passenger consist in the late forties and early fifties

[Anonymous]

[banghead]
I am looking for info about passenger trains in the 40's and 50's. Mainly for railroads like the great northern.
What was the typical type of motive power used by them to pull passenger service. (include both steam and diesel power)
Also, how many cars and what type were used on the cross country consist through glacier national park. I want to make this train as prototypical as possible, and I am in the east, and info on GN is scarce.
Thanks if you can help.[:)]

[tjsmrinfo]

finnius try www.rr-fallenflags.org for the great northern also look on the mr homepage for historical societies, sometimes they are grouped together with other roads, also go to train shows and try to find timetables or books on your railroad. also model railroader had 2 articles on pike size passenger trtains, also you might want to try to find books on passenger trains. the national railroad museum in green bay wisconsin has a book on passenger trains, i think that site is www.nrrm.org or .com not sure do a google search for it

hope this helps

tom

[Anonymous]

A good place to start is the Great Northern Railway Historical Society http://www.gnrhs.org

Other goood sources (print) include "Great Northern: Lines West" by Charles R. Wood and "Great Northern: Lines East" by Patrick Dorin.

The principal train on the route you mention was the "Empire Builder," a mostly-heavyweight train from the late 1930s until 1947, when it was completely streamlined. The train was re-equipped in 1951 and again in 1955. See the historical society website for an informative article on the consist and power of the train during 1955-59.

A secondary train, the "Oriental Limited," inherited the schedule and much of the equipment of the "old" "Empire Builder" in 1947. When the "Builder" was re-equipped in 1951, the secondary train was re-named "Western Star" and received the hand-me-down 1947 equipment.

A "Fast Mail" train also operated over the route throughout the times in question. In 1960 the "Fast Mail" was consolidated with the "Western Star," creating what some railroaders described as "a freight train with a diner in the middle."

[jimrice4449]

Prior to 1955 the Empire Builder ran about 12cars. In 1950 it was re-equiped. Most name trains have "signiture" cars. For the MidCentury EB it was the "mountain" series observation car. Unfortunately, no one makes a cheap kit for it and used brass ones are hard to find. I recently put mine up for sale w/ Caboose Hobbies and it was snatched up immediately. They were very distinctive, having most of the windows about 50% bigger than standard. The EB also had some distinctive, staggered window sleepers but here you're in luck as Brass Car Sides has the sides for the entire train. They are designed to be used w/ a "core kit" or attached to a cheap plastic car. The are carried by Walthers.
The Fast Mail was all baggage, and express cars and ran 10-20 cars. One attraction of the FM was that it generally had 4 to 6 Milwaukee Road cars and you could usually find a NYC or Pennsy car in it too.
Power for all GN's trans-continental trains (after the first few months of EB operation in 1947) was F units. For a while (I'm not sure of the time span) the GN psgr units had silver trucks and fuel tanks. Be sure your GN psgr units have two headlights (the frt had only 1)

[GN-Rick]

In the 40s, the GN's pssenger trains were still being pulled largely by steam-up
till 47. The locomotives used were class P-2 4-8-2s, S-1 and S-2 4-8-4s. On
occasion, one sould still find H class Pacifics (4-6-2s), especially on the flatter,
eastern portions of the line.Most local trains, of course, were more likely to
be pulled by smaller power-Pacifics and even some Consolidations though
this was rare. I do agree, though, that you should check out membership in
the GNRHS.Our Society has a lot of prototype information available. Also,
check out the Four Ways West series of GN books-they are excellent.

[Anonymous]

From "passenger Trainconsists of the 40s"
GN Empire Builder
1st Sec
4-8-4 #2584
GN 650 Dorm
GN 1030 Oregon diner
Pull 4290 16 sect
" " 4065 " "
General W.C.Brown 8-1-2
GN 1032 Minnesota Diner
General E.S. Godfrey 6-6
" " Gibbon 8-1-2
" " Benteen " "
Crookston 12-1
Peoria 12-Loung Obs

[Anonymous]

Soft cover, Wayner Publ. PTC of the 1940's
GN emp. Build / 2nd sec
GN 2588 4-8-4
GN 65 Bagg - Mail
CB&Q 1476 Bagg. ( ooooh)
GN 667 Coach
CB&Q 4800 Coach ( looks like Lincoln cclub Sorta )
GN 758 coach
GN 1043 Pennsylvania Diner
GN 944 Coach
GN 939 " "
GN 995 " "
GN 967 " "
CB&Q 4811" " Coldn't find that one in Bill Glick's Pass Cars of the Burling.??

[Anonymous]

That'll get You started. The book also has The GN Winnepeg Limited, Feb 28, 1947 with 4-6-2 # 1382, Oriental Ltd Train #4, July 9, 48 F5 ABA, a NP Troop train 2/17/45, The Q Expo Flyer , Advance Expo and Zephyr Rocket , 85 consists in all. WQuite a wealth of info considering the 1st sect. is easy to build with Branchline cars and about $400 + engine. The second sect with all those coaches can be hard or costly to build especially if you are going to do an accurate model. Most of those cars are unavailable without bashing or Brass buying. If you are serious and need more info drop me youe e mail address & I'll scan some pages.
Model Railroading is FUN and hard work.[soapbox]

[Anonymous]

RMANLEY and Waynor are correct about the consists listed. However, be aware that the Empire Builder only ran in Pullman and coach sections during WWII and for a while after. Normally the EB carried coaches and sleepers together. The obs Peoria was wrecked shortly after the war when the coach section rear ended the sleeper section somewhere east of the Rockies, near Wolf point, Montana, as I recall (not 100% sure about the location)
Bill Williams

[JimValle]

When the transition from steam to diesel came in the late 40's and early 50's some western roads like the GN, NP and WP actually preferred F3's and F7's geared for high speed. Since they couldn't go very fast in the mountains anyway, and they needed the extra tractive effort, four unit A-B-B-A lash-ups were common. SP and Santa Fe did more of their passenger work with E-units and PA's.

[Anonymous]

When I was researching Amtrak consists, I found that Passenger Train Journal was very helpfull. Unfortunately, it died out some time ago (maybe ten years ago?). I was lucky enough to pick up a whole bunch of old issues from my local hobby shop, and poured through them. There were tons of passenger train consists, rosters, and the like that have proven extremely helpfull. I don't recall offhand if there were any GN, etc articles, but I bet there were. I would be glad to scan any pertinent stories for you, but I'm afraid I haven't yet organised my PYJs and don't have any sort of comprehensive index. They're just sitting in a pile on my floor. :-( If you're willing to wait a little while, I should be able to sort through them sometime soonish (I'm trying to organise and index my library over the summer). Actually, if you can find a list of the relevant issues, I can check at the store, since we still have some PTJs left. (try the Trains.com mag index?).

[Anonymous]

Oh, also look at the MR "pike-size passenger trains" articles. They've done about six or so. (a quick trains.com mag index search pulled up: Nov 1980, Jan 1981, Oct 1987, Oct1989, May 2003 - I have all of these in my library, so I could review them, if you like, but I think almost all of them had a couple good midwestern prototypes, including a couple GN). I'm not sure that is a complete listing however, so try your own searches to be sure. The difficult thing with the search is that MR changed the title, try "Pike-size", "Pike-sized", "Pike sized", etc, or just try "pass train" or something.