After seeing so many early Amtrak trains on Google search and Railpictures.net during the “Rainbow Era”. I was wondering did certain Budd/Pullman sleepers run in the train with the vestibule in the front or in the back.
This applies to 10-6, 12 DB’s, but I’ve seen other floor plans not made in HO Scale.
Any help or photos would be appreciated. Thanks
They are bi-directional. That said, sometimes sleepers will be placed with the isle side to a river bluff so the room view is out to the scenery(NYC 20th Century Ltd).
Jim
Every railroad had different preferences, some did not care. The arrangement of cars within the train, and the “A” end, or “B” end placement depends on a lot of factors.
Availability of means to turn the cars for one thing. Length of the train vs platform lengths at scheduled stops, loading and unloading conditions at various stations, could all effect what they did.
But, the single vestibule car in concept allows all the vestibule ends to be the same directrion, spreading out embarking and dis-embaking passengers over the length of the plateforms for less congestion.
On my ATLANTIC CENTRAL streamlined trains with single vestibule cars are arranged with vestibules ahead of the diner to the rear, and cars behind the having vestibules to the front.
Photos of passengers trains will be the best info for your prototype.
Sheldon
Let’s say I’m modeling an early Amtrak Train. The train has 10 Cars and two E8’s, the last three cars are sleepers, two 10-6’s and a 12 DB. Can I run all three sleepers with the vestibule in the front facing the direction of travel? Or have the first two sleepers run with the vestibule behind and the last one with the vestibule in front?
FWIW, on the Great Northern Empire Builder of 1955, all vestibules were to the rear except the obs. I believe on the 1951 Builder, one of the coaches was vestibule forward.
Ed
I like Amtrak’s “Floridian”. I believe the Floridian sometimes had dome cars.
There is no single answer, as practices varied from railroad to railroad and train to train. Prototype photos of the train you want to model would probably be your best guide.
The typical setup for a classic passenger cars is Baggage/RPO/Express at the front; then the coaches; then the lounge and diner; then the sleepers; then the observation car if there is one. Diners and lounges rarely had entry doors. For purposes of boarding and detraining, the most convenient door locations tended to have the coach doors trailing and the sleeper doors leading.
Most Heritage sleepers I have worked have been set up with the intention that the single door (B end) is at the front. These were mostly ex UP and Santa Fe 10-6’s and UP 11 Bedroom cars in Amtrak Auto Train service. Remember that roomettes faced one way or the other and did not have the facing seats of the modern accommodations that are (incorrectly) called roomettes. Those cars should have their vestibules facing forward so that roomette passengers face forward. There may be other sleepers that had their roomettes facinig the other way. If your cars have an interior, or if you can find Pullman car diagrams, you can see which direction is appropriate for those roomettes. The sink and mirror are by the head of the bed. The passenger’s feet should face the vestibule.
Coaches were designed to be more bidirectional, but the trailing door was almost always more efficient for boarding and detraining, if the coaches were in the typical location ahead of the diner. Some trains (the Seaboard’s streamlined Silver Meteor comes to mind) had the sleepers ahead and the coaches trailing. I don’t know how they set that up.
Some railroad consist books were very specific about such things, while others were less specific. I recall notations in PRR consist books that were so specific that RPO cars were designated “letter end East (or West)”.
Sometimes the yard crew assembled the train wrong, and the over-th
Allow me to add this as food for thought. As the red ink on passenger trains increase yearly the idea of having a 5 man crew to spend time turning sleepers became less popular so,the cars would not be turned.
It would be to their advantage since they could eliminate a turntable and its maintenance cost and plus a turntable operator’s job.
Also to save operation costs the railroads would add a sleeper enroute and remove it the next day.No need to haul a car that is used overnight.
Of course this varied from road to road so,I highly recommend studying photos of your favorite railroad’s passenger trains.
End of runs for big time name trains tended to have turning loops or wyes.
I believe these loop/wyes were discussed earlier somewhere on this forum. I do recall noting that the WP had a turning loop in Oakland–conveniently placed, more or less, for the California Zephyr. Some of the track is still there and viewable in satellite views.
Also, just for fun, I just now checked out Chicago Union Station, the eastern end of the Builder’s run. There’s a wye about a mile south of the station. The wye for King Street Station, the western end of most of the Builder, is two miles south.
And there’s a turning loop about a mile and a half NW of Portland Union Station, the other western end of the Builder.
Minneapolis was the official eastern end of the GN. There’s a wye across the river to the NE about a mile. And there may have been one to the SW, too. The station is long gone. Perhaps the SW wye trackage is, too.
So, for Great Northern long distance passenger trains, it was relatively easy to turn the entire train.
Ed
Ed,
The ‘eastern’ end of the GN was at SPUD(St Paul Union Depot) in St Paul, MN. And there was a ‘wye’ there as well as a turntable/roundhouse. GN through trains to Chicago backed in from the Division St leg of the wye, and departed with CB&Q engines.
