A few weeks back, I bought a few streamlined passenger cars to fill out our El Capitan set. The new car’s graphics don’t match the set’s cars, but that didn’t bother me. I was talking to Doug Murphy about it and he said that pure consists, all cars matching, were rare. How right he was. I watched a video the other night on the Santa Fe railroad. All the footage was shot in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Never once did I see a pure consist. What I did see was a real hodge podge of cars thrown together, even on the more famous trains, like the El Capitan and the Super Chief. Madisons mixed in with streamliners, freight mixed in with streamliners, all of the above mixed together, and none of them had observation cars. A real eye opener. Just goes to show that there really is no wrong way to assemble a passenger consist. So go ahead, put that Polar Express baggage car in front of that streamliner coach.
So I guess running a Reading passenger consist with # 300 & 304 F3 diesels with # 15106 & 15104 Lionels with an MTH Streamlined # 5, passenger Reading Company would be prototypical? The Lionel diesels & cars are Reading Green with a yellow stripe, the MTH car is all silver. Used to run a Reading box car until I bought the MTH car.
Lee F.
Given my proximity to the BNSF railroad, the only time I ever see a matching consist is on a unit train, hauling coal to the east. In my mind, whatever looks good together is appropriate.
The madison style Pullmans were probably Pullman sleepers.
If I remember correctly these were leased from the Pullman car company by the various railroads until about 1950, when the railroads were allowed to purchase them. Up until about 1950 the Pullman car company owned and operated all the Pullman sleepers. So they would not have necessarily matched the rest of the passenger cars on a consist.
Pullman sleepers were typically painted “Pullman Green” and had car names, but didn’t have roadnames or numbers.
Given my proximity to the BNSF railroad, the only time I ever see a matching consist is on a unit train, hauling coal to the east. In my mind, whatever looks good together is appropriate.
Like johnandjulie13 posted, I live near Florida East Coast Railroad & CSX, the only time I see mainly all FEC is a sand train coming out of Fort Lauderdale area.
Norfolk Southern runs over FEC tracks and most of their trains are a mixture of roadnames. CSX is really bad about using any car for any railroad, have seen A.T.S.F.
boxcars with the old Q for quality in Indiantown FL parked on a siding, even saw NYC gondolas near Indiantown on a CSX train.
As for motive power I have seen very many differant diesels on both CSX & FEC lines, even Norfolk Southern has differant diesels, you may see a pair of SD-70M-2’s or a four GP-60-2’s together. FEC is still running GP-38-2A’s, quad-heading them at times, or may run some newer SD-70-2’s.
Amtrac was supposed to run on FEC to Miami but the deal fell thru because of Amtrac’s ultra low funding. One day an FEC GP-38 led the Amtrac train down the FEC line to Miami, innaugeral run. Also there has been talk of using FEC tracks for an East Tri-Rail run but so far Tri-Rail is unable to come up with enuff money to lease the tracks from FEC. Anyway FEC maintains their tracks better than most railroads and has way fewer derailments per mile than any other railroad.
Lee Fritz
I think there could be several ways these “mash ups” (to use the current term) happened. One way that I have rarly seen modeled or offered in a catalog is the trains that ran as a joint effort of more than one RR Co. The cars were sometimes lettered for the train but sometimes these were run with pooled cars so they could have very mixed paint lettering schemes. An example I can think of is “The Orange Blossom Special” of the Seaboard Air Line. It ran on the SAL the RF&P and B&O RR’s from New York City to Florida. It had RF&P as well as SAL lettered cars often there was an attempt to have a shared paint scheme. Sometimes this didn’t happen however due to car availability. Sometimes companies even leased or borrowed cars from other lines due to seasonal rushes. During WW2 there were other rules and many cars were used in other service
sometimes very far from the original line.
My understanding is that headend cars were typically older or repurposed. They seem to have been the last replaced or updated. Probably because no paying passengers were riding them(although often these head-end cars were the ones carring the loads that payed to run the train. Passenger tickets rarely payed enough to run the train.). Other special type cars that were/are slow to be updated include Diners, Sleepers, and sometimes Lounge or even Observation cars. The reason these were slow to be replaced is that they were seen as expensive and generated very limited revenue.
