Frisco 60's era passenger

[jbloch]

I'm getting a little ahead of myself, as I haven't even started my benchwork yet, but have been curious about this for a while, so here goes:

I grew up in a fairly small town in Missouri( Rolla), my mother would drive my friends and I to a nearby even smaller town (Newburg--really neet yard, even still had a turntable in the mid 1960"s) to hitch the Frisco passenger train and ride it back to Rolla (about an 8 mile trip, cost about 30 cents as I recall)--I actually rode the last Frisco passenger through Rolla (ca. 1966-67?)

Anyway, I'm interested in modelling this train--I don't have any prototype books. The locos were red, ran in an AA configuration, with previous triple-crown horse race champions names under the left front window (e.g. Count Fleet, Citation, etc.--remember this is pre Secretariat!).

Any ideas on what these locos were? Availability in HO? Also, what about the passenger cars? I note that in the Walthers catalogue, IHC has two passenger lines in the Frisco logo--but at 79.95 for 8 cars, ? detail quality in those? Have noted fairly negative threads on IHC locos.

Or, if not available in Frisco road name, possible airbrush another prev. released road name?

Appreciate any input.

Jim

[tigerstripe]

The locos are E8's, and were all named after famous horses, Pensive, Calvalcade, Big Red and I don't remember the rest and as luck would have it, I packed up all my books last week and will be moving soon. (bigger train room)..
I believe they were numbered 2004-2020, 2000-2003 were E7's assigned to the Texas Special. LifeLike P2K made E8's a few years ago but they are still around for about $45-$50. Nice detail and great runners, even have a flashing Mars light. Some of the older P2K units are notorious for split axles, but its an easy / cheap fix.
Passenger cars are a little harder, and good pictures are hard to come by. Most of the pictures I have seen show the loco's a few head end cars and the rest is hard to make out. Also there seems to be just as many mail / express cars as coaches on most trains. The sleepers were from the Pennsylvania, B & O , and Wabash, which were picked up at St. Louis.
All this is from memory so I'm sure there are mistakes, If you need a real answer, I will unpack at the end of the month.

[jbloch]

Tstripe:

Wonder if the horse names you mention were on a different Frisco route--I don't recall any of them coming through Rolla. Count Fleet and Citation I definitally recall, and ?Needles, so guess they weren't all triple crown winners.

Appreciate the info--and any additional in the future--I do probably need to review some books--I also recall there's an SLSF historical website.

Will look around for any of those P2K E8's.

Jim

[tigerstripe]

I think Middleground, Man of War, & Jet Pilot. Not all were racehorses I think a few were horses of Civil War generals.

[balearic]

The Frisco named its E units after famous race horses, not necessarily Triple Crown winners. They owned E7s and E8s, though the E7s were rebuilt with Farr air grilles and had the grilles behind the cab doors altered. Most were painted red with gold trim, except (I think) the ones for "Texas Special" service with the Katy, which were red, yellow and off-white/imitation aluminum. I'm pretty sure Microscale makes decals for both schemes.

By the way, "Big Red" wasn't the name of a racehorse; it was the nickname of Man O'War, a horse whose name was copyrighted. So, in a sort of reverse-Union Pacific situation, a railroad would've been forced to pay royalties had Frisco used the horse's actual name.

[garya]

Jim:
There are pictures of the racehorse locos at http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/frisco/friscoline/dieselrace.cfm .

I would recommend the Proto 2000 E8s -- you can get them from Trainworld, http://www.trainworld.com/ . As for passenger cars, that's a little tougher. Concor makes some Texas Special lightweight cars, and you can get heavyweight cars that are reasonable stand ins, as well as a variety of head end cars.

Gary

[tigerstripe]

garya:

Thanks for the link, lots of good stuff.

The E7's were 2000 - 2005. the rest are E8's.

2000 Fairplay
2001 Ranger .... Col. Henry Lee's horse
2002 Comanche .... only survivor at the battle of the Little Big Horn
2003 Steel Dust
2004 Dan Patch
2005 Winchester .... Gen. Phillip Sheridan's horse
2006 Traveller .... Gen. Robert E. Lee's horse
2007 Whirlaway .... 1941 Triple Crown winner
2008 Messenger.... English race horse
2009 Jet Pilot .... 1947 Kentucky Derby winner
2010 Count Fleet .... 1943 Triple Crown winner
2011 Gallant Fox .... 1930 Triple Crown winner
2012 Flying Ebony .... 1925 Kentucky Derby winner
2013 Sea Biscuit .... 1937 leading purse winner
2014 Truxton .... Andrew Jackson's horse
2015 Twenty Grand .... 1931 Kentucky Derby winner
2016 Citation .... Triple Crown winner
2017 Pensive .... 1944 Kentucky Derby / Preakness winner
2018 Ponder .... 1949 Kentucky Derby winner
2019 Cavalcade .... 1934 Kentucky Derby winner
2020 Big Red .... Man-O-War
2021 Gallahadian .... 1940 Kentucky Derby winner
2022 Middleground .... 1950 Kentucky Derby / Belmont winner this name was copyrighted and was changed to Champion, Gene Autry's horse.

