When a long distance passenger train traveled on the tracks of two or more railroads, would cars such as RPOs, diners, parlor cars, pass from one railroad to the next or would they be cut out at the junction point and stay on their home rails?
Also, would arrangements be made for one railroad to restock the dining car of another railroad for the return trip?
The cars stayed with the train from start to finish. For example the Super Chief received cars from NYc and PRR in Chicago. They stayed with the train until it returned to Chicago. The train was stocked with enough provisions for its entire run and restocked prior to its return trip.
John,
Pre Amtrak, there were many jointly operated passenger trains to destinations such as New York to Florida (PRR, RF&P, ACL, and SAL), Chicago to Florida (PRR), (L&N) ,and (ACL), (IC, CofG, ACL), Kansas City to Florida (SLSF, CofG, SAL). Going to the west coast, the famous California Zephyr was the collaboration of the CB&Q, D&RGW and WP. CB&Q also hauled the GN’s Empire Builder as well as NP’s North Coast Limited from Chicago to the Twin Cities.
Most of these trains were reserved seat only and when a passenger bought a seat on one, it was his to his destination, no matter whose car it took to get there. The Official Guide of the Railways is an invaluable source of information. Not only does it give the schedule and over whose railroad it runs but also the makeup of these trains, and which cars made the entire journey, and which cars were set out short of the destination.
Usually, the railroads formed a pool of cars to equip this train and some contributions were based on the carrier’s share of the haul. Because these trains were trying to compete with the other modes of transportation, many of these trains were all streamlined equipment, did not handle mail and express and wore unified paint schemes. The Central of Georgia had some E-8s that were painted in IC orange and brown, to handle their portion of the Seminole.
As previously stated, yes, parlor cars, coaches and sleepers covered the entire run on most of these interline trains. If you can find an Official Guide from the 1950s or even the 1960s, you will find many lesser examples of interline passenger service, using run through equipment.
consis
I understand about the transcontinental trains like the City of San Francisco and California Zephyr keeping the same passenger accomodation cars over the entire run over three railroads. I am more interested in how cars like RPOs and diners were handled and more so on the shorter run joint trains. Did they pass their RPOs and diners from one railroad to the next? Would a diner that originated at and supplied on its home rails stay on the train for its entire journey and would it be resupplied by the other railroad for the return trip or would it have been given enough supplies for the round trip by it’s home road. Even on some single railroad passenger trains, diners would be dropped mid-trip and be picked up by a passenger train going in the opposite direction.
Not an answer to the question, but I have observed that, on the Empire Builder’s run over the Burlington, it rarely or never contained two of its cars: the RPO and the 60 seat coach.
Ed
John;
When you look at shorter haul, joint trains, you have to consider their schedules. A diner would usually serve the normal meal times and, be closed at night. Therefore, it made sense to set it out at some point, to be re-stocked for service in the return direction on a train that ran during meal times These setouts/pickups would usually take place between dinner and breakfast times, and if schedules permitted, on home rails. If a joint train crossed from its owning railroad to another at noon, it was highly unlikely patrons would have their meals interrupted by having to switch cars.
The RPO is a different animal in that it is governed by the postal contracts and regulations of the federal government. Most flagship trains did not carry RPOs due to the time needed to load/unload mail at intermediate stops. I never saw an off line RPO on either the New Haven or New York Central in Boston’s South Station. New Haven interline trains (usually at night) that carried RPOs, only carried them as far as New York City’s Pennsylvania Station. I can’t recall seeing a foreign RPO in the PRR’s Sunnyside yard although it handled foreign consists of the ACL, SAL, Southern, C&O and others that participated in the traffic between New York City and points north, south and west. It seems most RPOs did not venture off home rails.
The answers to your questions have to take in consideration railroad(s) involved, cities served, schedule-at what point in the run meal service is required, at what point does it make sense to set the car out. Fifty miles from the train’s destination and the diner closes, why not just take it to the end of the run and deal with it there? Diners were expensive cars to own and operate and most railroads tried to keep the on home iron. In those cases where they were interchanged, the host road treated it like their own car.
Normally shorter run trains weren’t joint.
Do you have an example of a “shorter run” joint train?
