I just bought a combine car to ride in a small mixed train. Should it be placed just behind the locomotive or at he end of the train before the caboose? I saw both situations in layout photos but I would like to know what it was in the real life with Canadian Pacific Railway.
I don’t know about the CP but,most roads would want the combine bringing up the markers that way it will be out of the way when the crew was switching industries.The majority of the pictures I’ve seen of mixed trains didn’t have a caboose just the combine…The conductor would tend to the few passengers(if any at all) and in some cases sell tickets.
Guy;
Here is a link to a photograph showing a CP mixed train being made up in Goderich, ON. At the time the photo was taken, this was one of the few mixed trains left running in Ontario and there is only another six or seven years left of passenger service for this line before it becomes freight only.
As you can see, the combine is in front of the van (CP speak for caboose). The combine had its own heating system for cold weather so it didn’t need to be connected to the locomotive steam line.
Steve
At one time in Texas (don’t know if it is still in effect), state law forbade running freight cars behind passenger-carrying cars, as a safety measure. In case of a derailment, car tht derailed first would quickly stop but the rest of the train would keep coming, plowing into it. See the train wreck scene from the Cecil B. DeMille film “Greatest Show on Earth” on youtube for a staged but accurate depiction of a passenger train being accordion-folded.
Santa Fe called the combines on the end of its mixed trains “coach-baggage-caboose” and cars were nicknamed Coach CABBAGEand Caboose. That is the title of a book on the cars and operations:
Coach, Cabbage and Caboose : Santa Fe Mixed Train Service John B. McCall. 1979, Kachina Press, Dallas, Texas. 256 p.
Complete coverage of mixed train service with timetables of runs, narrative history and rosters, photos and scale drawings of nearly all coach-baggage combines on the Santa Fe. Includes a year-by-year list of what train numbers ran on what routes from 1901 to 1967, the end of mixed service.
I’m not sure about the CPR’s practice, but the CNR usually ran them at the rear of the train and they usually also acted as the caboose. On some trains, the car was known as a comboose, as it was a combine with a cupola - they had three of them.
As Larry notes, with it on the rear of the train, it was easy to drop it off so that it would be out of the way while the crew switched the local industries.
I have a couple in mixed train service, and run them at the rear of the train, for the same reason.
Wayne
Gidday Guy, I would have also thought that the combine would have been run at the rear of the train, while totally irrelevant to CPR practice that appears to have been what the New Zealand Railways did.
However here’s some links to sites that may help…
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/archiveThumbs.aspx?id=68139
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CPR_London/history_branch_psgr.htm
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CPR_Bruce/BRANCHPSGR.htm
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CPR_Trenton/History_KandP.htm
Cheers, the Bear.
Your post caused me to quickly page through Lucius Beebe’s classic Mixed Train Daily to make sure that my assumptions on this were correct. This book is of US railroads and not the CP. Still, virtually all of the photos show the passenger or combine car at the end of the train. When a passenger or combine car is used, it is very seldom that a caboose is used. [The conductor and rear brakeman can do everything off of the combine that they can do from a caboose, and often a small desk is fitted into one of the seats to form the conductor’s “office”.] A caboose thus becomes extra weight and possibly and extra movement or two. Some short lines did equip the caboose with about two rows of passenger seats and still sell passenger tickets for those then riding the caboose. As with most RR items, exceptions do exist, but the combine at the end and no caboose is certainly the mode for the US.
Bill
Some other factors that may be at work…
Mixed trains in the US, even already in the B&C era so well-documented, represented transportation in decline. Mixed trains in Canada still are a vital public service in afew places and not long from it in others. How does this relate to whether there’s a caboose or not?
I suspect that cabooses “combined” with a combine or other passenger car, have something to do with one or both of these factors:
A. Labor agreement; passengers are pesky and when lots of people are riding, the caboose is a refuge/office for crew.
B. Management feels that crew is more diligent and organized in their duties if assigned a caboose to use as refuge/office for crew.
