I picked up a couple of Walthers PRR R50B express reefers, and I was wondering: Would these have ever run on a NYC express train? I assume not since PRR and NYC semed to cover much of the same terroritory, but… one never knows till one asks on these forums!
TIA
Aaron
I’ve watched hours of NYC videos. Green Frog (Emery Goulash), Herron, Sunday River, Pentrex and quite a few smaller studios. I don’t recall ever seeing any R50bs in any of the NYC trains shown in them. There may have been occasion to have a B60b get shuffled into an NYC mail/express train. Some of the express cars travelled well across the country carrying magazines, newspapers and anything bulky that needed to “get there” in a hurry.
I’ve seen lots of photos of head-end cars of many eastern roads in Texas and California, even Vancouver, B.C. but not the R50bs. Of course, some PRR trains would have detoured on the NYC due to wrecks or R-of-W construction but that would have been the entire train. Not very often, though.
None of the R50bs made it to Penn Central so that excuse is null.
Sounds like a good excuse to start building a PRR mail and express train [;)]
Cheers, Ed
Thx, Ed, I knew you would know! Well, a certain someone has started me on the Pennsy passenger path… and I also have a few Spectrum cars and a pair of K4s awaiting DCC…
We also have a new club member who is putting together a freelance PRR train, so I’m sure he can keep my R50s warm while I prep my cars…
Meanwhile, while checking out Penn Central videos for coal train ideas, I saw several PC passenger trains using all sorts of ex-NYC and ex-PRR head-end equipment! So I plan to lpay with a train today that includes 2 PC B60bs, a PRR-painted B60b, a NYC Flexi-Van, and NYC streamlined baggage (I’ve yet to see a NYC hwt bag on a PC train). Can’t remember if I’ve seen a NYC express box in that mix. For people: A couple of PC’d ex-NYC coaches, PC’d Tuscan red sleeper, and the Budd grille I got from you (thanks again). Will post video if the train runs!
Helpful to know the R50s would not be in that mix, btw.
Aaron
I’m with you on running all that head-end stuff. I recall seeing #5 & 6, mail trains (M&E IIRC on the P-C for mail and express) run through Cleveland. There was usually five, sometimes SIX E7 and 8s on the point, never less than four.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen heavyweight baggage cars in the mix, sometimes from several “off-line” roads. I seem to recall seeing baggage cars from Southern Railway in the mix. Plenty of Flexi-Vans, of course.
You’ll want one of the NYC, single-window, heavyweight coaches with most of the middle windows blanked out plus oil stove smoke stacks added as a “rider car” which was more common than seeing a caboose.
The P-C leased a few Santa Fe RPOs toward the end of mail service so you could get away with one of these:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alcomike/49601665258/in/album-72157631664600097/
Plus you’ll certainly want an old Pennsy BM70m decked out in “Deep Water Green” as the color was known:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alcomike/48420558951/in/album-72157631664600097/
I happen to have a Penn Central project right now on my bench, taking an old L-L E8 in NYC gray and giving it a “patch-job” to Penn Central. There were dozens like this when I was a young lad hanging around the yards back then.
I remember seeing quite a few that looked like this:
never say never. it wouldn’t surprise me if they were found on secondary service trains like upsate New York or used for railway express deliveries.
Whoa. Mind BLOWN.
And that E8 looks cool. Amazing to see one that made it to the deadline with all portholes intact!
Somewhere I have an undec Proto2k E8 that I want to paint as PC - my plan was to just spray it black, and go right over teh portholes. But I never get around to it. Been using FP7s as a stand-in for FL9s. To wit:
Also, I put nearly all of my milk and express reefers on a train and discovered I really don’t need to buy any more. (The Hormel car is a joke with a friend who was there):
Aaron
Good point. And one of the nice things about being the only PC modeler at my club is that no one will know the difference!
Aaron
I’ve never been known as a rivet counter, but I can count wheels.[:)]
Hah!!
Last weekend, a friend had an ops session at his layout. I’d shown up before with U25Cs that (barely) made the curves. This time he said “No six axle locos, okay?” So I showed up with a five-axle C-Liner…
Aaron
So you mention portholes. This is exactly what I’ve been pondering the past few days.
