I’d like to shift the discussion to North American mixed trains in general.If we discount touristy lines like Santa Fe Southern,I believe the last true mixed train is in Canada. My beloved Rutland stopped mixed train service on it’s Addison branch,when that branch was shut down in 1951(I believe that would have been the only part of the Rutland which never saw a diesel).
We’re going to have to agree on a definition of mixed train for openers. A broad definition of mixed train would include such trains as the Denver-Kansas City leg of UP’s “Portland Rose”, which included a lot of piggyback and auto racks tacked on behind the passenger equipment or the similar arrangement on SR’s “Piedmont” between Washington and Atlanta well into the Amtrak era. More people would favor a narrower definition, restricting a mixed train to branchline operations with passengers carried in an old coach which doubled as the caboose or a stretched caboose with extra seats for the occasional passenger.
Along with others, I would define a mixed train as one defined as such in the Official Guide. Hitching some freight cars to a streamliner doesn’t make it a mixed train in my opinion.
I totally agree. A “true” mixed train picked up, dropped off and did any necessary switching of freight cars along its route. It was both a local freight and a local passenger train. It most commonly ran on short lines or branch lines and often was the only scheduled train on these lines. The passenger consist was often just a single combine tacked on to the rear of the train. Some carried an additional coach and a few (though very few) even carried a sleeper.
Mark
Agreeing with Mark. A freight train that coincidently will sell space to passengers. Whether it be in a car converted or built for the purpose, or a caboose. When I rode the Tuscon , Cornelia & Gila Bend in the caboose in the mid-70’s (RT ~ $1.97 Ajo to Gila Bend and back), the crew referred to it as a mixed train.
Santa Fe was prolific in the mixed train business. Some of this was due to an obscure Kansas statute which required “trains originating and terminating within the state” to carry passengers.
ABD
IIRC the Soo Line carried passengers in the caboose on their line thru Gladstone in the Upper Peninsular of Michigan as late as the 80s.
Just looked it up,the Soo line discontinued carrying passengers in Upper.Michigan at the end of 1981.
I remember reading a story by a reporter (IIRC the Detroit Free Press) who rode the train. First he had to talk to a few people at Soo to find someone who either knew or admitted to knowing about the service. The crew was surprised when he showed up to board the train, however, they accommodated him with stops convenient to where he could purchase food during the long trip. I thought about making the trip, but I could never figure out how to get back to my car. I finally mad a fan trip Gladstone-Trout Lake behind 2-8-2 Soo 1003 in the 1990s. That same weekend they made a trip Gladstone to Hermansville via former C&NW, and were to return on the former Soo, but a salvage crew was just starting to remove the track. on a late Saturday afternoon. Since the last car in the train was a WC office car (which by then owned both lines) I figured the timing of the dismantling was not just a random incident.
Can anybody name a mixed train that DID carry a sleeper?I recall an article about riding a mixed on the UP(was it Trains or CT?)from Utah to Wyoming.I believe it did run overnight,but I’m not sur there was even a coach,let alone a sleeper.
IIRC the Denver & Salt Lake had an overnight mixed with sleeper.
Growing up in the stations at Hatton, SK and Irricana, AB from 1954 to 1965, both locations had mixed train service.
Hatton was on the CPR main line, but was the Division Point(junction) for the Hatton Sub. to Golden Prairie. There was a mixed train that served the Hatton Sub. every Thursday, known informally as the not surprisingly named; Thursday Mixed.
Irricana was served by a NB mixed from Calgary to East Coulee on Monday. On Thursday the same equipment returned to Calgary from Bassano. This equipment ran from East Coulee over to Bassano on Tuesday, through some of the most isolated country you ever saw. It made a round trip from Bassano to Scandia on Wednesday. This was done by the same crew working four 12 hour days. A new crew brought the same equipment NB past Irricana on the way to Torrington on Friday. This equipment returned SB past us to Calgary on Saturday.
