When the Post Office required steel cars for RPOs, it put the railroads in a public relations pickle if they were still running wood passenger cars (steel underframe or not); it put them in the position of saying in effect "postal employees ride in steel cars so they're safe, you're just a regular passenger so you have to ride in this old wood car and hope for the best." Railroads converted to heavyweight cars pretty quickly to avoid that perception, even though the steel car's weight meant the railroads had to buy bigger engines to pull the trains. That's why Mountains and Hudsons and Northerns all came along in the 1910's-20's. Before that a 4-4-0, 4-6-0 or 4-4-2 usually was good enough.
wjstixJust to back up a second...wood cars (freight or passenger) with truss rods could be used in interchange service IF the cars had a steel underframe. Some older cars were rebuilt with steel underframes but still had trussrods. However, construction of new wood passenger cars had completely stopped by the 1920's, and really had been dying out since the US Post Office required all RPO cars to be all-steel in about 1905-1910.
Absolutely. A SUF car is NOT a wooden car, even if it's sheathed in wood. I suspect many of the later sightings people mention are likely those SUF cars. In the case of SP's cars, MOW service is a very differrent thing than passenger service. I'm sure they were wonderful cars, but I suspect they persisted simply because they had that alternative use, as they were otherwise obsolete for passenger service.
There was at least one exception to the all-steel RPO rules of the post office, which were the Rio Grande's narrowgauge lines. A waiver was apparently granted allowing the wood cars to be reinforced. This was done with lengths of rail vertically in the front bulkhead and steel plating attached to the car side (but not a SUF). This was intended to prevent the telescoping of car nehind the RPO into it and against the engine in case of an accddent. These cars operatede into the early 1950s until the San Juan was discontinued and were most likely the last revenue service for wood RPOs.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
That's a good point Stix. There were wood cars with steel underframes retaining their truss rods including cabooses, passenger and fregiht cars that got some more mileage on them as a result of the addition of the rebuidling. A prime example were New York Central wood cabooses. (Incidentally, there never was a "NYC 19000 Serices" as modelers refer to. These standard cars were refered to as SUF (steel underframe) cars. There were identical cars with the low cupolas numbered in the 18000 and 19000 number slot. Of course, the New York Central System had many variations of wood cars from the B-4, CASO, B&A and Toledo & Ohio Central, for example, and some ended up in the same number series as the standard SUF cars.)
Victor A. Baird
www.erstwhilepublications.com
Just to back up a second...wood cars (freight or passenger) with truss rods could be used in interchange service IF the cars had a steel underframe. Some older cars were rebuilt with steel underframes but still had trussrods. However, construction of new wood passenger cars had completely stopped by the 1920's, and really had been dying out since the US Post Office required all RPO cars to be all-steel in about 1905-1910.
They were long lived on the SP, the final example in revenue service was not retired until 1962 after a service life of over 70 years. SP had 2 former Palace cars rebuilt as rolling offices for its supply trains, rebuilt in the twenties with steel underframes they retained their classic arched windows, wood siding and stained glass in the clearstory windows.They were the pride of the Stores Department and maintained in pristine condition until retirement in the sixties a testiment to the care devoted by the craftsman at Sacramento.
Dave
But just a few years later during WWII, with the shortage of equpment, it was not unusual to see wood passenger cars with truss rods in some mainline trains, especially in the South.
Generally by the late 1930's the only wood passenger cars you'd see would be "Jim Crow" cars, cars used by black passengers due to segregation laws that existed into the 1960's in the South. Wood passenger cars lasted a long time in MOW service however. I recall seeing a BN work train with a couple of wood passenger cars (still in GN lettering) in the mid-1980's.
p
"The Louisiana and Arkansas Railway", James R. Fair , Northern Illinois University Press 1997, has interesting information. The photographs on pages 74 and 75 show the "Shreveporter" on its 12/30/1928 maiden run. Motive power was a 4-4-0, followed by a steel baggage-mail car, a steel coach, a steel Pullman sleeper named "Uraguay" and a second-hand wooden truss rod parlor/cafe/observation car purchased from the Missouri Pacific. Considering the Pullman was dropped off at Hope, Arkansas to be picked up by the MoPac for overnight transit to St. Louis, it would have been a steel car.
On page 81 is a sample timetable from 5/13/1934 containing the consists of both the "Shreveporter" and a second train, the "Hustler":
"Shreveporter": 12 section drawing-room sleeper (Shreveport to St. Louis), 12 section drawing room compartment sleeper (Shreveport to Memphis), Observation/cafe/parlor car and all steel coaches (Shreveport to Hope, Arkansas).
"Hustler": 8-Section Buffet Lounge Sun-Room Sleeper (New Orleans to Shreveport)(Pullman plan 4027-A), 12 section drawing room sleeper (Baton Rouge to Shreveport), all steel coaches (New Orleans to Shreveport).
Both are marvelous examples of a small yet first-class service name train.
PuttChooThe wooden cars remained a mainstay for a longer period than one would think. ... several hundred were quickly converted to Troop Tourist Cars ... during World War 1. Many were converted back to regular sleeper service and acquired their original names ... As late as 1931, when the Standard Car (Heavyweight) production was drawing to a close, eighteen percent of the fleet was still of wooden origin.