NYC_L-L_E8-broad by Edmund, on Flickr
Looking at photos they are all over the map on P-C Es. All sorts of combinations from none:
to one:
two:
three:
right up to keeping all four:
Here you can clearly see the ghost of the third porthole, plus some removed Penn Central lettering:
Actually I’m not sure there were even two P-C Es the same. In many cases you can see that they painted right over the vinyl of the NYC emblem, stripe and lettering.
Makes it easier for us “flexible” modelers.
Regards, Ed
No going back for me:
NYC_L-L_E8-blankout by Edmund, on Flickr
I decided to go half-way and blank out the middle two. I used a chisel to first remove the beading then slightly reamed the opening with a tapered reamer and pressed the styrene glazing in from the outside until flush. Then a tiny dab of Tamiya liquid cement. So far so good.
Thanks, Ed
I read somewhere that those side panels were made of pretty cheap stuff – can’t remember the material, but whatever it was, it wasn’t structural. So if a panel was damaged, or the glass broken, they’d just replace it with a solid panel. One less piece of glass is one less piece of glass to break.
Sanding them down doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all.
Aaron
It seems like it was a type of “ply-metal” with steel laminated over plywood.
I’ve seen many repaired sections especially on some PRR Es that were just plain plywood. There are also examples where some panels were haphazardly replaced or swapped from other locos where the paint or lettering didn’t match at all.
You can see that here on some of the replaced panels on this old Pennsy E8:
Part of that equation is also regarding higher safety standards for locomotive glazing. I think the FRA mandate came later but railroads were already removing as much glazing from cabooses and engines as possible.
Many of the PRR N5C cabin cars had smaller forward cupola windows retrofitted in order to comply with this. Rock throwers had a lot to do with this mandate.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-II/part-223
Here’s a “stuffed and mounted” example:
PRR Cabin Car by Craig Sanders, on Flickr
Smaller cupola windows and mostly plated-over side and end windows.
Regards, Ed
the PRR had passenger trains to Buffalo that went by way of Renovo PA most notably the Buffalo day express. This most certainly could have had R50b cars in its consist but more importantly the last mile into Buffalo Union Station was owned by the NYC so the answer to the original question is yes to the NYC railroad but unknown and possible as to NYC trains. Since magazines from Cuneo Press in Philadelphia went all over the country usually in B60b baggage cars R50b cars may have been substituted and no reason to not believe they might have been seen in upstate New York.
Back to the original question, unless you can find concrete evidence of it happening, I would say it didn’t happen. NYC and PRR were bitter rivals in their freight, passenger, express, and mail service. It’s possible you could see a car from a connecting railroad from one end or the other (like say Santa Fe car transferred to NYC in Chicago on it’s way to Cleveland) but PRR would either have not happened or have been so rare it’s effectively the same. Better to model the normal and commonplace rather than ‘one off’ oddball situations.
For my passenger trains, I have a couple of Railway Express reefers, which I figure are not captive and I can run with any fast passenger train. I even built a Railway Express depot to support the operations.
And a reverse to the question. Once a year an NYC entire train travelled on the PRR. It was when the West Point cadets came to Philly for the Army Navy game. So there definitely is a precedent for an entire NYC train behind a GG1.
Did they route it via the New Haven to New Rochelle, and if so did the GG1 couple to the ‘reverse’ end to take the train through Penn Station west?
West Point was on the West Shore line. Maybe they used that line and connected via the NNJ/Erie to the PRR, all west of the Hudson River.
The United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. was served by the West Shore. Trainloads of USMA cadets traveled over the NYC and PRR to Philadelphia, the hand-off between the two railroads being just outside of the PRR’s Jersey City terminal where the New Jersey Junction Railroad, a New York Central lessee, connected the West Shore’s Weehawken terminal with lines radiating westward from Jersey City. The NYC probably supplied the passenger cars.
Army-Yale games, on the other hand, were served by the NYO&W and NYNH&H, with the NYNH&H providing the cars, and motive power. The routing would be NYNH&H New Haven, Conn. to Campbell Hall, N.Y., then NYO&W to Cornwall, N.Y. over its own tracks, and then use trackage rights on the West Shore down to West Point, N.Y.
The New Rochelle routing was used for the funeral trains of FDR on April 15, 1945, with New Haven EP-4s pulling the trains backward to Mott Haven on the New York
