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I have a color motion picture I took of the westbound Sunset Limited somewhere in the southwest in August of 1954 behind two ALCo PA units. It was all Budd streamlined cars with the red stripe. A few days later I saw Daylight painted cars in California.

Can't answer your second question definitively.

Last edited by rheil

I hate to say it, but it all depends of the time.  At first they were kept pretty much to each train.  But after a while, there was mixing.  A SP president had enough and want everything painted like the SUNSET livery.  Of course SP also had cars in olive green, UP yellow and two tone grey as well.

It is more complex than that, but that is the condensed version.

And do not forget that SP was also a leg of the Golden State consists, even as far back when the original GS was made up of all green heavyweights.  I have a pic of a SP GS4 pulling a mixed pass consist, mostly of the GS cars.  However, the head cars are mix of green and Daylight colors.  As with all railroads, the bottom line was always revenue, and the matching color scheme of the consist did not always hold the upper hand.

Jesse    TCA   12-68275

Last edited by texastrain

In the 1950s, I traveled numerous times with my parents in early summer from Tucson to Chicago on the Golden State. After a day or two in Chicago (always including a visit to the O-gauge layout at the Museum of Science and Industry) , we boarded the New England States for Boston, then the Flying Yankee to Bangor, Me., then finally by car to Bar Harbor. At the end of the summer, we retraced this route to Arizona. These trips generated indelible impressions of the American landscape for an impressionable little boy looking out the window of a sleeping car!

Number 90 posted:

The last time I rode the Coast Daylight with a mixed (original fluted siding and Daylight colors along with re-sided Daylight cars having plain siding and in Sunset colors) was August, 1965.

So if I were modeling a 1965 Southern Pacific passenger consist, would the following cars work?  Did the Alco PA's and E-9's have the grey with the bloody nose paint scheme by then?

 

 

Chas posted:
Number 90 posted:

The last time I rode the Coast Daylight with a mixed (original fluted siding and Daylight colors along with re-sided Daylight cars having plain siding and in Sunset colors) was August, 1965.

So if I were modeling a 1965 Southern Pacific passenger consist, would the following cars work?  Did the Alco PA's and E-9's have the grey with the bloody nose paint scheme by then?

 

 

I had ordered those Lionel Sunset Limited cars until I discovered it really would have the fantasy Vista Dome car.  A great looking set otherwise, the finish is spectacular at night reflecting glimmers of light just like the real thing. Often wondered who at Lionel reviewed and ordered it. My guess is the same fellow who produced the Santa Fe 2801 FM unit with white stripes rather than silver...

 

 

 

There were at least three types of SP passenger cars with silver sides and a red stripe at the top:

  • Genuine Budd stainless steel cars with fluted siding, built in 1950 for the Sunset
  • Re-sided Pullman-Standard Daylight cars with flat stainless steel exteriors
  • Other cars from the City of San Francisco and the Lark, with painted steel sides
  • A few heavyweight head-end cars that made the cut.

Southern Pacific began using red and grey instead of red and orange (or black widow) on its passenger diesels beginning in 1959 or '60, and they all went grey as fast as they could be repainted.  SP treated its passenger engines better than it did the passengers.  The passenger engines were highly maintained and very clean.

Last edited by Number 90

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