For those who operate passenger trains, do you run homogenous consists, same style and paint scheme or do you mix things up. I prefer mixed consists with both heavyweight and lightweight cars, some painted, some stainless steel. Eventually, I’ll even toss in a few with foreign road names as well. I think this gives the passenger trains a little more character and was not uncommon during the glory years of passenger trains. Passenger cars would be interchanged between roads, particularly in Chicago and other interchange points between the eastern and western railroads so that cross country travelers would not have to change accomodations during their trip.
I have a ConCor Holiday train. They did 3-4 heavyweight with Alton maroon colors (Baggage, Sleeper, Observation,). They did 3-4 more in Smoothsides & Alton red/maroon/white colors (Diner, Sleeper, coach, dome). THey may have a PA1 to pull it. I use my Kato/Wabash PA’s.
You are correct, a mix of heavyweight & lightweight cars can look good. I prefer to have most of the consist look the same. An extra baggage can always be added to haul holiday mail. It’s fun to add a heavyweight Pullman to a lightweight consist. IIRC, the Alton/GM&O used hevyweight diners until the eve of Amtrak.
One of my passenger trains is the Rio Grande 1950 ROYAL GORGE, which then ran with a mixture of Pullman-Standard heavyweight, Budd lightweight and even a dome car! I’ve been able to duplicate it with Walther’s mixtures in the Rio Grande colors (which look really COOL on the heavyweights), though I haven’t found a dome car for it, yet. Oh, yah, it’s pulled by one of those handsome Rio Grande M-68 4-8-4’s. Talk about a ‘Transitional Train’, but it’s got a TON of character.
Tom
I’m running the SP in the year of the takeover of CP.
So I am running a local passenger that has a SP mail car and a CP combine.
My Denver Zephyr will be mostly Budd lightweights with occasional lightweights from other roads, mainly GN and NP. The Ak Sar Ben Zephyr will be a mix of lightwwieight Budd (CB&Q), NP smooth side, CB&Q heavyweights and head end (mail) from QB&Q, UP, SP and other roads which is mostly express box cars, ex troop sleepers and heavyweights. I am also thinking of running The Fast Mail which will have all kinds of head end cars from numerous roads.
Rick
My passenger trains duplicate the colors I saw when I was doing ‘next to the right-of-way’ research forty years ago (give or take.) That is, DMU cars are cream and orange, the two through sleepers are blue and everything else is grunge brown. None of the cars are heavyweights (they all run on four wheel trucks) but some are older than others (smooth sides versus rivets, round roof versus clerestory.)
As for multiple road names - none of my cars even have a road name in easily visible form (the newest DMU limited express cars have the speed-styled JNR at each end, but it looks like a flyspeck in 1:80 scale[(-D]) When your prototype is a nationalized monopoly you can get away with that.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
My Frisco passenger train from the 60’s that I’ll be modeling/assembling, ran a few heavyweights in the front(baggage, mail and freight as I recall) and streamliners in the back. Though some of them were purchased from other lines, I don’t recall that it ran with any other road names besides Frisco.
Jim
I don’t care about road names as long as they are pullman green-ish heavy weights. I guess an odd color or two wouldn’t hurt either. I’m just running a steam excursion train on a semi modern layout.