Om page 197 of Twilight of the Great Trains is a picture of GP9’s with steam boilers. The GP9’s are separated from the passenger cars with Flexi-Van containers in-between. How did the steam get to the passenger cars, assuming it did?
Thanks
Flexi-van cars used in passenger operations had steam lines for pass through from the engines to the cars that required it. On Mail & Express trains - the Mail and Express cars all also have steam lines to pass steam on to the cars that need it, as evidenced by trains having a number of mail and/or express cars in addition to their 6 to 10 or more occupied passenger cars.
Could you have mistyped the page number? My (hardbound) copy only goes to pg. 190.
Maybe there is a later edition with added content?
What is the name of the chapter?
Balt covered the answer; I’m just curious about the photo now.
Expanded edition ISBN 978-0-253-35477-8 America’s Main Street:Illinois Central Thanks to Balt for the unexpected quick reply
I know that the IC often used their passenger GP9s on both the Land O’ Corn and the Hawkeye back in the day. The Land O’ Corn had those flexi-vans on the head end and those cars had steam lines on them.
It wasn’t just Flexi-Van cars that had steam lines. Numerous TTX flatcars had steam lines so they could be used in passenger consists. Express boxcars also had such lines, along with passenger trucks.
Photos of Santa Fe mail trains with COFC on TTX cars are common. The Rock Island would regularly add TOFC to passenger consists. I remember the 7:00 AM Peoria Rocket leaving Peoria with a TOFC mail trailer up front after it lost its RPO.
When the railroads first developed intermodal container service, in the 1920’s, some container cars were equiped with steam lines to move mail and express on passenger trains. Of course our government shut down the early container service because they didn’t understand economic reality.
Could you explain what you mean? I am unfamiliar with that part of railroad history.
There were several programs starting in the 120’s to use smal containers (somewhere around 500 cu ft) to dramatically lower the cost of LCL shipping. The idea was that the container would be loaded at the shipper’s facility, and trucked to the nearest RR freight station to load on the train. A similar process would be doen for the receiving end. In both cases the freighthouse would be bypassed saving a lot of labor costs. The RR’s were keen on passing on the cost savings in the form of lowered rates, but the ICC stated that the container service would have to go by the higher rates of standard LCL (ca 1931).
One of the tragic things about this fiasco was that containerized shipping would have been an enormous help durin WW2 as contaners as we know them now got a big boost from logistics for the Vietnam conflict.
Thanks.
Yeah, that does sound like a fiasco.
The IC’s ‘Can o Corn’ also operated behind E units trailing Flexivans.
But that configuration explicitly doesn’t require steamline connections to or through the van flats…
If the Flexivans in fact trail the motive power and are ahead of the passenger occupied cars that configuration does require steam lines. Were the Flexivans to trail the passenger occupied cars, steam lines would not be required.
I thought he was referring to something Johnny posted a few years ago showing IC trains trailing Flexivan flats, if I recall correctly in the very last few weeks or days before Amtrak. Looking more carefully, the post could refer to running the van flats behind the power, in which case the ‘through’ steamlines would indeed have to be used.
Of course it does, Geep or E.
As noted, I misunderstood what you meant, thinking of pictures showing the vans trailing whole IC consists. (I think there were some instances of TOFC in the same end location in the train, and I suspect those flats would have had no steam lines, but it would be interesting to check TT history…)
IC’s (and other roads) Flexi-Van flats in passenger service were AAR Class BLF, which included steam and signal lines in their equipment.
Thanks for the reference, Overmod, but the only picture I remember posting is one in which you see an antediluvian rail fan.
Three or four of them were of trains in or leaving Memphis Central Station. As I recall, there were shots both with Flexis and with trailers (although not together) by the time the discussion turned elsewhere…
I did go through Memphis on #1 in October of 1970, on my way from Carbondale to Carrollton Avenue; I do not recall seeing any kind of intermodal in the train. We left Memphis about nine in the evening (4 hours late), and arrived at Carrollton Avenue in time for me take Southern’s #2 to Tuscaloosa (about 7 hours late; my thought was getting back to where I lived in Alabama that day.
In my high school days, I remember watching the “Campus” (Chicago-Carbondale) from the platform at 115th Street. It usually had three or four flats on the rear, probably placed there for ease in cutting them out at intermediate points.