A recent discussion about the Pennsylvania Railroad’s 1952 introduction of Budd-built “lightweight” fluted stainless-steel passenger cars got me to wondering about some of the details:
The brand-new equipment was assigned to specific name trains traveling (Boston) New York - D.C. IOW starting in 1952, passenger rolling stock on that PRR route on any particular train consisted either of all stainless, or all conventional (slab-sided, “heavyweight”). Was the weight differential significant enough that the GG-1’s hauling them had to be adjusted for a different load to haul?
Was there enough of a difference that a motor could haul more lightweight stainless at speed than non-stainless?
Would it have been prudent to mix slab- and fluted-sided cars on one run? I know they were compatible in having the same couplers, height and vestibules, but would it have caused problems to the steam braking system having different weights along the braking line? (I’m guessing not because the RR’s of the Sixties, at least with their diesel-hauled varnish, mixed shiny and solid pretty much at will – but was it different when hauled by a motor like the Gee?)
Any contributions welcome. Thanks! Al Smalling, Chicago
Al, I wish I knew enough to directly answer your question, but I thought I’d point out that the brakes would have been air pressure operated, not by steam. The steam would cool as it flowed through tubes, pipes, and hoses, and would mean frozen valves and stuff as it got back to the fifth, or seventh car and beyond…if it could make it past the last plug of ice. Instead, train brakes have always been via pre-cooled and dried air. The nested, hairpin beds of piping under the running boards of steamers were the cooling pipes. The tanks into which they emptied their air would have to be purged frequently of condensate.
Also, I doubt that there would be a huge difference in weight, but I will watch the other responses. Instead, the heavyweight designation came from a comparison with the cars that preceeded that design. My guess is that the fluted metal cars were plenty heavy.
The GG-1 could haul a longer train of heavyweights than could fit at the platforms of the terminal stations, so whether it could haul more lightweight cars is moot.
Heavyweight cars were exactly that - note that most ran on six-wheel trucks. They were built heavy (including concrete-weighted floors) to give them smooth riding characteristics. The stainless steel cars were considerably lighter, ran on improved design four wheel trucks but were still slightly rougher-riding than their older equivalents.
If the assigned lightweights couldn’t handle the expected loading, heavyweights would have been added, up to the limit imposed by platform length. Most usually, the heavyweights would have been head end cars and coaches.
Braking wouldn’t have been an issue. Freight cars in a loose-car train could have weights that varied from empty flats to loaded hoppers, and there were more of them. The weak links in air brakes are the hoses and quick-disconnect ‘glad hands’ between cars. A long passenger train would seldom have as many as 20 such places. Even a short freight would have 50 or more.
I don’t have all of my railway library unpacked yet after my big apartment renovation, but the Budd coaches built for the CPR started out in the 60+ ton range and the heavyweight cars they replaced started out in the 80-90 ton range.
The lightest cars were the day coaches, followed by the sleepers of various configurations and then the diners. Budd diners ran in the 80+ ton range and heavyweight diners were astoundingly heavy. 120 tons maybe. A combination of 1920’s appliance building techniques, potable water tanks, and cooking fuel tanks. CP used Pintsch Gas.
Al, The three most frequent materials used for lightweight cars were Aluminum, Steel and Stainless steel. Pullman’s first cars with stainless steel over mild steel were a disaster. These were the cars built by P/S for the early SP Daylights. They were nothing more than fluted stainless steel panels over mild steel and within a few years after going through carwashers and running along the Pacific Coast the mild steel rusted badly and was bad enough that it even rusted some of the car framing. That is why Sacramento shops undertook the rebuilding of these cars using only flat stainless steel on the car sides with just the band above the windows painted red.
The Santa Fe also bought similar P/S cars but found a simpler solution before the damage was done and that was to use a sealant about every three or four months along the seams where the two type metals (Stainless and Mild) joined or overlapped. This was applied after the cars had been through the carwasher after completing a trip.
The problem did not occur with the postwar P/S built cars with the stainless steel fluting over mild steel.
