Some of the power cars were originally set up in the green, cream and tan scheme, and painted silver later after most of the single level cars had been retired. The Burlington, like all of the Chicago carriers, had a flourishing newspaper delvery business. C&NW just stacked the newspaper bundles in the gallery car entrances, usually on the right side of the train, since C&NW ran left-handed.
On the IC wire bound bundles of newspapers were piled high on the rear vestibule of early morning and late afternoon southbound local wicker liner trains. These would be thrown off by the flagman at the various towns along the route from Kensington to Matteson. I and the other paper boys would pick up and fold our papers at the IC station and head off our bicycles to deliver them to the subscribers on our routes.
Mark
rcdrye Some of the power cars were originally set up in the green, cream and tan scheme, and painted silver later after most of the single level cars had been retired. The Burlington, like all of the Chicago carriers, had a flourishing newspaper delvery business. C&NW just stacked the newspaper bundles in the gallery car entrances, usually on the right side of the train, since C&NW ran left-handed.
My memory says that all the arch-roof power cars were painted silver in the summer of 1952 and a few of the monitor roof power cars, with the most of the monitor roof power cars painted like the single-level coaches.
It's nice to see this here. It is just one of the many benefits of the internet. Invaluable details of Railroad history like this would probably never make it to a book form. The commuter trains delivered papers out in both the morning and evening. There was the Chicago Tribune in the morning and the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun Times in the evening. The Naperville Newspaper Agency was in an old dilapidated building next to the station. It picked up a lot of papers for daily delivery, including the Aurora Beacon. I think, but am not certain, their papers came in daily bulk deliveries from a baggage car. I also don't think any (or very few) of the passenger liners stopped in Naperville back in the 50s. Napervillians went either to Chicago or Aurora to catch trains because we were too small back then (15,000 people). I could be wrong, but I believe the baggage cars were attached to a morning and an afternooncommuter train for the deliveries.
Let's get the papers straight: it was the Sun-Times and Tribune in the morning, and the Daily News and the American in the evening, adding the Daily Calumet and Hammond Times (both in the evening) in my neighborhood.
To the Editor of CLASSIC NEWSPAPER Mag:
Dad was night bartender and closed up the bar across the street from the LIRR Montauk Branch station for Rockville Centre. "Centre" sp. is correct. And he'd bring home that day's paper. Current Events Education? Yes!
Which inspires these questions: in newspaper terms, one edition was called "the bulldog" edition; which was it? And there was a "5-star" edition, same question. These pertain to the NY Daily News of the early 1950's.
LIRR trains, MU and steam, delivered bundles of papers, then, to the many close together stops in the Long Island suburbs.
I remember seeing a Burlington Northern commuter train at Hinsdale Illinois on a Sunday Morning in April of 1972 eastbound. There were the usual bi-levels but the coach next to the locomotive was a Burlington heavyweight coach painted silver. It did not have a clerestory roof. It was not a baggage car either and had windows. Was it used for newspaper deliveries or an extra coach?
I don't know, but CB&Q M.O.W. cars were orange from the 50s at least into the early 70s.
That was one of the power cars, which did have coach seats. That was pretty close to the time the HEP rebuild started. A HEP consist always had a green and white "E9", so a silver E8 or E9 needed a power car with more than two bilevels. It's possible the "E9" rebuilds were used with non-HEP cars during the transition, but I can't recall seeing any pictures that would prove it.
In the summer of 52 they did try to insure silver painted power cars were always used with bilevels.
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