One sort of general rule was that the trains often attempted to keep the classes of passengers separate. Often a dining car and/or lounge in the middle of the train would separate the first class passengers (sleeper cars) with budget class passengers who just had coach seats. Some trains had three classes of passengers.
Some railroads had “horse” cars used as head end cars with the baggage, express, and RPOs.
But as the others have said the only way to know for certain is to research the specific railroad and specific train. On that note, one thing I will say is that I often seeing people modeling the interesting exceptions rather than the more common “normal” configuration of a train. Don’t let your railroad fall into “exception world”.
There was a reason for the train crew to get up to the engines. If the passenger train had to take siding at a meeting point the head brakeman would some times make his way up thru the units to the cab so as to reduce delay at the switch waiting for him to walk up. On some crews the firemen would get the switch. Some engineers however, would not let the fireman touch the switch.
I used to fire for an engineer that would wander back to the diner to get coffee.
Thanks, Dick, it’s always good to hear the voice of experience…I’m going to make sure my engineer can get his fresh premium coffee: we don’t want him falling to sleep!
By “membrane” I think you mean the connection between cars or between the cars and the diesels?? Yes there would be a connection by a walkway enclosed by diaphragms.
However you started out saying you wanted a typical train of the 1935-40 period. The ALCO PA wouldn’t be introduced until 1946. You could use an A-B set of GM FT diesels, or if you can track down a GM E-6 (Life-Like / Proto used to make one) you could use that…or of course, use steam. In that time, you might see a railroad run heavyweight passenger cars on a top train with diesels because they were awaiting delivery of new streamlined cars, but generally in 1935-40 a heavyweight train would be powered by conventional steam.
Yes, I mean diaphragms, I couldn’t find the right word…Actually I tacked this question on to a nearly two-year-old thread and whoever started the discussion was modelling 1930s. The train I am building is theoretically from the 1950s when it might have been plausible to see Alcos pulling old heavyweights, especially on lines that could not afford the fancy new streamliners.
It does rather bring up the question, though, of what a railroad that apparently couldn’t afford streamliners and smoothsides be doing pulling six or seven nice old heavyweights with two Alcos. If they had that many customers they would have the money to buy nicer stuff, w
There may be a lot of good information but it appears some of it is opinion rather than fact. The make up of trains was not a random occurence. Most large railroads had a publication entitled “make up of trains” or something similar that gave the number, order and type of cars to be included. Most trains were consists and the only time they were changed is when a car needed shopping. So if there were the equivalent of 500 seats available number 501 was out of luck and had to take a different train. some days called for more mail cars to be dropped off in route or placed on the rear so they could be uncoupled and switched to location without distrubiung the passengers in the middle of the night. Look at Keystone Crossings web site under passenger operations for what the Make Up of Trains looked like for the PRR.
The LV ran lots of refurbish heavyweights behind PA’s. People assume that all of the trains that were operated were streamliners. They were relatively few, but since they were sexy, they got all the pictures. The PRR owned more heavyweight P70 coaches than the ATSF owned passenger cars of all types.
There is also an assumption that passenger service was profitable. If the passenger service was profitable it would maybe just cover the operating costs, it certainly wouldn’t cover the costs of replacing the equipment. Most of the benefit of the streamliner stuff was lower cost to operate and it was probably cheaper to replace than rebuild the old stuff (which many roads did, LV, RDG, PRR, etc) plus the passenger service was more of an advertising gimmick. It was a prestige thing, a loss leader.
Kind of makes you wonder if there weren’t government subsidies (mostly hidden in a round about way) if the airlines could be profitable? Or more likely, air travel would be about half what it is, and coach ticket prices up around $1000.
A good model to follow might be the Soo Line. The Soo did early-on buy some passenger F units and FP’s for dual freight-passenger service. However they realized pretty soon that passenger service didn’t have much of a future, and so buying new passenger equipment wasn’t going to be a good investment They never bought streamlined cars and kept using maroon heavyweight cars until passenger service was discontinued in the mid-sixties. They also quit buying F-type engines; when they needed more passenger diesels they bought high-nose GPs with steam generators. After passenger service ended, these continued in service pulling freight and iron ore trains. I used to see some with the “torpedo tubes” on top after the Soo bought the MN&S in the early eighties.
No not necessarily. Even big railroads couldn’t just run out an buy all the streamlined equipment they wanted. The Santa Fe ran its heavyweight cars well into the 1960s. I’ve seen the Santa Fe PAs on the point of many a heavy weight trains. I think the California Limited was one of them. It was only when the big ticket trains started loosing passengers that the surplus streamlined equipment got handed down to the second and third class trains. The Wichita-Pratt daily used a 1926 vintage combined car (running behind a GP7) clear through to its end in 1967.