Does this skirt make me look fat?

[tstage]

I'm going to ask a somewhat naive question about lightweight passenger cars - in particular, those used on the NYC.

I have set of '40 20th Century Limited (TCL) passenger cars where the underframe is covered by the side skirts.  Looking at the Walthers '48 TCL cars online shows them with the skirts removed.  I've viewed a few prototype photos of lightweight NYC passenger cars but dates when the photos were taken are generally later - i.e. after the NYC merged with the PRR to create Penn Central.

Were side skirts on the lightweight passenger cars primarily used in the time of streamlining and removed when streamlining was removed in the latter 40s?  I'm looking at a plain & unadorned brass lightweight passenger car that comes w/o side skirts (example below) and want to determine what era it would best fall into:

Thanks for the help...

Tom

[gmpullman]

By 1948 Pullman and the railroads had already decided that skirting was an unnecessary nuisance.

The pair of 1948 Kitchen-Dormitory cars were built without skirting.

http://canadasouthern.com/caso/images/nyc-476.jpg

Below is an example showing a kitchen-lounge from the same general order but used on the Commodore Vanderbilt.

NYC_1948_Pullman by Edmund, on Flickr.

I recall working on one of the 1938, 10-5 Pullman pool sleepers, Cascade Basin, which still had full skirts and it was a pain to remove sections to get at the brake and air conditioning components. The battery boxes had hinged sections that could be lifted and chained up. Still, by the '60s the hinges were rusted and things were falling apart.

1938 Century: Full skirts.

Century_life7 by Edmund, on Flickr

Full-width diaphragms fell into the same category. Nice to look at but were a headache to maintain and work around.

So your pretense is correct. Skirting, on most roads, started to disappear during the War years and dates "most" passenger cars to the late 1940s-early '50s.

You would, of course, want the full table car to go with the kitchen-dorm.

Regards, Ed

[7j43k]

From what I've seen, removal of skirts and full width diaphragms varied between railroads.

If you guys are talking about NYC, that's great.  But other railroads (if you care!) had different timing.

The Empire Builder had skirts up until about 1955.  The NP pulled them around the Loewy repaint in 1953.

 

Ed

[NorthBrit]

A very good question, Tom.

We have the same question with rolling stock here in the UK.

The answer is always the same.   Skirts were removed during the war to aid quicker servicing.   Yet pictures turn up with skirts still on in the 1950s.

I bet with some light-hearted searching there will be a picture or two of a NYC passenger car wearing skirts in  1950s.  If not, you know Rule 1 

Happy searching.

 

David

[tstage]

Thanks, fellas!  That confirms what I suspected.  Always something to learn in this hobby.

Tom