Several manufacturers have offered 60' heavyweight passenger cars and I am guessing these were designed for small pikes with tight radius curves. I've wondered whether there is a prototype for these, either on a class 1 railroad or a small branchline. I've discovered these can be bought cheaply on e-bay and I thought they would be a good choice for building a fleet of commuter coaches. I need to add KDs and metal wheels but its still a lot cheaper than most alternatives. I have a freelanced railroad but that doesn't mean I have an anything-goes attitude. I like to use equipment that could realistically have been used on prototype railraods.
I think of the various 60 feet passenger car models as selectively compressed, rather than models of short prototypes. The Athearn heavy weight cars, although short, look very prototypical to my eye. Cars just like that made up the bulk of the plain old passenger trains. Only the few crack named trains (the Congressional, the Broadway limited, the 20th Century Limited) ran the fancy streamliners. To go by train to most places, you climbed into a heavy weight coach that looked pretty much like the Athearns.
The Boston and Maine was running 60 foot wood truss rod open platform cars (the great splinter fleet) in commuter trains up thru the early 1950's. But they were something of a New England eccentric. The other trains I rode back in the day, the Pennsy, the New Haven, the Reading, the Canadian National, the Long Island, all used 70-80 foot steel heavy weight cars. Ambroid and/or Northeastern offered very good all wood kits of the B&M antiques for years.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
At least a couple of those cars are prototypical (maybe the coach and combine, IIRC), based on C&NW cars. The rest are just elaborations on that theme. Yes, there were short cars out there, but just not available in model form. I'd go with them and not sweat it.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
The Rivarossi 60' coach is based on a C&NW prototype.
Dave
Just be glad you don't have to press "2" for English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_ALEdDUB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqFS1GZL4s
http://s73.photobucket.com/user/steemtrayn/media/MovingcoalontheDCM.mp4.html?sort=3&o=27
Beat me by 1 minute, Mike.
Great minds think alike...Nice cat, BTW.
One of the most common commuter cars was the P54/MP54 coach on the PRR which was 54 ft between the vestibule bulkheads. There were hundreds of them. The MP54's lasted into the 1980's.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
The PRR "54" variants were used on branches as well as commuter runs. The mixed train on PRR's Lewisburg & Tyrone (running east from Bellefonte, PA) was photographed with a G5s 4-6-0, an MPB54 combine (mail/passenger/baggage; 54 feet), plus a B60 baggage car behind the freight car. Other equipment was used at times. Con Cor makes the P54 and PB54, although the price is a bit steep.
Buffalo Creek & Gauley also bought one of those MPB54 combines from PRR.
The Southern Pacific ran the 60 foot Harriman Baggage cars which were rebuild with arched roofs. They were used on the Lark in two tone grey until their retirement.
Ira
dstarr I think of the various 60 feet passenger car models as selectively compressed, rather than models of short prototypes. The Athearn heavy weight cars, although short, look very prototypical to my eye. Cars just like that made up the bulk of the plain old passenger trains. Only the few crack named trains (the Congressional, the Broadway limited, the 20th Century Limited) ran the fancy streamliners. To go by train to most places, you climbed into a heavy weight coach that looked pretty much like the Athearns. The Boston and Maine was running 60 foot wood truss rod open platform cars (the great splinter fleet) in commuter trains up thru the early 1950's. But they were something of a New England eccentric. The other trains I rode back in the day, the Pennsy, the New Haven, the Reading, the Canadian National, the Long Island, all used 70-80 foot steel heavy weight cars. Ambroid and/or Northeastern offered very good all wood kits of the B&M antiques for years.
The B&M was far from unique in running 60' wood cars into the 1950's. The Maryland & Pennsylvania RR also ran 60' wood cars until service stopped in 1954.
One of those Ma & Pa cars still runs today along with a number of B&M cars on the Strasburg Railroad. I believe they have 13 of the B&M cars.
But the fact is there were lots of shorter passenger cars even in the all steel era. An examination of passenger cars plans will show that lengths varied from roughly 60' to 85' in nearly every length in between.
Are a lot of the the passenger car models from earlier times in the hobby freelanced - sure - that is because most passenger cars are nearly one of a kind, often with only two or three or a dozen copies from the same plans - and the railroad shops got a hold of them.......
So unless you are a rivet counter, have lots of money, time, skill and/or research info, run what you like and what suits the curves on your layout.
Truth is many of these expensive new offerings are not as accurate as you might think - OR, if they are, they represent the smallest little window in time when the cars were delivered.
