I was just wondering if when railroads made up passenger trains, if there was any rule of thumb as to where particular kinds of cars, sleepers, diners, baggage ect. were placed in the train?
Prior to Amtrack, railroads usually placed the cars in this general order:
Baggage, RPO, Dormitory-Coach, Coaches, Diner, Sleepers, Observation.
Some trains such as the N&W Pochohantas had two crew coaches before the baggage-rpo combination. Also the diner may or may not be in the original consist and was added en route to the final destination.
A mail-express train would have express reefers, express cars, mail cars, baggage cars, rpo and maybe one or two coaches.
Rick
Depends on the railroad general practice and the configuration of the stations.
Generally a diner would separate the 1st class from coach class passengers.
On trains that are all 1st class (or all coach for that matter) the diner would be in the middle so people don’t have to walk as far to get to it.
The dormatory is usually next to the diner so workers are close, or at the very front of the train so passengers aren’t passing back and forth through it all the time.
An RPO is never in the middle of a train since workers/passengers cannot pass through it.
Some railroads ran sleepers to the front so 1st class passengers could get on and off at stations first, while the coach passengers had to wait for the train to pull up. Or they had to walk…
Others always had the sleepers to the rear making the observation car the exclusive domain of the 1st class passengers.
The 1951 Superchief always ran the lounge car right in front of the diner. This way the kitchen could also service an eating room in the lounge (Turquois Room).
The really best thing to do would be to study up on specific passenger trains that are similar to the one you are creating.
As the prior poster stated a generality is:
Head End Cars
Express
RPO
Baggage
Dorm
coaches
lounge (dorm lounge if there isn’t a dorm up front)
diner
sleepers
observation.
There are also many specialty cars like horse cars, parlors, smoking cars, snack bars…
For a while the California Zephyr ran a special Women & Children coach as the first coach in the train.
On the topic of diners and first class. The Diner should be placed so that second class passengers would not disturb first class passengers by going through their cars. Also placing the observation/lounge car next to the diner allowed first class passengers to leave the diner faster to the waiting lounge.
Magnus
when possible, the diner seperated the coachs from the sleeper cars, and the kitchen end of the diner coupled to the coach, dinning room end to the sleepers.
this allowed the 1st class passengers to enter the diner without having to go through the narrow hallway that ran around the kitchen.
In practice other than the RPO at the head end, cars were arranged as needed, coaches or sleepers may be cut out of or added to the train along the way, if the diner was facing the wrong way, too bad, it would not be turned just to have the hall next to the coach…
I agree, it’s best to read up on what particular railroad you might be modeling and how they ran their passenger trains–even a particular passenger train. Even though most passenger trains seemed to run coaches first (after the head-end cars), I remember riding the OVERLAND LIMITED between Truckee and Sacramento, CA on the SP during the late 'fifties, and the sleeper cars were run behind the head end baggage cars, then the diner, and a dome-car, then the coaches at the end. When I rode the CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR just a few years later from Denver to Sacramento, the situation was reversed, and my sleeper was just ahead of the dome-observation-lounge.
I generally run my 1940-50 Era passenger trains like this:
LONG DISTANCE:
Head-end (express reefer, baggage, mail)
Coaches
Lounge (if any–for coach passengers–sometimes called “Parlor” cars)
Diner (kitchen end toward coaches, dining end toward Pullmans)
Pullman cars
Observation-Lounge (for Pullman passengers)
LOCALS:
Head end (express-baggage-mail)
Combine (baggage-mail, passenger)
Rider coaches (walk-through snacks available from conductor, food usually stored in passenger end of the combine)–always try and feed your passengers, it makes them happier, LOL!
Tom
I might be wrong but it might also depend on the type of loco. In the steam days first class passengers would be in the end of the train and second class in the front. This changed with the diesels since the smoke was no longer an issue.
Magnus
On the railroad that today is the “Northeast Corridor” when it was run by the New Haven and PRR, those two railroads typically observed opposite practices. New Haven most commonly ran Parlors - diner - coaches. PRR did the opposite. On the interline trains you had some trains of New Haven cars made up the New Haven’s way, and some of PRR cars made up the PRR way.
Another type of Passenger Train were the All Sleeper trains such as the Twentieth Century and Broadway Limited. These trains had a RPO, Baggage, Sleepers, Two Unit Diner, Sleepers, and Observation. Included in the Sleepers were some specialty cars that had a small post office, barber shop, lounge etc. along with a sleeper section.
Rick
I guess I am wondering about the Canadian Pacific train I took from Winnipeg to Vancouver when I was just two. Three days and two nights. We were moving out to Vancouver and it was my mom,my sister, our pet budgie and myself in a roomette I think it was called. Anyway I remember so much about that trip I am sure that is where my train bug started.
The 20th Century Limited also offered a secretary service for the traveling executives so they could take care of business in route.
I seem to have read somewhere where there was a reason why your Overland Limited was configured in this manner. It had to deal with the layout of many of the stations up in the high Sierras and those of us who have been up there in the height of a snowy winter know what bad-weather is like. These particular stations dated from the late-1800s when trains were shorter than they were in the mid-1900s; they consequently had unequal length platforms, the long platform being to the east. Westbound the head-end and first-class cars were stopped as close to the depot as possible - the poor unwashed second-class passengers would alight on the platform and have a long walk to the depot. The train was usually configured just the opposite when traveling eastbound; this, of course, left the head-end cars at the far end of the east platform but those poor second-class passengers still had a long walk.
There were some trains running in the Midwest which were configured similiarly for similiar reasons. In the south Jim Crow consists always stopped with those Jim Crow cars as far from the depot as was necessary to avoid inconveniencing white-folks with any kind of a long walk. This may have been patently in violation of interstate commerce provisions of the constitution but who cared???
My N Scale Seaboard and Western Virginia Railway is currently set in the mid- to late-&nbs
There was an article on the CP “Canadian” in one of the ‘special issues’ of Classic Trains a couple years back, I think the one one called “The Streamliners” with the NP North Coast Limited on the cover. (I’ve got it at home, but I think that’s what it was called .[D)]) You should still be able to find that online or at a flea market, if Kalmbach doesn’t still have it in stock.
There are also books and videos available on the CP and on the Canadian.
p.s. Lounge or Parlor cars weren’t like today’s Amtrak cars where anyone could sit in them, they usually had either reserved seating (you could pay extra to sit in the parlor car rather than a coach seat) or were reserved to first class passengers only. (Not to confuse a lounge car with a bar car, which usually was open to everyone.)
Trains carrying RPO or express cars would always carry them at the head end, right behind the locomotive. RPO-baggage cars would run RPO section forward. These cars were ‘blind end’ cars, with no centerline doors, so people could not enter or pass through the security areas.
RPO-baggage cars have a solid, doorless bulkhead between the two sections.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)