Another situation where mixed cars in a consist would be found is while companies were transitioning and buying new car types. Rarely would all of the cars arrive at the same time, so the cars would go into sevice when they arrived often in mixed consists. For reasons of finace only the top line trains would get new equiptment. As the equiptment aged it would pass down to the lesser also rans. Eventually the cars would cycle through to the humble locals. When equiptment needed servicing older cars were brought up to serve the name trai
In 1967, when I road the Burlington from Chicago to Denver, I remember all the cars being the polished steel. We had at least three dome cars. I was in the dome car for sunrise and sunset. Wow! [:D]
The biggest mash-up I have ever seen is in the early days of Amtrak. The trains were a hodgepodge of cars from anywhere and everywhere.
To add to the general feelings expressed here, and specifically what Buckeye said, modeling the fallen northeast railroads that went into Conrail is loads of fun and with loads of variations.
In the passenger service years of Penn Central, you could see cars from the NH, NYC, PRR and newly painted PC cars. With the Jersey Central, they were buying passenger cars from anyone who had them for sale. You could see all sorts of GN and BN cars running on the CNJ, not to mention the varying CNJ schemes. Some of the CNJ passenger trains were referred affectionately as “The Jersey Builder” (after the Empire Builder) because of all the foreign GN/BN cars.
Now add into the mix how many railroads restored or partially restore passenger cars into inspection train service. Conrail had silver and blue cars, all CR blue cars, some quick roller jobs of varying origin and then later the Pullman Green colored inspection train.
The real railroads were into saving money. Passenger service on many was a losing proposition by the 1960’s. While some lines continued to offer the service, they also did everything they could to save money.
So on your model railroad, the same principle applies and is totally prototypical. Buy whatever passenger cars you can find on sale, mix them together and then laugh at those who say it isn’t prototypical… it sure as heck is!!
Just to add a little info on Tri-Rail in south Florida, they run south with the engine south of the cars or pulling the cars & run north with the engine on the south side or pushing the cars. Tri-Rail does not waste the time to switch ends as there are many runs each day, also Tri-Rail runs on CSX tracks between Miami & West Palm Beach & for most of the run now has a double track main except in parts of Fort Lauderdale.
Lee Fritz
Even on Metra, the double-decker commuter consists might have ex-MILW stainless cars (still had their original lease plates), ex-BURL cars - with the small green windows, and the famous (to me at least) ex-C&NW cars painted for RTA. Put a wheezing F40 up front and we’re ready to go. These days, these are almost all gone as they’re reequipped with ADA cars from Nippn Sharyo.
Saw a rare sight this morning on my commuter line: a morning freight - long and tall SUV carriers, high cube boxcars - lots of Conrail and TFM - and flat upon flat of auto frames - all out in the open and stacked super high.
Dave, you did pretty good with those links. One more thought to bear in mind: when folks photograph trains (past and present) they tend to want to get shots with the locomotives as the predominant part of the composition. So very often, freight and passenger cars get overlooked.
The possibility that “stranger things have happened” and have never been photographed is very real. For example in the early years of Conrail, most railroad photographers were more interested in gettting shots of remaining unaltered lines that ended up going into Conrail. So there are some early Conrail cars of which there seem to be very few photos of. I’m sure this senario exists for other railroads too.
Then there’s also the issue of black and white versus color photography. In the Monring Sun Lehigh Valley books, they explain they waited a long time to finally find a decent color photograph of the unusual early red/grey/yellow scheme that was used on a few first generation Lehigh diesel switchers. Most photos were black and white, making it very hard to determine the exact color scheme of the locos.
The more I learn about the “real” railroads that I like, the more I become convinced that the “prototype” is almost whatever you want. The real railroads existed to make money and broke their own “rules” inorder to do so. Lines like the Lehigh Valley and the Jersey Cental almost seem to have operated on rules of exceptions.
Almost every model train company has made a CR blue colored box car. True, Conrail did have one blue box car. But they had far more Penn Central green Conrail box cars done up from left over PC paint and stencils. And why? To save money. Mkes me wonder with all the 3-rail fuss over realism, where’s the model of a PC green Conrail box car???