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Classic Train Questions Part Deux (50 Years or Older)

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Posted by Deggesty on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 8:41 PM

In 1931 and 1932, Pullman rebuilt 20 16-section cars to have 14 sections and 6 washrooms. What was the reason for the 4 additional washrooms?

Incidentally 4 of these cars were rebuilt for service on a a New York-New Orleans train.

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 9:58 PM

You got this out of Neubauer's list while reviewing the four Williams, didn't you?

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Posted by Deggesty on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 11:32 AM

Overmod

You got this out of Neubauer's list while reviewing the four Williams, didn't you?

 

Nope, Passenger Car Catalog Pullman Operated Equipment 1912-1949 by Kratville.

This work shows diagrams of the floor plans of various cars.

The new names of the cars were Henry W. Grady, John T. Morgan, John M. Morehead, and John Slidell. 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 5:46 PM

Deggesty

In 1931 and 1932, Pullman rebuilt 20 16-section cars to have 14 sections and 6 washrooms. What was the reason for the 4 additional washrooms?

Incidentally 4 of these cars were rebuilt for service on a a New York-New Orleans train.

I guess it was because of the Jim Crow laws, racial segregation. The population of African Americans in New Orleans is still high nowadays, and the south was governed by the party that passed the Jim Crow laws, African Americans were not allowed to vote, serve on juries and local office...... Just a wild guess. Coffee

 

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Posted by rcdrye on Thursday, September 26, 2019 7:03 PM

The cars were probably a response to the Pickwick Night Coach, a double-deck Pullman-style road coach.  Pacific Greyhound bought 10 around 1930, probably for LA-SF service.

The 16 section cars cars were originally rebuilt (to plan 2412H) for SP's Sunset and Lark (used between LA and SF on both trains), with ten standard section plus four sections paired with four of the lavatories set up as "private sections".  Car names started with "Dale". Most of the cars were rebuilt in 1937 to plan 4042B (10 sec, 2DBR, 1Cpt) and named for colleges.  Four similar cars were rebuilt for Southern.

The names of the cars rebuilt to plan 2412H cars that were painted for Southern Ry. and named after important southerners:

Marshland -> John T. Morgan -> wrecked in 1933 on PRR at Tuxedo MD

Nacora -> Daleview -> John T. Morgan (1933)  -> Smith College

Trollope -> John Slidell -> Tufts College

Krantwood -> John Morehead -> Salem College

Graytown -> Henry W. Grady -> Heidelberg College

All four of the names had prevously been used on other cars assigned to Southern, built new  in 1925 and 1929.

All of the rebuilds were plan 4042B 10 secs, 2 DBR, 1 Cpt. and ended up in Southern Railway ownership.

 Thanks again to the Pullman Project database.

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Posted by Deggesty on Monday, September 30, 2019 1:54 PM

That's it!.

The sections and their assigned washrooms were arranged on each side of the aisle thus from one end of the car: public washroo,: private section, 2 private washrooms (each taking 1/2 the space of a section, and thus were not as roomy as a regular washroom), private section, and then 5 ordinary sections. From the diagram, these private sections had curtains, just as the other sections did, so the porter was not hampered in preparing the berths as they were hampered by the aisle walls in enclosed sections. The only advantage (as I see such) to these sections was that the occupant(s) did not have to wait to use the washroom.

 

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Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, October 1, 2019 6:41 PM

Although later better known for "High Speed" freight service, this steam road handled interurban trailers for short distances for several connecting lines.  Although several other trunk lines shared its territory, it was the only road that regularly did so.

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 8:01 AM

I think I remember reading about such an arrangement between the Indiana Railroad (the interurban) and the Nickle Plate (NYC&StL).  'No reason that steam railroad would not have had similar arrangements with the C&LE, Detroit-Toledo, and Northen Ohio.

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Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 11:43 AM

Yup.  Most of the distances NKP handled the cars were fairly short.  CERA box trailers had normal train air on their radial couplers.  The cars were handled in short cuts, so the relative underframe strength wasn't an issue.  Most of the activity had dried up by the time any ICC orders about arch-bar trucks in interchange service kicked in.

