NP waas one I had in mind, and I did not know about GN doing the same. I'll give you credit for two, and ask you to think hard about the two remaining. Remember one has a successor very much supervised not delayed train. The difference is that the Pacifics were used to power the commodity for a general market, where as the modern version is for one business entitiy only with dedicated freight equipment. The route used by the Pacific remains the same, but what was a connection has been changed.
The dessign for the freight he Pacific that was not built by the COMPETITOR of the third of the railroads that I thought of was a design during WWII to be constructed after the war. The type of freight service declined and diesels came, so it was not built.
Rob and All:
I am lead to believe that the GN handled most of the silk. In my many talks with NP veterans, silk trains were never mentioned. I have viewed a picture of a GN steam locomotive named "Marathon". Did not that locomotive handle a silk train from Seattle to St. Paul without an engine change?
Ed Burns
I'm still digging for pacifics used on freight. I think I have to withdraw the GN, which did use "passenger" power on silk trains, since it looks like GN favored 4-8-2 mountains. NP's silk trains didn't last as long as GN's, running for only a couple of years in the late 1920s.
So far I have DL&W N-5 pacifics, and Erie K-4-A (69" drivers) that were assigned to fast freight service, along with NYNH&H I-4 class. The NYC K-11a class was specifically built to expedite meat, produce and milk shipments (not particularly milk trains) to the New York City market. ACL P-2 class were built to handle Florida produce and juice trains (requiring the cooperation of RF&P and PRR) - a precursor to the Tropicana train of today.
www.steamlocomotive.com was the source for most of this info.
On target with ACL. Did not remember the Central's K11s. CP regularly used Pacifics for fast freight on level lines. CN designed a branch-line freight Pacific that was never built. Look forward to your question.
Johnny will like this one...
Last Midwest-Florida train carrying only open sections.
plus coaches, if ciyrse. IC Seminol?
Nope, The Seminole was carrying a 6-6-4 by this time.
The Dixieland,or whatever the secondary train on the route of the DixieFlaglerwas before it came off.
All of the Dixie trains had 6-6-4 or 4-4-5-1 cars, some built new in 1953.
Full disclosure: I'm sure the train carried sleepers with rooms from time to time, if only a pool-service 12-1 during the season. But for the last few off-seasons that it even carried a sleeper, all the OG listed for sleeping accomodations was a 10 section-restaurant car.
Royal Palm or Ponce de Leon (Southern) Cincy-Jax?
The Ponce de Leon carried the 10secRest car for the last couple of off-seasons it ran with any sleepers at all.
Before Amtrak's Superliners, two provate railraods used bilevel cars in long-distance service. Describe the economics reasons for both railroads' decisions, routes, description of te differendes between the two bi-level designis, use aafter 1 May 1971, uses beyond Amtrak, as a minimum, with as mucch information as you can provide additional.
I'll get the party started with ATSF and C&NW (we've had threads concerning the bilevels on the Flambeau 400 service, for example). I leave it to the experts here to fill in the rest of the detail and do whatever they want with questions.
Those are the two railroads. Why don;t you try to fill in the details?
One railroad bought nee cars for more economical operation, with increased capacitiy and confort fewer car milrs. The other bought new cars to provide better service bargain with a state DOT for dropping money-loosing intrastate trains. Whihc is which? Then go on with your descirptions.
Although C&NW's were marketed as bilevels, they were actually gallery cars, all P-S built to the same carbody specs as C&NW's commuter fleet. One of them, parlor car 6400, was later converted to a commuter coach (but with nicer restrooms...) C&NW even filled out the fleet by adding roof extensions to diners and various lounge equipment, with and without baggage and RPO sections.
Santa Fe's Budd-built cars were - as advertised - "Hi-Level" since the lower level didn't go to the end of the cars. The original 1954 pair, about a third of the 1956 second order and some of the 1964 third order of coaches had transition steps at either the front or the back (car going forward with the downstairs bathroom corridor on the right). Some of the 1964 order had space for the news agent as well. 1954 and 1956 order used on the El Capitan (and combined Super Chief/El Capitan) with the 1964 order allowing cars to spread to the Texas Chief and San Francisco Chief.
Amtrak assignments included the Chiefs, Sunset and Panama Limited, along with other service mixed with Superliners, like the short-lived Houston section of the Texas Eagle. Some of the lounges are still in service as "Pacific Parlor Cars" on the Coast Starlight. Last Amtrak service for coaches was the Heartland Flyer.
