A railroad website whose location escapes me right now, once said that at Christmas time, to handle the crush of parcels and Christmas cards, the B&M would operate solid trains of baggage and mail cars up the Connecticut River line. The poster concluded by saying he doubted any model railroader had every modeled at train like that.
Well, that sounded like a challenge. I have been increasing my baggage car fleet at train shows, repainting and decaling the train show fodder for roads likely to be sending parcels and mail to upstate New England.
Here we are, exiting the tunnel under Mt. Bunkbed passing Franconia Paper Co. The layout is a narrow around the walls deal in my downstairs guest bedroom. A requirement was to be narrow enough to permit putting up guests in the guestroom. A drawback is I cannot fit much into a photo without the edges of the layout showing.
And here is the end of the train. Baggage cars are Athearn heavyweights and IHC's.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
David.
Nice work. You can not forget the venerable Pennsy B60b baggage cars. There were hundreds of them scattered across the whole country.
I have also read an article a long time ago that stated during rush times and shortages of special cars other types of cars could be pressed into mail storage and package express service. I imagine at one time or more that you could see express reefers, express horse cars and scenery express cars in mail transportation service.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
Very interesting, I didn't know they had full trains of baggage cars at Christmas time.
Nice lookin consist you have there, and nice layout also.
Michael
CEO- Mile-HI-RailroadPrototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989
Pete,
I didn't forget the Pennsy. This is my Pennsy baggage car.
Out west, specially selected Pacific Fruit Express reefers were leased for storage/parcel mail service during the holidays.
Dave
MotleyVery interesting, I didn't know they had full trains of baggage cars at Christmas time.
Mostly run as extras right behind the first sections. Not only Christmas time. Remember the days before UPS, Fed Ex and others where Parcel Post, Railway Express, and the Post office saw all the small package and all the mail service. There were no coast to coast flights scheduled every hour and airports were not even a twinkle in the designers eye. Trucks had hard rubber tires and highways were dirt paths. Everything went by rail.
Dave.
Nice.
I occasionaly run trains of solid head-end cars. The one shown below was detouring because of a wreck:
CNR horse express (built from a Rivarossi coach):
NYC wood baggage (former Athearn steel Pullman):
Grand Valley insulated express car (built from an Athearn wood reefer (new wood ends, new roof with no ice hatches, and express trucks):
CNR Express/RPO (a slightly modified Rivarossi car):
CNR Express Boxcar with storage mail (modified Accurail, with Athearn express trucks):
Pennsy express reefer (a re-worked Walthers r-t-r car):
Pennsy X-29 in Railway Express service (a Red Caboose kit, extensively modified to match an existing prototype):
Grand Valley mail storage car (MDC Harriman-style car, with modified doors, new underbody, and six-wheel trucks:
EG&E insulated express cars 2034 and 2033 (MDC r-t-r milk cars, slightly modified for package service):
And another Grand Valley express car (similar to 2035, shown earlier):
A Lackawanna boxcar, supposedly equipped for express service (modified Train Miniature boxcar):
Likewise this Nickel Plate "express" boxcar:
A CNR express reefer (re-worked Athearn car):
Grand Valley 2072 a 64' wood Express/Baggage car (built from an Athearn 72' steel Pullman):
EG&E 2054, another Express/Baggage similar to 2072:
EG&E's "Macassa", an 88-seat coach (a slightly modified Branchline kit):
It's the rider car for the tail-end crew, with plenty of room to spare for a few railfans collecting rare mileage:
Wayne
Wayne.
That is some very good looking rolling stock and a fantastic looking railroad you have got. You are an excellent modeler.
For more examples of only head end car trains there are the weekly newsprint trains, Seasonal express reefer use, Milk trains, and the yearly catalog trains. Any one of these could be run as an extra section of a scheduled train. Then you can have the specials like the football specials, exposition specials, horse racing specials and the like. There were daily mail trains to and from major cities six days a week. Most of these would be scheduled and not run as extras.
Thanks for your kind words, Pete.
I originally posted those photos and several other related ones almost two years ago, along with a little story to go with them. Anybody who's interested can view the whole shebang HERE
On my road, only regular passenger trains are scheduled, with all freights moving as extras. In the summer, though, there are quite a few passenger excursion trains running to the locale shown in the photos. If they can't be combined into one of the regularly-scheduled passenger trains (there aren't a lot of them), then they may run as second sections of those trains. Otherwise, they're carded as Extras. Since the road is a secondary line, running mostly locals which have to "work" each town, it's usually not too difficult to slip two or three cars of excursionists past for a day at the lakeside attractions.
The New York Central always ran solid M&E trains. The trains would frequently include Baggage Cars, converted WWII troop train cars, Flexi-van and even forign roads cars, especially REA cars. Of course I would assume the Pennsy did this also, but I am not a Pennsy Fan, so I don't have much info on that.
Would you consider a Pacemaker train a M&E train? It was LCL and fast freight. I am talking about back when the Pacemaker service was available, not later on in their history when the Pacemaker boxcars were just boxcars.
Paul
Dayton and Mad River RR
I found this while looking for something else. I have not looked at all the pages but notice how many trains are just express head end equipment! train #49 the New England Express is all head end except for a crew car. This appears to be the only named head end car only train. There are quite a few trains of just head end cars. http://prr.railfan.net/passenger/MakeUpOfTrains_ER_NYZone_1929.pdf
The SP was known to use it's Coast/Valley mail trains as a ferry service as well, I recall when trainsmasters would require a visit to the Los Angeles General Shops for wheel/axle work many a time they were on the point of the mail trains, often in mutliples! Post 1964 they were confined to the commute pool with Bayshore responsible for most repairs, so it was a rare treat indeed to see them off their normal assignments.