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 2:49 PM

A specific streetcar route operated for only one week, inaugurated and ended several years after WWII.  It represented a curtailmenet of a much longer lasting line, the curtailment caused by a reconstruction and repair project.  Its own end after one week was caused by a street repaving project, but middle portion of the original line was continued to be operated by streetcars for several months more, with one end at the one-week line's cutback terminal and the other at an even more distant terminal than the original line, using different equipment.

Only double-end streetcars were used in all these operations.

Where, when, why?

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, October 3, 2019 1:12 AM

Hint:  Both the long-term line and the subsequent one-week shortened line served two large and important educational institutions, and at the end of the week, only one was seved by the remnant, although the other still had some streetcar service.

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, October 3, 2019 11:16 AM

Hint:  The long term original line served a large city and a snall city. The one-week operation served only the small city.  The route that ran on the remaining section served the small city and a suburban town that also had a direct streetcar line to the large city.   The eventual replacement bus again served a close copy of the original route involting the large and small cities.

For a time it was operated with trackless trolleys. This involved new wire over a large turnback loop over two streets that never had streetcar rails.

Today, the bus also is close to the original route, but is extended over a second bus line that has been combined with it.  One can transfer to rail at four locations,. two at its terminals.

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Posted by daveklepper on Friday, October 4, 2019 1:42 AM

East Coast

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, October 6, 2019 1:30 AM

The constructioni project that closed the two-city line and instituted the one-week cutback to just one city, the smaller, involved a bridge rebuilding.

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, October 6, 2019 2:15 PM

The Briege having been rebuilt during the time when there was no transit service across it, still has the name of one of the two educational insitutions but is used only very occasionally by its students.  However, students of the other educaional institution use it regulaly, to and from classes, and some resent its name. The very first local horsedrawn transit service in the metropolitan area used the bridge; it had an early horsedrawn streetcar line, electrified before 1900, and lasted until the bridge was overhauled without streetcar tracks and the one-week-only service inaugurated, itself ended by a paving project at the lines other end.  When the bridge reopened, it was with pre-WWII gas buses, then came TTs with new wire over the bridge, and then diesel buses.  The TTs were the miniority make within the total large TT fleet of the system.

Before the bridge rebuilding, the streetcar line had partially or fully off-street loops at each end, but never saw regular service from any of the PCCs in a fairly large fleet of PCCs, athough PCCs did cover the line or part of it on fantrips.  One type of double-end lightwieghts from a very large fleet of them was used.  But the remaining trackage after the one week saw only the oldest cars still in use by the system, also double-end.  (PCCs were and are the only single-end cars ever used on the system.  Een then, the system did use double-end PCCs, the only North American system that used both single and double-end PCCs.)   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

th

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Posted by rcdrye on Sunday, October 6, 2019 3:24 PM

Looks like line 76, which ran from Harvard Square to MIT for a week before the MIT-Central Square section was added to the Watertown-Central Square line.  Converted to trackless trolley April 1950, to bus in 1961.  The then-MTA used type 5 and center-entrance cars on routes requiring double ended cars.  The PCCs began arriving in the late 1930s, with the double-end PCCs coming used from Dallas in 1956.  Some of the Dallas cars are still in service on the Mattapan line along with a few original Boston PCCs.

The MIT bridge links Boston and Cambridge across the Charles.  My Dad used it to get to MIT from his frat house in the 1940s.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, October 7, 2019 6:00 AM

OK except:

1.  Bridge  always named Harvard Bridge, much to annoyance of us MIT people.  When first opened around 1885, MIT, fairly new at the time, had not moved from the original Back Bay campus across the river to Cambrudge along Memorial Drive.

2,  No Dallas cars are still in service on MBTA.  Mattapan - Ashmont was their last passenger-carrying regular route, but now only the wartime PCCs are there.   No Dallas car got the heavy rebuilding and air-conditioning that all Boston PCCs still in service receive

3.  Type 4 dseck-roof heavyweight cars, even older than the Center=Entramce cars, were used on Central Square - Watertown until end of streetcar service in 1950 or 1951, and thus ran to MIT. to Memorial Drive, 1949 and early 1950. 

Look forward to your question.

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Posted by rcdrye on Monday, October 7, 2019 6:59 AM

daveklepper
Bridge always named Harvard Bridge, much to annoyance of us MIT people.

