heavyweight and streamlined passenger cars

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mikebalcos

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Aug 9, 2006
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Quezon City, the Philippines
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I have a set of Athearn streamlined passenger cars. And I have 2 heavyweight cars (RPO and baggage). Currently, I'm considering using the heavyweight cars with the streamlined ones. I've seen some pictures of mixing heavyweight and streamlined passenger cars of model railroads depicting the 50's. I've been informed before that this kind of mix did happen in real life, but that was long ago and I'm not sure about this since I haven't seen real pictures of passenger trains with this mix. BTW, my passenger train is a 1950's Santa Fe with a F7A and streamlined passenger cars. I just want to know if passenger trains then did mix streamlined and heavyweight cars, regardless of road name. But I'm also interested if Santa Fe did practice this too. :)
 
Yes mixing heavyweights and lightweight cars was very common in the 40's-60's, particularly using heavyweight baggage and RPO cars in an otherwise streamlined consist - many railroads never bought streamlined baggage or RPO cars and just used their old heavyweights to the end. Some railroads left the cars in Pullman Green and some repainted them to match the streamlined cars. C&NW for example had some heavyweight baggage and RPO cars that were green while some other heavyweights were painted yellow and green to match the streamlined colors...and it wasn't uncommon to see both in the same train, along with a streamlined baggage car to boot!!

In the Great Model Railroads video series, Chuck Hitchcock's "Argentine Division" layout was featured in one of the tapes/DVD's. He modelled the Santa Fe around Kansas City c. 1951 and did a great deal of research to get his freight and passenger trains correct - and many of the trains on his layout used both type of passenger cars together as I recall. If you search books and the web, you'll find quite a few pics of both being used together. Sometimes, because the heavyweights were repainted, it can hard to tell. But as far as I know ATSF heavyweight RPO's and baggage cars were green their whole lives.
 
The two best resources I have found are the ATSF yahoo group and the website www.qstation.org both Chuck Hitchcock and Andy Sperendeo (MR Editor) are regular contributors on both. The group is nice if you had a question like this or you could do some research on the site and find out EXACTLY which cars the may of 1950 super chief had in a consist for example. Good Luck!!!


Now for my question, it is my understanding that the pullman cars would be interchanged with other railroads anyone know about this?

Cory
 
Cory: Pullmans/sleepers would be the commonest car interchanged with other roads. I think that some western Pullmans went to New York City. Before Pullman had to divest itself of car operations, most of the cars were pooled and could go anywhere. There were also "run through" trains like the Zephyrs that went over several roads and might have cars lettered for all of them.
Mike: When Canadian Pacific introduced the Canadian, they rebuilt some heavyweight sleepers with corrugated aluminum panels to match the Budd cars. These were called "tourist sleepers" and ran ahead of the coaches.
 
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