Hi all. Can someone tell me if 65' heavyweights were actually used and if so what years they were used?. The reason I ask is because I have several of these cars and am unsure what era they belong to.
Hi,
Several model manufacturers, notably the Athearn "Heavyweights" were selectively compressed in length to satisfy the common 18" radius of many model railroads.
Actual passenger car lengths gradually grew, as the advancement of better carbuilding materials and technology developed, from a common length of about 50 feet in the 1870s during the era of all wood construction. Around 1905 steel underframes became the industry standard allowing carbuilders to approach seventy feet in the length for their cars.
In 1907 the PRR, out of necessity due to a New York City ban on using wood cars in the North (Hudson) and East River Tunnels built their first P70 coach at an outside length of 80' 3-3/4"
By 1915 the standard heavyweight design allowed a length of 85' give-or-take and for practical reasons this length became the norm.
ACF lot #7789 003 by John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, on Flickr
Some head-end cars were shorter with some being in the 60 to 70 foot range. By this time the US Post Office was requiring RPO cars to be of all steel construction.
If you can find a copy of The American Railroad Passenger Car by John H White, Jr. (two volumes) you will find a great deal of information on the development of North American railroad passenger cars.
Good Luck, Ed
Mark,
Several railroads operated 60' steel passenger cars into the 50's. The C&NW operated these cars in commuter service and on branches. The PRR had steel cars based on their MP54 design as well. And there were a lot of mail and express cars in that length as well on many railroads.
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
The short answer would be pre-Amtrak. Most heavyweights of less than 80 or 85 feet were used in commuter service and as railroads shed their commuter operations to government agencies, one of the first orders of business would be "modernization", quite often with lightweight equipment made surplus by Amtrak. The Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit are two that come to mind.
The CB&Q had some very short cars as well, shorter than Athearns and even shorter than the Varney or Penn Line 60' "standard" passenger cars
Check out this pic
https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/fileSendAction/fcType/0/fcOid/31276248886228983/filePointer/31276249360940564/fodoid/31276249360940560/imageType/MEDIUM/inlineImage/true/CB%2526Q%25203003.jpg
Dave Nelson
Thanks for your input guys. I guess it all boils down to just having fun and ignoring facts...