After reading reviews of Broadway Limited’s NYC J1e Hudson steam locomotive in Model Railroader Magazine and in another train publication, I bought one. Now I would like to add passenger cars that are appropriate for the era, but I’m not having much luck discovering which cars would be right. Recommendations?
When new, the Hudsons were first assigned to the top trains, most notably the heavyweight version of the Twentieth Century Limited. The Century was an “all-Pullman / all first-class” train; except for the NYC dining car, all the cars from the baggage-smoker combine to the open-deck observation car were Pullman cars.
The recent MBI book “Twentieth Century Limited” by Karl Zimmerman has a rare photo layout on page 46, showing an individual pic of every car in the train from the engine on back, all pics taken of the same train on the same day in the mid-twenties, just before the Hudsons came along.
The cars shown are:
Pullman Baggage/Buffet-Smoker-Lounge Delta
Three 12-1-1 Pullman cars, Dana, Holland and Hardwick (12 sections, 1-compartment, 1-drawing room)
12-1 Pullman sleeper St. Delphine (12 sections, 1-drawing room)
NYC dining car (number only, no name)
12-1 Pullman sleeping car Winter
6-3 Pullman sleeping car Southey (6-compartments, 3-drawing rooms)
Pullman 8-compartment lounge/observation car Waldameer.
So this shows 9 cars in total. After the Hudsons came along, this would increase to 12-14 cars. I think I have a typical consist list in one of my old Kalmbach books, but it would basically be the same just with more Pullman cars. Since there are so many Pullmans, cutting out a few to make a more “layout friendly” train of say 7 cars should be pretty easy.
Later of course, the Hudsons ended pulling a variety of trains, including secondary trains, mail trains, local passenger trains and even some freight trains. NYC ran a HUGE number of passenger trains - probably
Thank you for all the information. This definitely should help me add realistic stock to my setup.