[garya]

Found some more info here:

The passenger trains that stopped in Newburg and Rolla were the Will Rogers and the Meteor. In the early 60s the Will Rogers left Newburg at 6:05pm and arrived in Rolla at 6:20pm. On page 45 of Marre's Frisco in Color is a picture of the Will Rogers in Rolla on October 11, 1965. The head-end cars outnumber the occupied cars by a healthy margin. Near the end of service the trains were combined into the Oklahoman (I think). Marre has a photo of the last Oklahoman on page 49, with mostly mail and baggage cars followed by a few lightweight cars. One could model these trains with a few lightweight cars in red and silver, such as the Con-Cor cars, and use Rivarossi or Athearn baggage and RPO cars. Yardmaster has an express boxcar, and there are conversions for the Walthers troop sleepers to match post-war express cars. You may have to reletter these cars, but it would be an interesting train.

Gary

[jbloch]

Gary/T-stripe:

Thanks for the info/link. I'm a newbie, having not done any airbrushing before, but think I might give it a try if I can figure out the paint scheme from these and hopefully other book or website pictures.

Funny how 40 years of memory can play tricks on you--I thought the horse names were under the left front window--obviously it's on both side windows.

Jim

[Anonymous]

Passenger Train Journal had a 2-part series on Frisco pax trains in 1984 called "Ozark Pacers". If you can find it, the info there will probably be useful to you.

[tjsmrinfo]

jbloch sometime back there was an article in model railroading i believe on passenger trains through springfield,mo circ 1950 and lists the trains and the train names. I dont remember if it names the horse locs of the frisco. also model railroader had an article or question regarding theses locs. i have both these issues and will try to locate them or you can do a search of the index of magazines at the top of the page.

for prototype pics you may want to look at www.rr-fallenflags.org and scroll down to the S page and click on SLSF(frisco)

Hope this helps

tom

[tjsmrinfo]

jbloch sometime back there was an article in model railroading i believe on passenger trains through springfield,mo circ 1950 and lists the trains and the train names. I dont remember if it names the horse locs of the frisco. also model railroader had an article or question regarding theses locs. i have both these issues and will try to locate them or you can do a search of the index of magazines at the top of the page.

for prototype pics you may want to look at www.rr-fallenflags.org and scroll down to the S page and click on SLSF(frisco)

Hope this helps

tom

[garya]

I found an old topic I started a few years ago on Frisco Passenger trains: http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7565
Andy Sperandeo was kind enough to respond to my query, and it started me on some research into the Frisco.

I didn't log in for a while (had a baby). For some reason, my account was cancelled during my absence and I had to re-up, which is why it says "error" where my name should be.

Gary

[Anonymous]

Frisco E7s 2000-2005 were all converted to the "racehorse" scheme in about 1950. Tigerstripe has provided the names in his post above. And, yes, not all were named after racehorses. 2020 "Rig Red" got its name (the common nickname for triple crown winner Man-O-War in the press) because the horse's owners wanted royalty payments for use of the name (no, the UP did not invent that practice), which Frisco was unwilling to pay. The original common paint for the Texas Special and Meteor was DuPont duco red/cream yellow/aluminum gray, but the Meteor units used the blue Frisco coonskin in place of the star and dual heralds, and did not have any lettering on the upper side panels. The stainless side panels came off in the conversion and were reused on a couple of heavyweights. The common paint coincided with what became an abortive merger attempt among the Frisco, Katy and Alton that was rejected by the ICC in the late 1940's owing to (what else?) protests from other RRs. Imagine a fluted stainless steel Alton car (there weren't any) and you've basically got the original streamlined TS-Meteor paint scheme. The maroon trim on the skirts on the TS cars got simplified to duco red starting in 1950. The Frisco cars retained this scheme until the end, although the TS cars eventually got "Frisco" on the letterboards like the Meteor cars. The Katy cars generally kept this scheme, but some got black roofs during the Deramus era (they were sort of default black anyway, because the San Antonio car washer did not scrub the roofs).

The Katy E7s 101 and 101A from the TS operation kept the original paint scheme (whici, sans stainless became the basic MKT scheme until the Deramus debacle) until 1950, when they lost the star, twin heralds and train name and got Katy heralds on the nose and sides. They kept this scheme, along with the stainless, until they were sold for scrap in the mid-1960's.

Even with the new paint, the Frisco racehorse units were an excellent match for the streamlined equipment. BTW, by the late 1950's, the white trim on the racehorse units was history, and the metallic gold then got replaced with a less expensive dull ochre color that was not too dissimilar to the original.