of the train going to Seattle and part to Portland Oregon on the Spokane Portland and Seattle RR, which like the Burlington was owned by the GN and NP together.
As part of the deal, the Burlington and SP&S contributed some cars to the Builder fleet, so indeed cars lettered “EMPIRE BUILDER” could be sublettered for GN, CB&Q, or SP&S. IIRC the Burlington and SP&S each contributed one complete “set” of cars, but the cars were intermingled with GN cars - you wouldn’t see a Builder with just SP&S cars for example, but since the majority of the cars were GN cars (I think they owned 6 or 8 full sets of EB cars) you could see a train that was all GN.
Of course adding to the fun, some cars were operated by Pullman, and had Pullman sublettering too. In the heavyweight era, sleepers on EB were letterered “EMPIRE BUILDER” but were owned and operated by Pullman.
A good book for an overview of the train is “Great Northern Empire Builder” by Bill Yenne, published by MBI. Many hobby shops or places that sell railroad books will have it.
GN streamlined the Builder in 1947, brought in the new “Mid-Century Empire Builder” cars in 1951, and added short dome cars in 1955, so by the mid-fifties many of the 1947 cars had been handed down to the Western Star or even lower ranking trains like the International, Gopher/Badger, or Red River.
Interestingly, since steam still pulled the EB well into the forties, and the CB&Q was an early user of diesel passenger power, it was possible for a time to ride the EB and at different times ride behind steam, diesel, and electric locomotives - without ever changing cars. GN of course had electrified trackage in the mountains up to about 1956.
Great Northern had FTs with steam generators, and I have seen pics of FTs on the Builder, but probably only pinch-hitting…I don’t think they were regular power, F3s or later F7s in A-B-A sets were the “usual suspects”.