Those cars built of Aluminum mainly by American Car and Foundry had there ownset of problems and that was electrolysis caused where steel and aluminum joined and the area was frequently damp due to rain or whatever. Aluminum cars had steel in the endposts and mainframe as well as the center sill in most cases and where this joined steel there was a problem within a short period of time. The Union Pacific turned to undercoating for there cars and solved the problem for the most part. The MP took a similar approach but used a different product than the UP.
The Budd stainless steel cars were for the most part lighter in weight than the Aluminum or the mild steel cars. The reason is that the corrugation or fluting actually served as the structural frame of the carbody. Mild steel cars needed to
Thanks for the timely info, West Coast Al! There are plenty of images of Gee’s hauling stainless equipment, one of my favorites for a movie is in the (original) MANCHURCIAN CANDIDATE (1962), a ground level shot of a G hauling a solid stainless consist at speed…just a second or two but it conveys the essence of such travel in the 1950s - 1960s period.
I agree with you that after the PC merger, the company had no compunctions about using a mixture of painted and stainless coaches. Other passenger trains often wound up doing that, too, sometimes mixing multiple liveries along with the occasional lightweight car. It wasn’t just a private RR company thing to do, though; the first couple of years of Amtrak “rainbow” L-D trains were quite common.
I should point out that lighweight cars were nothing new with Budd, although they may have been the lightest. On a per linear foot basis, or per seat basis, the PRR P-70 steel coach designed by George Gibbs was actually lighter than the wood car it replaced! And about 70% of all postwar PRR non-suburban main line coaches were simply rebuilds of P-70’s, and they were considered postwar lightweight cars that looked, when fully rebuilt with picture windows, reclining seats, larger washrooms, and low arch roofs with modern compact air-conditioning, looked just like other railroads new ACF and Pullman Standard streamlined coaches. They continued to ride on four wheel trucks, and the full rebuild involved replacing the outside pedastal flexible frame PRR standard passenger truck with (in my opinion) a better riding regular drop equalizer doubly sprung possibly General Steel truck. Also they emerged with only one vestibule, like most postwar equipment and in contrast to the New Haven which stayed with two vestibules for postwar coaches (but not postwar parlors).
The Congessionals and Senators were fully Budd and kept that way. Other corridor trains had mixtures of equipment. Most PRR NY - Washington trains had the modernized P-70’s but carried heavyweight six-wheel truck parlors into the 1960’s with little attempt to modernize these very traditional and very comfortable and smooth ridings cars. Boston - Washington Federal and Patriot had a real mixture of equipment, including modernized P-70’s with recilining seats, partially modernized P-70’s (many variaties), prewar American Flyers (8200 series, certainly lightweight), postwar fluted side versions with reclining seats and the smoking section, and postwar NH parlors mixed with prewar PRR heavyweight parlors on the Patriot, but quickly (by about 1950) all postwar Pullmans, both PRR and New Haven, on the Federal. T
That 15-car AAR test train in 1938 was almost all P70s-- what was it, 1015 tons?
No question a GG1 could maintain whatever track speed was-- 75 mph initially, 80 mph later-- with eighteen heavyweight cars on the level. The only question is its acceleration. Most NY-Washington schedules were 3 hrs 50 min or 4 hrs; the Congressional was the only one scheduled at 3-35. So unimpressive acceleration wouldn’t necessarily mean a late train.
In ordinary service, the GG-1 had the reputation of being the only of PRR’s motive power that could pull away so quickly it would make a standing passenger lose footing if he wasn’t aware that the train had started moving. I was behind a Gee during the PC era and it did indeed feel swift and strong, and as the train started to move, other than the creaking of the bulkheads, the train was close to silent. After all, the motor’s acceleration was based on DC traction motors. Aren’t they the ones that are supposed to be at max efficiency pulling away from zero mph? (Or did that just apply to trolley cars?)
Perhaps the Congressional’s faster carding was due to other factors: making fewer stops, perhaps stopping for less time at Philadelphia, perhaps getting faster clearance onto the main or into the Hudson tunnels. Fewer stops would trim time on deceleration and dwell time as well as acceleration. It made a difference during the Metroliner era. Things like that (?) – al
During WWII I rode an “Advance Congressional” (in coach, with the regular Congo carded as all-First Class, but that too went out the window when the PRR wanted to move the people) that made it from Washington to New York in 3:05 with just one stop for passengers in Newark.