If you have even been on a railroad diner, you know that their storage area is very small. A diner might have to be resupplied several times on a longer trip.
That’s not a “supply” issue, its a “service” issue. For example there is no need to have a diner on a train that is operating between 8pm and 7am. There are no meals served during that time. Or if the majority of the passengers on one leg are not long distance passengers and so rarely eat meals there is no need to have a diner. In those cases the railroad will cut out the diner and then pick it up on the return trip. It might mean they need fewer diners.
It would be interesting to do a count. The Empire Builder and the North Coast Limited did. The City of Portland did not. Trains 1 and 2 on the SP&S did. The Super Chief did.
Ed
I bought the full set of the Walthers 1948 20th Century Limited whenever it was that came out. It included an RPO. What’s unique about it is that it’s a full length car and even though it is a lightweight, it has 6 axles. I also have the MTH 1938 version of the 20th Century Limited and it has the same type of RPO but in light gray livery. The 20th Century made so few stops between New York and Chicago that it wouldn’t have spent much time if any loading and unloading mail and express.
Yes. six-wheel trucks under lightweight cars are very neat!
SP&S also had a lightweight RPO car with six wheel trucks, although the mail apartment was only 30’, instead of the 60’ of the NYC cars:
Come to think of it, UP’s lightweight RPO’s had six-wheel trucks when they had 30’ apartments, but four-wheel trucks when they had the 60’.
Going farther down the rabbit hole, UP’s 300 class boiler dorms are probably the only lightweight cars to have one of each.
Ed
Since trains like the Twentieth Century Limited and others offering premium service, made fewer stops and normally did not have storage mail cars in the consist, the extra length above the more common sixty feet was often used to provide more storage space for sorted mail, and mail yet to be sorted. Six wheel trucks were used to provide a smoother ride for the postal employees who usually performed their duties standing up. This also provided greater safety as they moved about the car. The common mail sorting “apartment” sizes required by the postal regulations were 15, 30 and 60 linear feet. In most cases, this can be judged by the window arrangement and how much blank car side there was between the last window and the farthest side door. This would tell you where the storage area was.
The Pennsy and New Haven ran several joint trains on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington. Some of these continued beyond Washington to points south with a number of partners taking the southern leg. There were a number of different railroads that ran combined Chicago to Florida routes.
Great Northern had the postal contract from Seattle to St.Paul. Mail storage cars and RPOs travelled first on their top train - the Fast Mail - and starting I believe in 1960 mail cars were handled on the head end of the Western Star.
However, GN didn’t have the mail contract from St.Paul to Chicago, the Milwaukee Road did. So the GN passenger cars would go from St.Paul to Chicago pulled by Burlington Route engines, but the mail cars would be switched over to the Milwaukee to take the rest of the way. GN, CB&Q and Milwaukee all used St. Paul Union Depot.
Cars sometimes did carry through, so you might see a Milwaukee Road RPO on the Fast Mail or Western Star, or a GN car on the Milwaukee.
True, that the Pennsy and New Haven ran interline trains between Boston and Washington. These trains could consist of all New Haven, all Pennsy, or a mix of the two roads, coaches, parlors, diners and sleepers. In the early 1950s, the PRR bought two Budd built, streamlined consists including square ended observation cars to outfit the Congressional Limited and the Senator. The Senator was a Boston-Washington train operated by the two roads. Early on, the New Haven would turn the entire consist on the car washer loop in Boston, but NH’s declining finances soon brought that practice to a halt. Closer to the coming of Penn Central, even the Pennsy stopped turning it in Washington as well. Because train 173 did not carry head end cars between Boston and New Haven, those with a seat in the Martha Washington or Benjamin Franklin (parlor-lounge-observation cars), had the pleasure of watching the headlight of the trailing FL-9 dance the entire 155 miles to New Haven, where it would be replaced by the end of a headend car or an EP-5 electric (coming from Rapido!!!).
