A friend of mine recently purchased a Santa Fe E8/9 A & B unit set as well as a consist of several matching smooth side passenger cars for them to pull.
The guy at the hobby shop where he bought them said that it was an early version of the Super Chief, but I’m not so sure about that.
Is there anyone out there that can solve this arguement?..
Santa FE used mostly F units and corrugated stainless steel passenger cars. They did have a few E units, but I’m not sure if they had any smooth side cars.
As far as I know, ALL lightweight Santa Fe passenger equipment except some head end cars (baggage, baggage-mail, or mail) had fluted stainless steel sides. This included Budd equipment and equipment not basicallys stainless by Pullman and ACF. They were very, very careful about all equipment on their steamline trains matching visually. However, the very first Super Chief was not streamlined but used upgraded Pullman cars, six wheel trucks and all, and that may have been painted silver.
The Burlington was similar except that they bought some single-level lightweight coaches from the Chicago and Northwestern (when that railroad double-decked the Penninsula 400 with long-distance gallery cars), which had smooth sides and were painted a greyish silver to try to match the fluted side cars.
Often early versions are dramatically different than the ones we know.
Easter Easter Easter Easter Easter!!!
underworld
[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]
The cars in question are silver smooth sides with four wheel trucks made by Con cor. Each car has a thin black, yellow and red stripe running across the bottom. The consist includes an RPO, a baggage car, a sleeper, a coach, a dining car, a vista dome car and an observation car. One of the cars is named Chama Valley. It’s a real nice looking train, but I’ve never heard of a “smooth side” Super Chief…
Those cars are a fabrication, like many other “Santa Fe” models.
In terms of lightweight cars, ATSF had a number of smooth bags (dominated the inventory by the 1960’s), the experimental pendular chair car that usually ran on the San Diegans, and the Valley series 6-6-4 Pullmans, which were War Babies (WPB refused to let them flute the cars due to strategic materials considerations), originally painted two-tone gray and then simply gray. The bags and sleepers lasted until the end. Gulf Coast Chapter NRHS has a Valley car (Verde Valley) that they kept operable for excursion service.
Hey. A fellow Texan…
You’ve got me curious now. What other Santa Fe rolling stock is out there that might be a fabrication ?. If my buddy is happy with his train, then good for him, but for me, If it’s not true to prototype, I wouldn’t want it. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
“Thanks”
trainluver1
Many of these don’t fall into the scale category but fit more with the “train set” types. Most of the really egregious ones that are way off base include pax cars with red window stripes (used to be extremely common), smooth side SL cars except as above, Budd and ACF short dome cars and CZ/Canadian dome obs cars (the only short domes ATSF owned were the PS pleasure domes, the rest were full domes, and they owned no dome obs cars), ATSF F40’s and Superliners (similar to, but definitely not, a hi-level), steam locos with warbonnet variations or ATSF-painted NYC Hudsons from the Century, yard switchers in red/silver warbonnet, Alco FA’s (they never owned any), the Rivarossi HW combine on a mainline pax train (these were no-frills rider coaches used on the mail trains, built from ex-Chief library cars), etc.
Notice I’m not nit-picking here. There are variations from the industry “norm”, (particularly in HW cars, where ATSF used an easily distinguished floor beam on their cars) that clearly ID the car as ATSF, but recreating that look out of the box would render the correct car basically unaffordable to your average hobbyist. I’ll leave those issues to the picky modeling types–they do their thing well, just like others do their things equally well. Fortunately for many prototypical modelers, a lot of the newer SL SS high-end models out there appear to be ATSF or near-ATSF prototype.
And you’re absolutely right. If someone is happy with what they have, then great!! It won’t detract from his fun and those who are prone to criticize should suck up and zip the lip.[:D]
Hope this is useful.