So, despite a few examples, by the time people started to bother taking pics of those mixed trains in the US, everyone was riding in one caboose, because management so no need/justification for it and neither did crews.
In Canada, mixed trains hung on much longer, I suspect unions had a stronger voice in the need for a caboose, and management may have agreed with them on the need. And thus more pics of cabooses in Canada.
A. Labor agreement; passengers are pesky and when lots of people are riding, the caboose is a refuge/office for crew.
Actually both the conductor and brakeman would ride with passengers and attend to their needs-if not a regular passenger conductor and brakeman would be needed.No railroad would want to pay 2 extra crew members especially when most mixed trains carried more express then passengers.There was company/union work agreements that allowed this.
B. Management feels that crew is more diligent and organized in their duties if assigned a caboose to use as refuge/office for crew.
Sorry…A caboose cost money to operate and if the crew is in the caboose then like I said there would a regular passenger conductor and passenger brakeman to attend the passengers(if any) needs because the work rules would change the very minute a caboose is attached to the mixed because now a caboose is bringing up the markers and it must be manned at all times whenever the train is in motion-except when the crew is preforming switching duties of course…
Every railroad job classification was covered by Company/Union work agreements which must be followed…
As a example.As a brakeman I wasn’t allowed to couple or uncouple passenger cars or express cars since that was a carman’s job.
Why?
The carman was qualified to connect the signal and steam lines.I wasn’t because as a yard or road brakeman I wasn’t trained to do that work.
Thank you all. Here is the train at the station. Sorry, this part of the layout is till to be finished.
It can depend on the time of year, and how the car is heated. If the car runs on steam heat from the engine, it would normally be behind the engine (at least in cooler weather) since most freight cars don’t have steam lines to pass the steam back to the passenger car. The freight cars would follow, then a caboose. If the car has one or more stoves (indicated by having one or two smoke jacks sticking out of the roof) then the car didn’t need steam from the engine, and could be used like a caboose in the back of the train.
Guy,Very nice…[
Your mix train looks like it was taken from the pages of Lucius Beebe’s “Mixed Train Daily”.[tup]
I agree based on photos I’ve seen most common practice was combine served as the caboose.
On the other hand, we must remember that the caboose was the train crew motel at the end of the run during the mixed train era unless the terminating station was large enough to have a bunk room. The engine crew usually stayed in a bunk house adjacent to the roundhouse.
Dick Haave
Operating rules require occupied equipment such as passenger cars or work boarding cars to be carried at the END of the train. This should never be in front of the freight cars.
Any combine that is meant to be used in mixed train service will have coal or oil stoves for heating, not rely on steam heat from the engine.
Actually at the larger and medium size terminals crews would prefer to stay in the Railroad YMCA where they had a nice warm comfy bed,hot meals and a place to wash up.These YMCAs also had billiard tables,card tables and reading room…Crews at smaller terminals may have selected to rent a hotel room or if they was assigned to a certain train many would rent a sleeping room by the month.
RR YMCAs started showing up in the 1870s and most crews gave up sleeping in the caboose because the bunks wasn’t very comfortable and there was no chance of being jarred awake as their caboose was being switched about…
BRAKIE
Thank you for the comment.[:D]
I’m curious to know what happened at the end of the run / line, especially if it was a terminus?
If the Combine was on the rear, where was it put when it came to switching the freight cars?
Brian
Brian,Most times the combine would be left at the station while the mixed train crew worked the industries.
BTW Every branch line had a end terminus it may not be much maybe a 2 or 3 track yard,a turntable or wye but,that was the end of the branch…There was usually a run around track near the station if there wasn’t a small double ended yard or wye…
Maybe they’re both stored in van alley waiting for their respective conductor’s next trip? Can’t really tell if there is another car to the right of them.
I’ve seen enough photos and film footage of a train freight cars following the passenger car(s) to seriously question whether that’s really correct.