Dad always called it the MIT bridge...Maybe to annoy the Harvard folks.  At least that explains why the frat house is in Back Bay.

I'll post a new question later today.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, October 7, 2019 9:43 AM

Type 4 at Central Square

At MIT

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Posted by rcdrye on Monday, October 7, 2019 8:10 PM

All of the type 4s were scrapped.  A few type 5s are around in museums, along with a couple of center-entrance cars.

For good customer Union Pacific, Pullman rebuilt several UP-owned cars to plan 4177 for service on light-traffic lines in Idaho and Washington. The cars were Pullman-oprated, but some of the cars' accomodations were of a type not normally associated with Pullman.  To satisfy somebody's problem with the cars being labelled as ....-sleepers, they were listed under another designation in UP's and Pullman's list of cars.  Give the car designation and maybe one of the cars' endpoints.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Monday, October 7, 2019 8:52 PM

Plan 4177 comprised three cars, numbered UP 2784-2786.  They were known as Chair Sleeper cars (the name on the scanned UP drawing on the first link) and had 8 sections, and would also seat 22 in coach.  They were used between Portland and Lewiston.

The very similar Plan 4178 cars (6 sections, seating 30 or 40 in coach) were used between Portland and Yakima.

http://utahrails.net/pass/Coach-vs-Chair_UP-2781-2786.pdf

https://www.streamlinerschedules.com/concourse/track7/spokane195407.html

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 6:30 AM

Except for a few PRR Parlor-coaches UP's cars were the only cars with coach seats regularly operated by Pullman.  Main stem of the train they were used on was the "Spokane", 19 and 20.  UP was inconsistent in timetable labelling, with the plan 4177/4178 cars listed as both "Tourist" and "Standard", sometimes in the same equipment listing.  The Coach-Sleeper designation came in the early 1950s.  Both UP and Pullman records refer to the cars as "Coach-Dormitories" even before their assignment to dormitory service for dining car crews on seasonal trains like the "Utah Parks Special".

The cars were rebuilt from UP-owned coaches after the Pullman breakup and were never in Pullman ownership.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Thursday, October 10, 2019 11:57 AM

Now for another rare, but probably not unique type of passenger-carrying equipment.

Coverted from even older wooden coaches in a regional railroad's own shop, a series of coach-cabooses ended up becoming the last revenue-service passenger equipment with truss rods, and also may have been the last wooden passenger cars rostered by a Class I, as they outlived the regional that built them.  

Name the regional railroad that built them, and the route they were mostly used on.

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 5:26 PM

I'm thinking the SP&S built them for the Oregon Trunk, where they operated in mixed trains from Wishram WA to Bend OR until 1971. Since SP&S became part of Burlington Northern in 1970, the cars outlasted their (re-)builder.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 8:21 PM

The cars I am thinking of lasted another 10-15 years in service after the end of the SP&S/BN mixeds, which ended with the formation of Amtrak if I recall correctly.

A photo of one is included with one of the "The Way It Was" stories that cycle through the main page of this website.

Greetings from Alberta

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, October 18, 2019 2:20 PM

Georgia Railroad?  Their non-main-line mixed trains ended around 1983 (as CSX trains), and some of the combines used there had truss rods.

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Posted by Jones1945 on Saturday, October 19, 2019 5:48 AM

rcdrye

Except for a few PRR Parlor-coaches UP's cars were the only cars with coach seats regularly operated by Pullman. 

Speaking of PRR Parlor-coaches, I was trying to find out why there wasn't any parlor or parlor-observation car attached to PRR's Trail Blazer before the train combined with "General." I don't believe that an overwhelmingly successful all-coaches train like Southern Pacific's Coast Daylight didn't have any impact on PRR's management, which probably led them to make a wise decision - made a tremendous amount of money by running an all-coaches train between NYC and Chi-town so that they didn't have to pay Pullman a single cent.

I read an article about a test conducted in the early 1940s at Pullman's request, where a sleeper provided by Pullman was attached to the end of the consist of this all-coaches streamliner for about one month. At least one Pullman porter or a train attendant worked for Pullman (I can't remember the detail) was aboard to see what kind of service he could provide on an all-coaches train. I will need some time to find the source of this article again if our forum member wants further details, but it gave me the impression that Pullman wanted their cut/share on every train running on the New York to Chicago corridor. But of course, no follow up after the test, and PRR kept making money from this "Pullman-Free" all-coaches train ( its gross revenue in 1940 was equal to $2,260,000 or $40,416,960 today). 