And, many of the earliest smooth side cars where more like 78', not 85' like later versions. So 72' cars like those offered Athearn and ConCor are not necessarily as compressed as you might think.
I could type a long list of prototype examples, but I will let you do your own research - the two Carstens books on passenger cars are good place to start.
Sheldon
The New Haven was the No. 3 railroad in numbers of passengers carried. On Sept. 30, 1956, the NH had 1086 passenger cars. Of the 788 loco-hauled, non-articulated, passenger-carrying cars, the NH had just 12 cars under 80' long (these were Baggage-Smoker combines of 77' 2 5/8"). That's 1.5% of the fleet.
Of the NH's 276 heavyweight coaches, only 122 were 80' 4" (all built in the WWI era). The rest were 82, 83, or 84 feet long (all built before 1931).
The NH had 201 streamlined cars from Osgood-Bradley starting in 1934. All were 84' 6 1/4" long. The NH had 220 post-WWII stainless steel-clad cars from P-S. All were 85' 6" or 85' 9".
Sub-80' cars were a strict minority in Southern New England.
Paul A. Cutler III
Paul3 The New Haven was the No. 3 railroad in numbers of passengers carried. On Sept. 30, 1956, the NH had 1086 passenger cars. Of the 788 loco-hauled, non-articulated, passenger-carrying cars, the NH had just 12 cars under 80' long (these were Baggage-Smoker combines of 77' 2 5/8"). That's 1.5% of the fleet. Of the NH's 276 heavyweight coaches, only 122 were 80' 4" (all built in the WWI era). The rest were 82, 83, or 84 feet long (all built before 1931). The NH had 201 streamlined cars from Osgood-Bradley starting in 1934. All were 84' 6 1/4" long. The NH had 220 post-WWII stainless steel-clad cars from P-S. All were 85' 6" or 85' 9". Sub-80' cars were a strict minority in Southern New England. Paul A. Cutler III
There are and were railroads south and west of the Hudson River...............
And lots of them had lots of passenger cars less than 80' long.........even streamliners.
As I sit here and look at a copy ofthe original drawings for the B&O Cincinnation, the baggage/buffet/louge was only 76' over the buffers, making the car body less than 74'.
The rest of the train was 79' over the buffers, making the car bodies less than 77'.
But than again te New Haven was not tring to keep a fast schedule up mountain grades and around sharp curves...........
The Walthers / Rivarossi 60' heavyweight coach and combine are modelled on C&NW cars. CNW called them a "utility coach" and (you guessed it) "utility combine". I suspect the Walthers / Rivarossi 60 RPO and Baggage cars are also based on CNW cars, but many railroads had similar 60' cars.
The Athearn heavyweight RPO, baggage and coach cars are full-length cars that are shorter than 80', the other cars are shortened versions of those cars. I believe all their streamlined cars except the RPO and Baggage are 'shorties' also.
The round roof 60 MDC/Roundhouse "Harriman" heavyweights, now made by Athearn, are I think all shortened versions of longer cars.
65, 92, and 58 on Strasburg are all former P&R cars from 1910.
Reading ran many 60 foot cars (62' actual inside length) - in fact only the Crusader cars and a couple of baggage cars were longer.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks to everyone for the replies. I've had other pressing matters since starting this thread and am just now getting around to reading them. I got the answer I was hoping for. It would seem that these 60 footers, while not common, were in use on a few railroads. Since my railroad is free lanced, there's no reason it can't be one of those railroads. I just didn't want to use them if there wasn't a prototype anywhere for them.
I've had a set of the Rivarossi cars, lettered for the CB&Q, for several years and I intend to use them on my branchline if I ever get around to building it. I've been looking for a cheap way to build a small fleet (10-12 cars) of commuter coaches and I stumbled across a couple Life-Like Scenemaster cars on my LHS's second hand shelf. I think I paid 8 bucks a piece for them, not even sure what I would do with them. A few weeks ago, I took them out of the box and they don't look half bad. They had rubber diaphrams on the ends. They had truck mounted horn hook couplers and plastic wheels but that is easily remedied. Since then I've picked up a few more on e-bay, some with and some without the diaphrams. I don't know if this was a detail added to later runs by Life-Like or have been added by the original owners. There are several more available on ebay and I should have no trouble building the commuter fleet to a reasonable level for an average price of about $10 a car plus the cost of adding metal wheels, KD couplers, and diaphrams. A lot cheaper than paying north of $50 for a high end RTR coach.