Cotton Belt Passenger Cars

[coachayers]

Does anyone have any information on SSW (Cotton Belt) passenger cars? SSW served Memphis Tennessee from the west. The only photo I can find on the intenet is from California and is one of the ECW lightweight "American Flyer"-style cars. A lot of the SSW equipment (and paint) was Espee clones. Did they have anything fluted, smoothside or heavyweight? Any Decals so I can just "invent" something as a last resort?

Bob

[dknelson]

If I can add my own question to Bob's .... what passenger cars would the Cotton Belt have run behind their 4-4-2 steam locomotives? I bought one years ago and have toyed with the idea of having it painted and lettered and maybe have a display train.
(For those with long memories, around 1980 North West Short Line imported these brass 4-4-2s but skimped on the motors -- I think they used Tyco motors of all things -- and the engines were essentially unsalable (they had some Milwaukee Road 2-6-2s of the same quality and now I wish I'd got one of them too).
So they dumped them on the market for, as I recall, $75 each as "RTRR" -- "Ready to Rebuild and Repair" and also sold what they called an "MIM kit" -- MIM stood for "Make it Move." It was a new motor, but even it was crap unless you really worked at it. Mine ran fairly well but not great. It is a beautifully detailed model.
Dave Nelson

[csmith9474]

This probably won't help much, but I thought that I would throw it in. I myself am looking for SSW pax cars, so I will pass on anything that I can find.
http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?december99/12-01-99/ssw_business_FairLane.jpg

Smitty

[Anonymous]

Aside from the ECW American Flyer cars, the remainder of SSW pass cars were heavyweight.
Ch

[passengerfan]

The Cotton Belt lightweights were 400-409 76-seat coaches delivered by Pullman/Bradley in November 1937.For most of their Cotton Belt existance they were numbered 200-209 beginning in June 1940. All ten cars were first leased and then sold to parent SP between July of 1952 and April 1959. 200 became SP 2350, 201 became SP 2203, 202 became SP 2205, 203 became SP 2351, 204 became SP 2207, 205 became SP 2210, 206 became SP 2208, 207 became SP 2206, 208 became SP 2209 and 209 became SP 2204. The SP assigned the cars most often to Peninsula commute trains but they did operate on the Owl and West Coast at times out of Los Angeles.
All other cars as previously mentioned were heavyweights.

[SSW9389]

Floor plans for some of the Cotton Belt cars can be found at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CottonBelt/ You have to join the group and have a Yahoo ID, but there are folks on that list that know about the Cotton Belt.