The ‘Wye’ south of CUS has been there for a long time. This the Jct where CB&Q trains made a right turn and headed west!
Jim
Ed,Maybe at some locations but,not all or railroads would not have to have “station switch jobs” and railroads like the Washington Terminal,Cincinnati Union Terminal and other passenger terminal switching railroads would never existed.
Every train had to be cleaned,serviced and inspected between runs,Diners and Pullmans had to be throughly clean. This means they had to go to their prospective clean out tracks, coaches went to clean out and storage until needed.REA went to the REA building while mail storage and ail express went to the USPO building.
There are thousands of on line photos showing this operation and the proud passenger terminal switching railroads that served them…
After PRR dropped the fire on their remaining K4s they could not wait to closed down the passenger roundhouse and remove the turntable-this TT was also used to turn sleepers and observations-in Columbus since there was no need to change locomotives…This servicing area was West of Columbus Union Station.
The “new” service area was a diesel fuel and water stand located near CUS platforms. All that was changed at the station was the crew and sleepers,REA and mail cars was added or removed.
Some major stations the trains pulled in or backed in no loops there.
Larry,
It looks like Cincinnati was a through station and would have minimal need to turn trains. Since they were using a turntable and doing cars one at a time, they likely didn’t feel a need for a loop or wye. I am not a follower of the area, so I am not knowledgeable of what trains terminated there and the need to turn them.
DC was a combination through and terminating station. The through trains would not need turning. Of the terminating trains, I wonder to what extent the cars had to be physically turned. I assume they used the turntable at Ivy City. Again, not the fastest way to turn an entire consist.
I don’t think I was talking about anything other than physically turning the train. I do know that trains were cleaned and maintained between runs. Whether or not any or all of the train was physically turned.
I do think that railroads considered how they would turn trains when they designed the cars and the consists of their name trains. For example, I do believe that GN knew they could turn full trains before they designed the '55 Builder. And that that information affected the design of the cars and consist. On the other hand, perhaps the PRR Congressional was designed knowing that all or most of the train would not be physically turned at the terminals.
And, for trains that backed in, they had to have turned the train, somehow, earlier. They likely used a loop or a wye. Unless the train backed the whole trip.
Ed
I travelled on the Amtrak Empire Builder in 1977. The trailing car was Buffet Dome Sleeper with the vestibule trailing. The dome was set up with fixed padded seats facing tables, but the buffet itself was shut. The train had four SDP40F locomotives and sat at 79 mph for mile after mile. I stood looking back (or forward from the dutch doors) for some time, but the view from the dome was pretty good too. I think there was a total of four people in the dome at most, sometimes fewer.
M636C
I think we all mourn the loss of the dutch doors!!!
You might well know this already, but the car you were in was not a “real” Empire Builder car. It was built for the NP’s North Coast Limited. It was rebuilt from a dome-sleeper in 1967 into a dome-lounge-buffet-sleeper to make up for the removal of the obs. I wonder if it did.
There were several like it. Car numbers on the NP were 375-379 and CB&Q 380.
Ed
Ed,those looks are deceiving.Several L&N,PRR,NYC,Southern,B&O and N&W passenger trains originated and terminated there. At its peak CUT kept 5 crews busy breaking down and building trains as well as keeping two large roundhouses busy…
In some cities there was no room for a wye since the station was located downtown and the nearby freight yards and city buildings ate up the remaining space.
BTW. CUT was build during the Great Depression and could handle up to 219 trains and 17,000 passengers a day…
The farther west one got, the later in a city’s history the passenger stations were built. Or would that be earlier. Anyway, I think you get my point. Which would mean getting the room for loops and wyes would have been easier. Of course, negotiations with the city fathers in the east might could help in the quest.
Ed
In Washingtion, terminating trains such as the Capitol Limited are turned on the wye, just as they have been for about a hundred years. It would have been too inefficient and time consuming to turn an entire passenger train one car at a time using a turntable, even though there used to be two of them at the former engine terminal plus another for single cars closer to the station near the point where the Post Office track came in. Similarly, terminating trains at Chicago Union Station are turned at the wye where the former CB&Q splits off to go west while the former PRR goes south. I believe the AT&SF used a loop near 21st street to turn trains that terminated at Dearborn Station. Also, I have been told Cincinnati Union Terminal used a loop that surrounded the steam era roundhouse.
Tom
Yes,but,it was not for turning complete trains if that was the case CUT would not be needed to break up and build passenger trains. Again dining cars had to be service and reloaded at the commissary track and there was a large commissary building there as well as a large Pullman yard. Passenger cars would need clean and service.
That type of work was never done at the platform even in the 60s.
I did look for a wye in DC. I see something that looks like a wye at Ivy City, but I don’t think it is. So, where is it?
Ed
Larry,
Everything you say is true. But it has nothing to do with whether a train is turned on a wye/loop.
NOBODY is say that, because the trains are turned on a wye/loop, that cleaning and maintenance can be avoided. And yet you are implying that.
Ed