The constant equipment on these trips was a Combine; a potable water tank car, to supply the stations and Section Men’s houses where the local water supplies were either bad or non-existent; and the conductor’s personal Caboose. Cabooses changed as conductors bid in and out of the jobs, but the Combine and the tank car only changed when they required scheduled servicing. In the eight and a bit years we were at Irricana there were three different combines and two different tank cars.
I once asked Dad what would happen if there was suddenly so much express brought in for shipment that it wouldn’t fit into the combine. It turns out that back in the day, there were very old day coaches and full baggage cars that
Bruce., since I first saw the name Yahk about sixty years ago, I have wondered bout it. Do you know whence and why it came?
Beyond assuming it was a Native word, I never knew much more. So, I did the only logical thing and looked it up on Wikipedia. This is what it said:
According to British Columbia’s Geographical Names Information System, “Yahk” is a Kootenay word meaning either “arrow” or “bow” and referring either to the Yaak River or the Kootenay River. The southward curve of the Kootenay River (from Canada into the United States and back into Canada) is said to be a “bow”, with the Yaak River possibly being the “arrow” (if the name is from the Kootenay word “a’k”).
According to the USGS, variant names of the Yaak River include A’ak, Yaac, Yahk, Yahkh, and Yak.
Bruce
Thanks, Bruce. So, perhaps, there are two “Bow” Rivers in the area; the one with the Indian name, and the one that is called “Bow” (which we drove along going back up to Lake Louise from Banff in '03, and from Lake Louise to Banff in '09 and along, as much as possible, when going from Banff to Calgary in '09. In '03, we saw two or three groups of elk along the way; we saw no elk in '09.
The C&Os mixed train between Clifton Forge and Hot Springs, VA carried a New York - Hot Springs sleeper which ran between Clifton Forge and Washington in the FFV.
Mark
Johnny, although the names escape me, there are several more rivers in North America that translate into “Bow” from the local Native dialects. This tidbit of information came up at the same time some local university professor once said that the the Bow River you saw is in fact an incorrect interpretation of the native name for it. Other professors, of course, disputed this.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
Bruce
The Tonopah & Goldfield carried a sleeper in mixed service during WW2 for the USAAF airfield at Tonopah.
Here we have a specific situation that does indeed require a sleeping car. But it occurred to me that confusion in other cases may be arising for different reasons.
On the CPR as on many other roads, that except those built for service on specific named trains, almost all of the CPR combines were conversions from colonist sleeping cars. The upper berths were never removed from the coach section, and the mattresses remained. The baggage man, whose name I won’t mention, who worked the mixeds the whole time we were at Irricana, slept in the upper berth on the right hand side next to the bulkhead between the baggage compartment and the passenger section, when you faced the bulkhead. He kept other personal items in the berth across the aisle. He lived there six days a week.
In those days the engineer and fireman slept in bunk houses, the trainmen and conductor slept in the caboose, and the baggage men slept in their baggage car/combine. It was a union thing. I don’t recall how it was the running trade men only worked a maximum of four days per week, but baggage men worked six. Another union thing. I think some of the confusion, this many years after the fact, may lie in the difference in mixed trains posted as carrying a sleeping car, and those that had a car capable of being a sleeping car.
Bruce
The Georgia Railroad mainline Super Mixed trains carried the West Point Route Pullman “Alabama River” when one of the two lightweight coaches was in the shop. It was always a pleasure to find it subbing since it was kept very clean in comparison to the coaches as it was used as a host car along with the Georgia Railroad office car, known today as Georgia 300, at “The Masters” golf tournament in Augusta.
Technically not the answer you are looking for since overnight travel was not involved, but it was a Pullman in mixed train service up to 1983.
I was fortunate to have grown up in the prime of the Georgia RR mixed trains. For the fame they earned, the service was short lived, 1969-1983. 14 years. I was 14 in 1976. My school friends and I put t
Reminds me of my riding the Suncook Valley mixed four times in the summer of 1945 at age 13 on my own. Concord - Pittsfield, NH. I’ve posted the story before.