I could find no historical reference that makes mention of any 20th century commuter cars made by pullman that were 65’. The only thing I could find was 19 century wood passenger cars that were 65’
I was wondering where Con-cor got their models for their 65’ Pullmans?
They are probably for small radius layouts.
Yep. It was common for older train set passenger cars to be unrealistically compressed in length so they’d work on the tight 18" curves standard to packaged train sets.
Unless you’re talking about the new Con-Cor “MP54” Pennsylvania RR self-propelled electric commuter cars? Because those actually were about 60-66’ long.
I belive CNW had some commuter cars in that length. I doubt Pullman ever made cars like that.
None of the new Con-cor 65’ heavyweight cars are “Pullman” cars at least not in the sense of being sleeping cars. The cars are available as a Baggage car, Combination car, Coach, and Solarium. I don’t know their exact history as far as what they’re based on, but Pullman built many different kinds of passenger cars, so they could be based on cars built by Pullman.
In the heavyweight era, there were quite a few RPO and Baggage cars built between 60-70’ feet. Coach cars and Combines were often around 70’ long. So those Con-cor cars may be fairly accurate. Rivarossi / Walthers et al have offered 60’ heavyweight RPO, Baggage, Combine and Coach cars that were based on real 60’ long C&NW cars.
Solarium cars were Observation cars, and generally were around 80’ long, so I’m pretty sure that car is a shortened version of a larger car. However, it could be some shorter Solarium cars were built as business cars??
The ConCor “branchline & commuter” cars are “freelanced” with no “exact” prototypes. They are based on the tooling used for the PRR mP54 commuter cars that ConCor also makes.
As others have commented, they are not “Pullmans”, Pullmans are sleepers. Pullman did build all sorts of cars for nearly all the railroads and, as commented by others, lots of bagage, PRO, coaches, etc, were various different lengths - many being in the 60-75 foot range.
Truth is, a very large percentage of passenger cars of all eras and types were unique, being one of a kind. Or, only built in very small quantities to the exact same plans - two, three or maybe six cars. And then railroads always modified them, seldom keeping them the same as their “sisters”.
This is what makes prototype passenger car modeling so difficult for us and for the manufacturers.
Truth is, many of those fancy name trains sold by Walthers, MTH and BLI, are only “close”, not exact because some cars are so similar they can get away with using them on different trains, but the prototypes were not “identical”.
And again, the railroads seldom kept them “as built” for very long - so even if relatively correct “as built”, those cars are likely not all correct for that train just a few years later.
BUT, many are so close it takes knowledge beyond “expert” to know the difference.
Personally, while I have some of that level of knowledge about the three prototype roads I model, I simply ignore it and freelance those trai
On a bit of a tangent, there were Pullman sleepers even shorter than 65’. The Rio Grande operated a number of Pullman sleepers that ranged from 42’ to 50’ in length on the narrowgauge, plus some emigrant/tourist sleepers that weren’t Pullmans. These were late 19th/early 20th century cars, so mostly wood construction.
While they were NG, they were usually delivered rolling on standard gauge trucks, then put on the narrowgauge rails in Denver. That would make an interesting model if you do TOC standard gauge and want something a little different.
Tagging on to Mike’s post, quite correct about these NG sleepers, and in it’s early years, WP had several aquired from the Rio Grande converted to standard guage for use as inspection cars!
Dave