For those with a strong interest in intercity passenger, mail, and express operations, an education can be found at:
www.alphabetroute.com/nynh/equipmentlists/NH%2010-1962%PCNST.pdf,
Here you will find a 1962 New Haven consist book. The consist book contains the makeup of all of their passenger trains other than commuter, a roster of all cars, the trains they are assigned to, those which are spares (yes, in case a car had problems and couldn’t go, you had to have spares available) and more. Of note is the break out of the the originating points of head end cars and, the way they were swapped from train to train at New Haven. For instance, we know New York’s Grand Central terminal was stub ended, the end of
The address for the consist book should have an additional “h” after the “nynh” that follows the .com/. I hope that fixes it. If not simply go to www.alphabetroute.com, then find the New Haven in the list of railroads covered and then, passenger car roster, and at the bottom of the list, you will find the consist books.
This is the operation that most interests me because it is similar to what I have in mind. I’d even chosen The Senator as the name for this train, unaware that the Pennsy had such a train on the northeast corridor. My principle fictional city is in northern New Jersey and is the first stop coming out of east staging which represents interchange yards with several of the roads in that area. I envisioned a joint train from Washington to upstate New York, diverging from Pennsy rails at Newark. While I’m interested in how the RPOs would be handled at the interchange, I’m more interested in what to do with the diner. Would it likely be dropped off at the interchange or would it continue on the train to the northern terminus. I haven’t worked out the exact schedule but I see this train coming onto the layout late morning. It would need some kind of food service for the lunch hour and I don’t know whether to drop the Pennsy diner off in my principle town and subsitute a diner from my home road or just continue the Pennsy diner on through to the end of the journey. I’d like to know which would be the more prototypical practice. The other option would be to have the Pennsy diner theoretically being dropped off in Newark and never leaving Pennsy rails. In that case, I would just add a diner to the consist when it arrived from Newark. That’s why I would like to know if it is a prototypical practice for a joint train to keep the same diner for the
John,
I’ll tell you what New Haven and Pennsy did. They ran 'em straight through, Boston-Washington, Washington-Boston. Go to the consist book and look at trains in the 170 number series and you’ll see the three Washington trains that carried diners, the Colonial, Senator and Patriot,carried their diners the entire 450 plus miles between Boston and Washington, regardless of which railroad it belonged to. As pointed out in another post, it allowed both roads to roster fewer diners. For instance, if a diner served lunch between Baltimore and Philadelphia, then dinner beteween New Haven and New London, after it closed, it would not be set out in Providence. Closed, it would continue on to Boston with the rest of the consist, where it could be serviced, cleaned, and restocked for the return trip. It is labor intensive, time consuming, and therefore very expensive, picking up and setting out passenger cars. Thats why railroads avoided it, any time they could.
I knew a retired New Haven chef who much preferred to work the Penn jobs instead of the shorter Grand central runs, because he got paid extra for working offline, on another railroad. Not only did the cars go offline, the crews went with them.
It was the RPOs that didn’t leave home iron. Please investigate this book. It is an eye opener. Some trains even picked up PRR coaches in New Haven and dropped them in Baltimore or vice versa! Diners were usually open two hours for each meal so, if yours hit your layout in the late morning and depending on where this took place, it would at least serve lunch and maybe dinner on your rails. The schedule will dictate that.
As information, the GN’s and one CBQ “Great Dome” Empire Builder lounge car has six wheel trucks due to the weight of the car. Those cars and the diner and ranch car where on a St Paul-Chicago-Seattle-St Paul rotation cycle.
Ed Burns
That’s a good point to bring up, although the Empire Builder’s cars were mostly GN cars, some cars were owned by CB&Q or SP&S, or were owned/operated by Pullman. That’s why the cars had “EMPIRE BUILDER” on the letterboard, with the owner name/initials on the ends of the letterboards in smaller lettering. GN wanted the train to look uniform, to the point they had cars lettered “EMPIRE BUILDER” that were used on other GN trains but were available to substitute on the Builder if needed.
SP&S had cars built for service on the Portland section of the Empire Builder that were initially lettered EMPIRE BUILDER but were later lettered SPOKANE PORTLAND & SEATTLE instead. They kept the GN paint scheme, however, until when they were repainted to Broadstripe. Also, the baggage-RPO’s built for the train never had EMPIRE BUILDER on them, but always GREAT NORTHERN.
I would very much like to see examples of that. It doesn’t fit at all with what I recall.
Ed