@raising4daughters posted:So how about the reverse? Streamlined diesels like PAs, E, and F units with heavyweights?
It was a very common practice for most railroads and in some cases well into the 1960's. You would often find early first-generation diesels being reassigned to lesser trains that didn't warrant being upgraded with newer streamlined cars. These secondary trains in many cases generated lots of the revenue from head end traffic. In the case of Alco PAs, they tended to get bumped to secondary trains sooner than EMD units due to the poorer reliability.
Heavyweight coaches remained in commuter service in the 70's and often E units would be assigned to pull those.
I am currently putting together a train of heavyweight cars to go with my E5 as I think it is more interesting than matching it with streamlined cars. Once the E7s, E8s and E9s took over the mainline trains for the Burlington, the E5s were "demoted".
Finally on this thought, mail and express trains tended to be mostly heavyweight cars in the form of express boxcars, reefers, baggage cars, and RPOs. In order to qualify as a passenger train and therefore run at passenger speeds, a single coach or combine known as a rider car would be added as the last car in the train and one could purchase low-cost tickets for very basic service. Crews also used these cars.
Personally, I find these mixed trains to be very interesting trains because of their lack of conformance between car types, paint schemes, and even road names.
