Rapid Transit Holmes posted:I bought the Sunset Limited's 2 car add-on set in order to have an SP sleeping car for my Illinois Central Hawkeye. The Lionel cars are fantastic/amazing/gorgeous but, of course, wrong for my application... but I settled. The prototype car, in days of yore, was a smooth sided numbered job which was painted red and silver. By the I came along in the late '60s, the IC was running Pullmans in foreign road colors on Nos. 11 and 12 - one car in each of the two trainsets. The SP car was far preferable to the RF&P's Spotsylvania County because the SP's ceramic toilet deadened the rail and truck sounds while the County's stainless steel acted as an amplifier and every rail joint could wake the dead.
If I close my eyes, I can see the little blue night light, feel the shiny blue and white wrapper on the PULLMAN bar soap and smell that "Pullman Smell" that has no equal on this planet... *sigh*
The HAWKEYE? That ran in the Mid-West. The closest SP at the time got there was near Dallas. What train did that IC train connect to? Or did IC lease the cars?
Also, there is nothing like the square of ice cream served in the diner!
