All I know about Pullman’s shop complex is what is said on page 114 of
Signor’s book on the Western Division: “For many years, The Pullman
Company maintained this shop complex [referring to a photograph] at
Richmond, adjacent to the Southern Pacific main line… Serving the
western terminus for three transcontinental railroads, the facility was
kept quite busy maintaining Pullman’s vast fleet of cars.”
What a great on-line industry to model!
Can anyone provide additional information on this plant and its
operations, such as (1) what period did the shop operate, (2) whether
Pullman had its own in-plant switchers, and what were their type, (3)
beyond the obvious switching of Pullman cars, to what extent were
freight cars handled there to provide materials for the shop, or
repairs done to non-Pullman cars, and (4) can anyone provide track and
building plans/layout?
Just the switching of various Pullman cars, especially during the streamline era, allows for a lot of modelers’ license. I used to ride to high school past Pullman’s Calumet shops in 1967 and 1968 during Pullman’s final days and regularly saw Pullmans in the colors of GN, SP, UP and some others I can’t remember.
WOW! Being a passenger car fan, I have never thought of this as a lineside industry, it would be perfect! Also, modelling a Budd or ACF plant would work too. Even if you only had room for a small switching railroad, this would certainly provide plenty of variety. Thanks for the idea.
Now I’m on a roll here with a related question. Just how were new passenger car deliveries handled? For example, how was the Budd CZ equipment delivered to Chicago from their Philadelphia plant? Did PRR tack these cars onto freights, mail trains or any one of their Blue Ribbon Fleet trains or were they run as seperate trains?
The following is a website that answered part of my questions. The shop had a transfer table serving repair tracks with the the SP at one end of the table and ATSF on the other.
http://www.pullmanshops.com/index.htm