Southern Pacific Daylight Dome Car Question...

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Greetings all.

I recently purchased a six car set of Kato N scale Southern Pacific Daylight smoothside passenger cars. The instructions in the set show that there is another four car set available that includes a dome car. My question is did Southern Pacific actually have smoothside dome cars during the time they used smoothside cars on the Daylight ?.

Thanks in advance for any information about this.

Tracklayer

2

The SP had home-built ‘3/4 Dome’ cars that were used on several of their trains. IIRC, the Kato N scale dome car is a UP prototype(short dome).

Jim

3

This is the typical hobby manufacturers’ habit of making pretend “prototypical” models by lettering/painting models for railroads which never operated same. If one is interested in modeling the prototype, it is “buyers beware.”

4

Okay markpierce. So you’re saying that the SP Daylight smoothside dome car is a pretend model or the Daylight smoothside cars themselves never existed ?..

Tracklayer

5

I was referring to the dome car. If it makes you feel better, there were never any Daylight trains/cars either. Whatever makes you happy, Tracklayer.

Some paint and lettering, and someone will buy it, for what it isn’t.

That’s OK, as long as you’re happy with it.

Get real

(Heavyweight coaches of the former Southern Pacific RR.)

6

Maybe this will help you…

Go here: http://www.trainweb.org/web_lurker/WebLurkersDOMEmain/

Scroll down to SP and read all about SP domes then compare them to what Kato has to offer.

You can be the judge if you are willing to “compromise” with your consist.

Ed

7

Better than dome cars, are open platform cars.

8

Observation cars are nice too.

9

The 3/4 design was unique to the SP, 6 were constructed in the Sacramento Shops beginning in 1955 from surplus DAYLIGHT tavern/lounge cars with a 21 inch viewing area out of difference to tunnel and snow shed height restrictions.

Dave

10

Dear Tracklayer,

I can remember traveling several times on the Coast Daylight in the 1960’s, when my favorite dome was the SP 3/4 length car. By this time the fluted siding had been removed and the color scheme was silver with the red letter board stripe. The entire train was smooth sided in this era. Somewhere I have some photos. If I can find them I will try to post one or more. I don’t know what kind of dome is included in the Kato set as I cannot find any pictures on the web. Is it a short dome or a 3/4 dome?

Regards, Ted Blishak,

11

I rode in one of these once. I especially liked the lounge area with its high glass ceiling.

Ed

12

Dang! So the Daylight train that I run that I got from Con-Cor, with a dome car, didn’t exist? Neither did my railroad! But it sure is popular with the little folks riding on it!