Sounds like good info. Keep in mind what the most obsolete 18% of the Pullman fleet was probably doing in 1931. Yep, mostly sitting in storage as the nation's economy ground to a halt. So making one out of every five passenger cars in a train wooden in 1931 is probably stretching reality quite a bit. But I do that all the time, so go right ahead if that works for you...
A couple of interesting websites on passenger cars are:
Pullman Digital Collection (Newberry Library) has some 2,349 drawn items including floor diagrams,
equipment and lettering diagrams, etc. collections.carli.illinois.edu
Passenger Car Photo Index has passenger car color photos by railroad.
passcarphotos.info
One of the recognized authorities is White's book "The American Railroad Passenger Car".
Two more books are "The Century of Pullman Cars", Vol. 1 and 2. I'll quote from Vol. 2, page 19:
Quote: "The early 1900s were a time of tremendous demand for wooden railroad cars. Most of these
became obsolete within 10 years when a ban was placed...New York City...Hudson River. Despite this
development and the immediate retooling for the production of steel cars, the company prevented their
early demise by reassigning the wooden cars to other routes ... The wooden cars remained a mainstay
for a longer period than one would think. ... several hundred were quickly converted to Troop Tourist Cars
... during World War 1. Many were converted back to regular sleeper service and acquired their original
names ... As late as 1931, when the Standard Car (Heavyweight) production was drawing to a close,
eighteen percent of the fleet was still of wooden origin. End of Quote
On page 295 (same vol.) it has a picture of AMHERST (Plan 1963C, Lot 3252) 12 section, drawing
room, built in 12/05 (20 cas) with truss rods. On page 341 is a photo of BROOKFIELD (Plan 2447), 12
section, drawing room built in 11/09 (4cars) with truss rods, for service on the ... "20th Century Limited".
It was one of the last wooden Pullman built.
Research, it's fun digging this info up.
That sounds like a neat little train.
If you have no more info than that, try to determine if the "Pullman" was something the RR owned or Pullman did. I know there were some small outfits that didn't use Pullman for sleeper service, although it was otherwise near universal. It's possible the L&A had their own older sleeper, for instance. Pullman was trademarked, but most people would make no such distinction about whether a sleeper was owned by Pullman or someone else.
If leased or other arranegement to supply the car from Pullman, I would most likely be a steel car at this point.
The fact that there were other wooden cars in the train somewhat heightens the chance that the "Pullman" might have been an older wooden car. Most likely, it was an 80' if it was.
To all who replied - THANKS! The information was very useful. My Depression era name train will be based on the Louisiana & Arkansas "Shreveporter" - a baggage-mail car, one coach, a pullman sleeper and a wood truss-rod parlor/cafe/ observation (the one used by the L&A when the train was inaugurated at the end of 1928 was bought second-hand). A prototype example that you don't need lots of cars to run a first-class name train.
All steel cars were required for use into Pennsylvania Station in New York, due to the Hudson River tunnels. This opened in 1910, and naturally, ability of a car to run into New York over the PRR would have been a 500-pund gorilla in the industry. The restriction was due to an earlier accident and fire on the Paris Metro, when a fire that broke out on wooden cars following an accident resulted in consuming all the available oxygen in the tunnel and asphyxiating a large number of passengers. This is probably why PRR employee timetables also required that dining car stoves be extinguished when running through the tunnels.
By the time of US entry to World War I in 1917, wooden Pullmans had been largely demoted to troop and hospital train service.
No and no, in short.
Ed summed it up pretty well. Wood Pullmans quickly went out of their service with the introduction of steel cars. There was a big push in hiring at Pullman after WWI and I suspect that eliminated any that still lingered as steel car production expanded. My grand-dad made his way from southern Indiana up to Pullman, Illinois and worked there for several years before returning to try to make a go of farming again.
While there were no shorter Pullmans in the 20th century, the first Pullmans in the 19th. century were short. And there were Pullmans on the Rio Grande's narrowgauge lines for a time, but I believe were all gone or converted to other uses by 1900 due to the Rio Grande's standard gauge line to SLC being finished.
All steel cars were a feature that Pullman and the railroads were touting primarily as a safety advantage. Fire and the fear of "telescoping" were hazards of travel in the wood car era.
Certainly on name trains and most of the more popular trains all steel cars were the norm by the late teens. By the 1930s the majority of wood cars had either been scrapped or rebuild into steel cars. A few even retaining the truss rods after steel carbodies were fabricated. This was especially true of diners which were more expensive to replace.
Quite a few "head-end" cars were still wood with steel underframes even into the 1950s and, of course, on short lines and branch lines you would still come across wood cars, mostly coaches and combines.
I don't have reference material at hand but I am not aware of any Pullman Standard cars shorter than 73 feet or so unless there were some for export service. Especially since you are referencing sleeping cars in particular. There may have been a few "shorty" coaches and mail, express or baggage cars but sleeping cars? Highly unlikely.
Take care, Ed
Maybe this is addressed elsewhere but I'll throw out this question here.
I'm modelling in the era 1933 to 1939. Would it be prototypically correct to use a wooden truss-rodded Pullman sleeping car in a name train during this time period? Or, had Pullman withdrawn and scrapped all the wood cars in favor of the steel heavyweights by the 1930's?
Second question. Did Pullman build and utilize any sleeping cars smaller than 70 feet in length? 68 feet? 65 feet? 60 feet? This would apply to both wood truss-rod cars as well as steel heavyweights built in the 1920's and 1930's.