Thanks for the info drephpe. I really appreciate it. It’s a shame that some manufacturers take advantage of train lovers by producing and selling products that aren’t true to prototype-or that don’t really exist at all… I myself have bought items over the years only to find that I couldn’t identify them in any of my rolling stock books. That’s one thing I’ll say about companies like Kato and Microtrains, they do a really great job of research and detail with their stuff.
trainluver1
You know, it really depends on your interest. Not everyone has an acute interest in precision and absolute fidelity to prototype. Face it, if you model anything (trains or planes or something else altogether) you are doing a caricature of the real thing. There is no way you can build a truly scale model railroad, unless your prototype is a couple of city blocks long, any more than you can accurately model an even moderately-sized commercial airport. So if somebody wants to run that set of equipment your friend bought and they’re having fun doing it, great! If you’re more interested in accurate re-creation of the prototype, great! Many model railroaders I’ve known in my lifetime got hooked into the hobby early in life on completely un-prototypical models (what could be less prototypical than Lionel O27, for Pete’s sake, or even the old American Flyer, which at least had 2-rail track but was hardly to scale or prototypical??)
However, since you have shown an interest in the ATSF prototype, check out these guys:
http://www.atsfrr.com/index.shtml
http://atsf.railfan.net/
They can probably tell you more than you want to know.
Here’s their stuff on the Valley sleepers:
http://www.atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Review/Walthers/Walthers6-6-4Sleeper/
Hope this helps[:D]
Once again drephpe. Many thanks. Yes, I am very much into detail. And if I had the room and money would probably try and build that two or three city block layout that you mentioned… I’ve been building models since I was a kid back in the early 1970s, and have always strived to make them appear as close to the real article as possible. Though my present layout is of a fictional place, I want all of my engines and rolling stock to be as close in appearance to the real thing as humanly possible.
Santa Fe did own some smooth side sleeping cars that were 6 Roomette 4 Double Bedroom 6-Section Sleeping cars of the VALLEY series. The Santa Fe owned 26 of these cars and they were initially assigned to the CALIFORNIA LIMITED and three were assigned to Chicago - Kansas City - Tulsa. They never operated in the Super Chief. A single smooth side coach was delivered to the Santa Fe by St. Louis Car in November 1936. The cars never had any permanent assignment its number was 3071but it did run in the Tulsan for many years.
Passengerfan–
The 6-6-4 Valley cars also showed up on the Kansas Cityan/Chicagoan and the California Special/SF Chief, as well as on the PHX connection.
The St Louis smooth coach was the experimental pendular car I mentioned earlier, usually assigned to the San Diegan. It had a pendular suspension and “streamlined” oval windows. Strange looking car in some respects.
If you want to really pick a nit or two, the Santa Fe never owned any E-8s or E-9s. They had a few engines that looked lik E-8s or 9s that had been rebuilt from traded in early E units but they retained the original 2000 HP instead of the higher E-8/9 rating. The only visual ID feature was the presence of F unit type number boards instead of the E-8/9 flush style.
The number board arrangement on an E unit was a manufacturer’s option. Some E units came from the factory with the protruding number boards, others were flush, and some were the side boards.
I don’t think our original poster is worried about whether these units were rebuilds or not. On the outside they looked like E8’s and 9’s, and would be very prototypical with minimal modification (who models the prime movers, anyway??). Except, of course for Amos & Andy, who maintained a wholly unique appearance until the end (variety is indeed the spice of life). And some of the early ATSF E units just got changed around some but didn’t lose their general early appearance.
That’s what makes this fun (probably in a perverse sense, societally speaking).[(-D][(-D][:-,]
Okay guys. Slow down here. You’ve really got me going now. If it’s not too much trouble, what’s the history of the E units-as in, how and when did they begin, how far did they evolve and so forth.
By the way. My buddy Rob that owns the fictional Super Chief in question said to tell you guys thanks for the info, and that he can’t wait to have a word with the guy at the hobby shop that sold it to him…
trainluver1–
Are you asking about E units in general or Santa Fe E units in particular??
Tell your buddy not to be too hard on the guy…
Can an Internet video be made of the discussion, and a link herein so we all can see it?
When I rode the SF Chief both ways between Joliette and Amerillo about 1969, I rode in a smooth-side sleeper in at least one direction, assumed it was a borrowed car, and forgot all about it. Thanks for reminding me. Sorry about the mistake.
E units in general, and Santa Fe E units also if possible.
“Thank you Mr. drephpe”