Hello,
How did railroads like the NYC or PRR number their passenger cars for named trains? Would it have possible to see two (2) cars with the same number in the same consist/section?
Thanks!
Every car has its own number, be they boxcar, observation lounge, or ancient MOW flat.
The only way it would happen is if the two cars with the same number were from different railroads. But while foreign sleeping cars could be found on long distance trains, at least on some railroads, they were usually named. Day coaches (except on pool services) rarely ran through; coach passengers usually had to change cars.
But if you go back to the early days of railroads in the 19th century, it was not unknown for duplicate number series to be used for different types of equipment. So you might have locomotives 100, 101, and so on, same for coaches, same for baggage cars, etc… Where it happened it was very short lived, since the potential confusion in both operations and book-keeping is obvious.
John
The assigned car number on a ticket was different then the physical numberofthe car. Most cars had a device in a window near the vestibule like what a bus.has. IIRC it had four digits.that were manually set. The ones on the PRR were white numbers on a black background.
During the mergers of the 1980’s and 1990’s it was found that several roads had freight car sequences with 4 or less digits. Those often duplicated series of engine numbers. It drove computers and especially computers that got updates from automatic equipment identification readers nuts. Eventually all the cars were renumbered.
That window device was the ‘line number’ that was assigned for the train. For example, a train may have line number 442/444/446 assigned to it today. All St Paul to Seattle sleeping car passengers will be assigned to line number 446. The actual name or number on the side of the car will be different, but the line number device in the widow will be correct for the ticket.
Most passenger cars with a ‘name’ usually had a ‘number’ as well.
Jim
delete
I remember taking my father to North Philadelphia station to catch the Broadway Limited. About five minutes before the train was due the station announcer would announce the train and say what track. He would then read the car numbers and where they would be to be boarded. On the underside of the canopy were numbers on signs so people could move to the right location and minimize boarding time.
In general, true, but check your prototype if you’re not freelancing. On the Rio Grande, between locos, passenger cars, freight cars, standard gauge and narrowgauge there was some duplication of numbers used on different classes of equipment.
It’s possible an engine might have a number the same as a car on a railroad. The MN&S had a Baldwin diesel 15 and a caboose 015 that often ran together on trains. But you wouldn’t have two freight cars from the same railroad with the same numbers.
Remember too that the car “name” or reporting marks are the 2-4 letter ID of the railroad, and the car number.
When a railroad buys another railroad, or two railroads merge to form a new railroad, they keep the rights to their old reporting marks. In the 1990’s C&NW bought a number of new freight cars that they assigned reporting marks CGW or CMO, reporting marks for the old Chicago Great Western and Chicago St.Paul Minneapolis & Omaha railroads. So you could have say a covered hopper CNW 111789 and CMO 111789.
Keep in mind too that most Pullman cars used individual names, not numbers.
Ah, but funny things do happen. Early in my railroad career, there were two foreign road cars with the same initials and number on the Thurlow PA RIP track. Each car was a load and had it’s own revenue waybill. The situation was temporarily resolved by opening each car to determine the load, and re-stenciling the cars with an A and a B suffix. The cars were re-billed and delivered to the appropriate consignee, then “Home Shopped” to the owning railroad for resolution. Normally, and in response to the OP’s question, normally it doesn’t happen on prototype railroads.
Joe