Oh, corrction. The heavyweight PRR parlors that ran well into the streamline era, at least into the 1960’s, were modernized in two respects: roller bearintgs for their six-wheel trucks and mechanical air-conditioning replacing ice.
The Congressionals and (at least in certain timetables) Senator and Colonial did not handle checked baggage. Most of the other NY-Washington trains did. Very seldom would you see head-end equipment on these trains, more often on the Colonial, and sometimes on a Senator just to get a car from Boston to Washington in a hurry.
The EP-3’s (boxcabs and the GG-1 prototype), EP-4 and EF-3’s on the New Haven were just as good as the GG-1’s in handling the trains, but were limited by track speed restrictions and curves. And the back to back Alcoes did go 100 mph between Boston Switch north of Providence and Readville.
Good points all, Dave. I should have mentioned when I posted my answers that the original 1952 NEC Budd stainless-equipped trains did not accept checked baggage. This suggests that they didn’t have a baggage car or RPO. That might have speeded up ops a little, too. IIRC the Metroliner never accepted checked baggage – nor had anywhere to put it. The same holds true for the Accelas.
The 1937 NY Div timetable says GG1s and the R1 were allowed 1330 “tons” on passenger trains-- where the “tonnage” was calculated by assuming 90 tons for diners, 85 tons for Pullmans, 65 tons for P70s, and various tonnages for head-end cars.
Edit: the 1939 timetable allows GG1s 2500 tons, except 2000 tons under the rivers.
I was able to reach into the boxes of packed books I still have and pulled out two Classic Trains special editions “Streamliner Pioneers” and Dreamtrains" and have some more info.
But first I wanted to address one point touched on by timz above. Growing up I learned from my father that passenger cars were assumed to have a forty ton capacity. I also learned that the weights of Budd coaches ran from about 80 to 110 tons.
So when I read the article Crafting the Lightweight Super Chief in “Streamliner Pioneers” and looked at the table on page 25 of the article I was surprised and annoyed to see such discrepancies in the weights of the cars listed. I then hit upon the solution to the problem.
My father was a train dispatcher, and for operational purposes such as one would see in a Employee Timetable, on the CPR it was assumed that the weight of passenger cars was 40 tons greater than the manufacturers delivered weight. This heavier “weight” was used to calculate to engine requirements for each passenger train. I think this is what has led to the wide variety of weights I have seen in many locations, as the authors of the articles have gotten different information from different source documents from different departments. Shop force documentation would be different from operation department documentation, as each department would have different needs and requirements.
Now to some of the weights I found in the two books. On page 12 of “Streamliner Pioneers” it makes a general assumption that heavyweight cars weighed between 65 and 80 tons. The chart I mentioned earlier on page 25 lists the w
It certainly was common for heavyweight and streamlined cars to run together on a train. In fact, you’ll note that most of the Walthers “Heavyweight” cars are decorated in streamliner colors rather than the correct steam era Pullman green. Many railroads did this so they could mix the two types of cars together. Some like Great Northern even went so far as reconditioning heavyweights with new roofs so that, except for their six-wheel trucks, they were almost indistinguishable from smooth-side lightweight cars.
BTW they were called “heavyweights” because they were so heavy compared to the all-wood cars they started replacing in the early twentieth century.
I never heard or knew of the basis for the forty ton number. Was it based on the carrying and suspension capabilities of the trucks and the frames of the cars, or was it an arbitrary safety number developed back when the normal capacity for freight cars was forty tons. Or was it a combination of both.
This is a question I have wondered about and I never have seen the answer.
I’m just speculating, but is it possible “ton” no longer, in this context, meant literally “2,000 English pounds avoirdupois”? The concern with tonnage in this thread has been more with tractive effort – “haulability” as it were – than with gross weight if all we are discussing is the engine’s ability to haul. Perhaps “ton”, while a linear marker (i.e., more is more) had become more of a metaphor, like, say, “ten-penny nail” is today. Is that possible? I myself have trouble getting my mind around an all-steel boxc