Did Railroads run the two types of passenger cars together?
I have seen several photos of Burlington Route trains that had both types in the same train. I am no expert, but it seems that this was more common on the less big name trains.
So this would be perfect to run on the A.T.lines (my railroad). Thanks for the info.
I also have a few pictures of SP doing this, but as Simon said, it did not usually happen on their big name trains such as the Daylight.
Regards,
Stephen
I have to agree with the others on this one. I have also noticed that it seems that the heavyweight baggage cars lasted longer and were seen a little more frequently mixed in with the lightwight passenger cars, but that could just be my observations only and not the norm.
That (Baggage) and RPOs (Railway Post Office) cars were certainly seen mixed in with many trains of mostly streamline cars. When you say heavyweight, don’t forget the 1930s smoothside passenger cars. They weren’t the lightweight cars, but might appear to be in a photo.
Many RRs that went the streamliner route never bothered w/ s/l head end cars. The SP Noon Daylight on the Coast ran w/ a heavywieght baggage car painted Daylight and the San Juoaquin Daylight had regularly assigned hvywt baggage and baggage/mail cars. The Pennsy not only never bought a s/l had end car until after WWII but cosmetically altered hvywt cars to run in s/l trains. The pre WWII Trailblazer was all hvywt altered to look streamlined as was the NYC Pacemaker and Mercury and The B&O Capitol Lmtd.
One other thing. Frequently a train would be inaugurated before all the cars were delivered. The C&EI/L&N Georgian when first inaugurated ran with s/l coaches followed by hvwt Pullmans painted to match the coaches w/ shadow line striping to imitate the corrugated stainless steel panel on the coaches. The Southern/N&W Tennessean was a ltwt stainless steel train that had three hvywt pullmans on the rear painted silver to match the rest of the train. The Milw Olympian Hiawatha ran for a year and a half w/ the the two rear Pullmans as hvywt. One of them was an open platform observation car. The train frequently ran in the 100mph range. That must have been quite th ride on that open platform!!!
Absolutely,
As a friend pointed out to me, many of those pretty railroad postcards and posters were pretty much publicity. In the early years railroads like the Santa Fe, Burlington, Pennsy, NYC, did run their “hot shot” trains with similar consists, however, by the 1950s when a lot of the “hoopla” was wearing off, trains of streamlined and heavyweight cars mixed together could be seen often. Not to mention that several railroads interchanged sleeping cars with each other. So in addition to the heavyweight and streamlined cars, you also had “color” in consists as well.
Oh, my, yes, the railroads mixed them up quite a bit. There was a ‘transitional’ period right after WWII when the railroads were buying new streamlined equipment from Budd and Pullman, and mixing them in the standard consists as they arrived. I’ve got a picture of the Rio Grande “Royal Gorge” pulled by an 1800 4-8-4–the consist is a streamlined baggage, coach, standard coach, streamlined vista-dome car, standard diner, standard Pullman sleeper, streamlined sleeper and a vista-dome lounge. Talk about colorful, all that pullman green and Rio Grande silver and gold. The train looks like something I might have put together on my layout after one too many beers, LOL!
Tom [:D][:P][:P]
Yes the railroads did use streamliners and heavyweights together.
Thanks for the help everyone…here is the lash up on the A.T.lines
C&O streamlined baggage with B&O Heavy Weight Observation
Another source for heavyweight cars is the diner. RMC ran a great article, where do we eat? Some routes don’t support a full diner, so they may have had a cafe/lounge arrangement.
Many old coaches got upgraded air & other mechanicals, with a new roof, but kept their 6wheel trucks. I can remenber going on some excursions with NW611 with the heavyweight cars. One even had all the windows removed so you got true open air conditoning. Works great when the breakers in the cars would not work. The old cars had a smooth ride as solid as any lounge.
One of the more famous name trains that operated with both heavyweights and lightweights was the NYC Wolverine. For most of its postwar career the train a New York Chicago train via Detroit with a Boston section operated with heavyweight and lightweight head end cars and carried a mixture of both types of sleeping cars as well. When the GN combined the Fast Mail with the Western Star the train often ran to twenty cars. The forward part of the train was a mixture of heavyweight and lightweight head end cars with the streamlined Western Star next complete with the beautiful Mountain Observation and unfortunately more heavy and lightweight cars to the rear of this including a heavyweight storage mail car on the rear with a brakemans copmpartment. I tried several times to get a ride in this car but was never successful.
Had some time this afternoon looking through various books and saw several examples of streamliner and heavyweight cars in the same train. Even several pulled by steam engines.
So there’s even more “authority” to model that way but even more important, as this is a hobby and it’s your railroad, you can “mix and match” as you choose.
Dale
When they were short of cars for inceased traffic, HEAVYWEIGHT cars were often added to the consist , as needed. Certain ‘Specialized’ cars such as Diner’s, Parlor Car’s, Baggage, and Pullman’s were the most prevelent . Passenger ‘comfort’ was the #1 goal, and arriving ‘on time’ a badge of honor.
And then there is AMTRAK. We (in the end) get what we pay for - or certainly pay for what we get.
I know it is my railroad, believe me the things you see running on my railroad are not prototypical. I was curious to see if the real roads run them this way