Note that the PRR didn't even buy any Pullman built coaches for the first generation Trail Blazer (1939-1949) like SP's Coast Daylight, if there was any please enlighten me. Even the cars used on the 2nd generation of Trail Blazer were manufactured by PRR's own shop (P85b). There were less than ten P85a (PRR #4030-4032) and P85f (PRR #4043, 4044) streamlined coaches built by Pullman Standard but Budd was PRR's preferred coachbuilder in the postwar era. 

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, October 19, 2019 11:30 AM

Jones1945
Speaking of PRR Parlor-coaches, I was trying to find out why there wasn't any parlor or parlor-observation car attached to PRR's Trail Blazer before the train combined with "General."

I believe you will find there'd be no reason for 'Pullman' to provide such a thing; a number of railroads (wasn't New Haven one of them?) provided parlor-car service quite happily thenselves.  This might be thought of as an early kind of 'business class' amenity upgrade ... but note that Pullman could have demanded 'space charge' of some kind for coach passengers to use the thing, and coach passengers... would all camp out in there ASAP if there were no protection to keep them out (or at least move them out if they were getting drinks or snacks in there).  (I think this also clarifies somewhat why Pullman had so little 'chair' service...)

So in order for two-class travel to work, you'd need the same sort of Chinese-wall protection between the main part of the coach train and the 'parlor car' that you'd have with a combination coach-and-Pullman setup.  That implies either careful vigilance at the vestibule of a 'parlor-obs' at the rear (so that the parlor folks could get to the food facilities, etc.) or placing the parlor near the front where it might 'feel' more surge and other effects if present.

As noted, the experiment of running a predominantly 'coach' train, with all its advantages, with a couple of sleepers tacked on the rear to fill out the capability of the engine was an obvious thing to try.  The intermediate step of having a higher class of 'chair' service was an obvious thing, too.  That something like this didn't catch on, even in that era of better-subsidized marketing of passenger services, is probably as strong an indication as we need that it was not likely seen as 'favored by patronage', either.

Jones: something that comes to mind is Yourkevitch's nearly-built proposal to put the equivalent of a Trail Blazer on the North Atlantic run in the mid-Fifties.  That had much the same opportunity to add 'luxury' -- hell, the original White Star economic model for the three 'big ships' wasn't really all that far from it -- but note that it didn't happen, in part because the DH Comets showed us how the future was roaring up on us, and American aircraft then clinched it.

MInd you, I'm still bitter we never got supersonic transport aircraft, so I'm one of the wrong people to ask about substitutes for luxury transportation commanding all the extra luxury prices.  Think of a 20th-Century Red Carpet service for a 2707, which is entirely thinkable, and you'd never go back to even water-level sleepers again.

Now, back to the combinooses.  (Hint.)

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Posted by daveklepper on Saturday, October 19, 2019 1:26 PM

The original Trailblazer did have an observatin-lounge car at the rear, open to all passsengers.  I think it still was in place in the summer of 1952 when I rode the train.  The situation was that people who ordered drinks and snacks had priority on the seating.  It was a blunt-end observation car with a small galley-kitchen and tables and a coiunter with seating  and the usual observation rear facing seatsw, but with small tables, at the rear.  If my memory is correct, and I am not confusing it with some other overnight train that left from New York's Penn Sta.  Why and when the obs-lounge was dropped is something I'd be happy to learn.t

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Posted by daveklepper on Saturday, October 19, 2019 1:38 PM

Also, most PRR streamlined coaches, vestibule and one end only, low rounded roof, air conditioning, reclining seats, picture windows, were actually rebuiltr P-70s keeping the originial frame and often the trucks as well.  The postwars, P85s and subclasses, were Juniata-built.  Both outnumbered the Budd-built coaches.  The Budd coaches were built specifically for the Congresionals, Senator, and through operation on the Southerner, Tennesean, East Coast and West Coast Champions, and Silver Metero, Star, and Comet.   And later there was the Keystone and then the Metroliners and Phildelphia-financed Silverliners.

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