Both the C&NW and AT&SF designs were 15' 10" tall, shorter than the 16' 4" of the Superliners.
Continiue, please, with the route of the C&NW cars, before and afer Amtrak start-up. Why were these caars purchased?
As far as I know, al the C&NW long-distance gallery cars were eventually converted to commuter coaches. Not, or course, the single-level diners with false roofs.
Some of the single-level C&NW long-disance lightweight cars were sold to the Q and replaced their last long-distance heavyweight peak-traffic cars. They were painted silver, but without any shading to simulate fluting.
The only bi-level long-distance car that was converted to a commuter coach was the all-parlor 6400. All of the others were leased and later purchased by Amtrak and used mainly in Illinois and Wisconsin corridor trains until retired. The Bi-Level "400s" ran on various routes north of Chicago, often completing multiple trips in a day. An example would be one set that originated in Milwaukee, ran to Chicago as a "commuter 400", then headed north to Green bay as a "Flambeau 400". In the summer season they ran as far north as U.P. Michigan, covering both routes to Green Bay, Menominee and Ironwood. The C&NW agreed to purchase the cars and run the "400s" on main routes that were still financially reasonable in exchange for permission to discontinue a fairly large number of financially hopeless local services.
Some of the cars were sold for further service after they were retired in the early 1990s - notably to the Alaska RR. Amtrak added cabs to two or three of the coaches to allow push-pull operation.
Just a comment that some railroads referred to the six roomettes, six sections, and four double bedrooms as "6-6-4's while others referred to them as "6-4-6's" to reflect the actual layout of the cars.
Prewar 6 sec, 6 rmt, 4 DBR cars (UP/C&NW/SP "American" something AT&SF "Valley", SP 500 series) were laid out with the roomettes in the middle. Postwar "National", "Pine", "Beach" and CN's pullman-built "Green" cars (and most likely the CB&Q's cars) had the bedrooms in the middle. Other railroads that had prewar 6-6-4 cars were MP, Erie and IC. UP had both "American" and "National" series cars.
Although only the parlor was actually converted to commuter seating, the idea behind the design was clearly the idea that such conversion was possible, and this idea was widely promulgated at the time.
Any in use today?
And a reminder to good old knowlegeable rc for another quesiton.
Sorry about the delay - asleep at the switch...
This secondary SP name train was the last SP train to carry open sections. It shared its name with another SP train that had become coach-only years before.
The Oakland-LA Owl?
Johnny
Or overnight Houston - New Orleans?
Johnny has the correct answer in the Oakland - L.A. Owl.
Sharing its name with the T&NO's overnight Dallas-Houston train (which lost its sleepers in 1955), the Owl ran on SP's West Valley line, handling lots of mail and express in addition to passengers. In its last years it had dwindled to a single 6-6-4 sleeper, an articulated coach, a snack bar coach and a bunch of head-end equipment. The Owl was discontinued in 1965, only three years before the much better known Lark.
The runner-up for open sections in SP's world was the City of San Francisco, which carried a St. Louis 6-6-4 ( postwar National car belonging to UP or Wabash) for two years after the San Francisco Overland was discontinued in 1962. All of the cars were prewar cars in SP's 9500 series and stemmed from earlier service on the Lark (which went all-room in 1949) and other SP trains, including the City of San Francisco.
For several years, the Southern operated what it called "Motor-powered Coach Trains." One of the schedules was for the Cracker, a day train between Atlanta and Brunswick,Ga.
What other service did each engine for this train perform?
I guess it depends on how you look at it. The other services run with the FM power cars were the Goldenrod, Vulcan and Joe Wheeler, on Chattanooga-Mobile and Tuscumbia AL-Oakdale TN schedules. Looking at it another way, the power cars were also RPO and baggage cars.
I may have phrased the question wrongly. Perhaps I should have asked "What other train did the Cracker's engines power?"
Incidentally, I have no TT that shows the Vulcan operating to Chattanooga. In 1943 it was a Columbus, Mississippi,-Mobile train.
My oops on the Vulcan. I followed a note and should have remembered your question somewhere way up in the thread.
I would guess - without any timetables handy - that it handled a connection off of the Kansas City-Florida Special between Jesup and Brunswick. The main part of the train would have headed south towards Jacksonville (via ACL trackage rights) at Jesup.
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