Has anyone ever seen any articles on converting a HO passenger car to a “Jim Crow” car. I have never seen any available commercially but sadly it was part of the “Ol South” and they were quite often seen on many trains.
I am sure someone has some suggestions-
I remember someone emailing me with a similar question a few years back, I think his name was John and a member of this forum. There’s plenty of prototype info available for a person to model some units but I haven’t seen one done yet. If no one turns up anything here, I would suggest contacting the historical societies. Here’s a discussion from a while back on the TRAINS forum:
Splice together a Roundhouse Overton coach and combine.
There’s one preserved at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Florida.
Here’s one from the Greene County RR site. (scroll down)
Looks like a good scratchbuild project.
In HO you could easily go plank-by-plank (notice the simple windows).
See the article “Scrathbuild a mixed-train combine” by Dick Scott from the February 2006 Model Railroader p. 78. Scott showed how to model a Louisville & Nashville combine with a center baggage compartment and passenger compartments at each end. The prototype was used to comply with segregation laws on mixed trains. Scott’s model was in O scale, but some of his techniques could be used in HO, and the overall project could be a guide to kitbashing such a car.
As a historical note, one of these cars was restored and used with the locomotive “General” in the L&N’s commemoration of the centennial of the Civil War “Great Locomotive Chase” in 1962. I was a high-school student when I rode the car behind the ancient steam engine when the “General” visited New Orleans.
So long,
Andy
If you’re trying to make a model of a specific prototype, you need to find a model of a car whose exterior looks similar. While some such cars may be road-specific, most, as far as I know, were simply a standard coach which was separated into two sections, either with a partition or a simple sign, as on the example shown in Tom’s link.
In Canada, we had cars with separate sections, too: smoking and non-smoking. [swg]
Wayne
If you build it, please remember what it represents and hope that kind of stupidity never takes hold again.
I have never seen an article on one but I have thought about building for several yearsit has become one of those back bunner projects
I had recalled that L&N combine article cited above but didn’t realize it was that many years back, already.
These cars are seldom modeled, but were rather ubiquitous across the South. I suspect that embarassment about the policy they represent is the reason, but that type of car can really “place” a model railroad in a time and general location. If you look through the sections on Southern short lines in Lucious Beebe’s classic Mixed Train Daily, most all of the steam trains shown have a Jim Crow car. That book emphasizes the “wedge shot” of the front of the train, but there are several good photos of the Jim Crow combines on a number of lines. Georgia’s Sylvanina Central Jim Crow car is nicely depicted on page 38. Wadley Southern’s Jim Crow car is shown on page 32. These cars were found in both wood and metal “heavyweight” varieties. The center baggage compartment seems to have been a rather common arrangement.
In addition to my HO logging line, I have a garden railroad (F Scale - 1:20.3) that represents a line running down here in South Carolina in the 1930’s. I have thought of simply taking a pair of Bachmann combination cars and splicing them together; using only the one baggage compartment in the center. The overall car would thus be lenghened and the trussrods would have to be rebuilt, but generally it would be a straightforward project. When folks ask “what kind of car is that?”, it would offer a “teaching moment”.
Bill
Hi!
I believe the Illinois Central Historical Society did an article on the subject, and a copy may be available from them.
I realize that cars such as this were a part of life “back then”, and pretending they didn’t exist is just wrong. So if you are modeling this, please remember the ignorance and inhumanity that caused it to be.
Some newer (as in built right after WWII) passenger cars, such as the N&W’s P2 coaches simply had a partition in the car to separate each sections, but it only had doors at one end (I have the MTH model). The Southern’s Tennessean had coaches that were also partitioned but had doors on each end.
http://condrenrails.com/MRP/Tennessean/Tennessean-equipment.htm
Alvie
Obviously there was a lot of racial discrimination in the southern US states. But Jim Crow laws and racial segregation were by no means limited to that region. Indeed, northern states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island probably preceded most of the South in creating institutional segregation early in the nineteenth century due to the growing population of freed African American there. Writing in 1836, the abolitionist Lydia Marie Child complained that “our prejudice against colored people is even more inveterate than it is at the South” (An Appeal to That Class of Americans Called Africans, 1836). Schools, churches, and, yes, railroads of the 1830s and 1840s refused to allow African Americans to share facilities with whites. Railroads around Boston like the Boston & Providence thus included “colored cars” on most trains for African Americans. Those who tried to sit in the regular cars were forcibly rejected by conductors and brakemen. No less a figure than Fredrick Douglas suffered this fate on the Eastern Railroad in September, 1841. Reacting to such incidents, the African American and Abolitionist communities in the area began a growing protest movement. Because the city of Salem was a center for this movement, the Eastern responded by ordering its trains not to stop there, though one executive, trying to mollify the situation pointed out that African Americans were allowed to stand on the open platforms of any car. Public opinion, however, gradually shifted, and in 1843 the Commonwealth’s legislature formally outlawed all such segregation–and what may have been the nation’s earliest Jim Crow cars. These were apparently not special cars, however, merely older and less ap
I have a kit of car sides (N scale) for a Santa Fe streamlined divided coach. Union Station kit #7504. I don’t know if something similar is available for HO or other scales. I have not built mine nyet. I need it to model an authentic Texas Chief of the mid 1950s.
The car was one of the few streamlinded coaches with vestibules at each end. It also had small restrooms, 2 at each end, one on each side of the aisle.
Santa Fe bought 3 of them to satisfy Texas segregation law when it streamlined the Texas Chief.
#3187-3189
1947 Pullman 52-seat lightweight, partition
85’ coupled, 82’10" body, per PS Library diagram
floor plan, Quarter Century of Santa Fe Consists p.64
T&NO racially-segregated heavyweight cars like some 60-C-5 &-6 coaches had an interior partition, with a door. There was no external difference.
Thanks
I am already thinking in that direction or maybe using an old Athern combine & passenger car
Thanks
That’s exactly what I was looking for.
Larry
Loyld-
Thanks - you are totally right. The era I model included these cars on many mixed trains down in Georgia - it is just my interpolation of a slice of time.
Certainly glad it changed but, alas they are no more local passenger trains either.
Just to add to the discussion, don’t forget that there were also “modern” versions of Jim Crow cars. Both, the SAL and ACL had Budd Baggage-Dorm units which were designated for black passengers.
I seem to recall that MR had a drawing and feature with pictures around 1957 or 1958. My mind say’s it was a Central of Georgia car but don’t hold me to any of this. I know I saw an article when I was a kid and these were the on;y mags I read then.