Heavyweights VS Streamliners

I also prefer the heavyweights. I guess that's why I have more steam vs diesel.  Although I like F units.

 

doug

YES!   You put it perfectly.  I feel  the same way.  Yet, strangely, I have more aluminum stream-liners (22 or 23 - all from three different Santa Fe Super Chief Sets). My excuse is that in the mid '50s I actually rode in a sleeper on the superchief twice as a kid.  I'm not sure if I ever rode in a heavyweight car - certainly not overnight.

 

Anyway, I have only seven heavyweights - all Lionel interior-less ones I bought used to put interiors in and repaint into my Blue Comet.  I really like the look, romance and all associated with them, and to me they are the very essence of the golden age of rail travel.  I plan to buy a bunch for UP and SF use on my layout too.  I have no idea where I will keep them - completely out of shelf space, but  . . . 

I have both, but my favorite is the PRR "Fleet of Modernism" streamline cars (1938-48). I have them in MTH and K-Line, all semi-scale, and pulled by K4s and GG1 (I do not like the Loewy version K4).

I like them all, but my personal favorite is the 1939 version of the Hiawatha streamliners. These are the ribside cars, orange with a maroon stripe, with the Beaver Tail observation with the Buck Rogers fins on the tail. They were built to go with the F7 4-6-4.

 

I do run heavyweights a lot. In fact, a string of heavyweights behind a black Bi-Polar is on deck for this weekend's open house at the museum. 

Have not run my heavyweights yet (insufficient track radii) to compare. That, in itself, says something. But I will let you know. Variety is the spice of life. Maybe both???

whether heavyweight or streamline, i just wish manufacturers would offer actual Pullman plans vs generic coaches.

I like them both. But the 1948 lightweight blue ribbon fleet cars are my favorite.

 

I love all passenger trains, and, I run trains from all eras. A set of heavyweights behind a Hudson, or Streamliners behind a pair of F3's all look great to me.

I have just ordered the full 12 car set of 3 Rail's new streamliners in VIA livery to be pulled by my VIA Genesis AA set. But my favorites? My Orient Express sets and my Darstaed Pullman sets.

My favorite too is the k line "Fleet of Modernism", also pulled by either a K4 or GG1. K line did a fantastic job on these type of cars. Their Art Nouveau lines and tuscan color are hard to beat.Fred

It depends partly on which engine you want to match up with the train, to get the right look.

 

YES! But I don't think they will because they can sell more passenger cars. Can't blame though, I would do the same thing.

heavyweights

During the transition era any combination was possible and very likely

 

A variety of images of equipment I use. 

I love to mix lightweight streamlined equipment with steam and riveted cars.

A very prototypical CB&Q version of the train #39 Exposition Flyer. War rations prevented newly ordered Budd stainless cars and for 10 years the Expo ran a combination of lightweight and mostly heavyweight cars staffed by both Pullman crews and Burlington/Rio Grande/WP crews.

The same with the Orange Blossom Special in the South during the War years a combination was typical. 

I really like the juxtapose of the utilitarian Pullman heavies and the flashy colors on the new streamlines equipment; it certainly was a fun era to model.

 

Of course all steam and heavyweights is a must! 

 

I have both but really prefer the streamline lightweights. The glamor trains like the Sante Fe Super Chief, the NYC 20th Century Limited, the California Zephyr, the Congressional and so many more look totally awesome. Remember, a good many of us started our love of passenger trains when Lionel back decades ago released the four pack of Lionel Lines streamline coaches to go with their new F units. There was no more beautiful train to me at that time. That memory has held true for me since then. Hence, streamline coaches win for me.

I like more modern passenger train sets so streamliners win for me

Some of the heavyweight Pullman cars (privately owned after 1948) lasted in passenger service into the early 1960s, at least in the south. If you model any passenger trains through the 1950s, having both heavyweight and streamline (lightweight) cars is prototypical. If you like a particular road and date (say 1956) find some public timetables for that year and railroad and look at what type of sleeping car (or even dining car) is listed in the consist for a particular train. The 10-1-2 and 8-1-2 types were still in use, right beside streamline 10-6 sleepers. Some railroads, like the ACL, SAL and Southern in the south, painted the heavyweight cars to match new streamline cars, so they would blend in while sitting at a station. 

 

I am looking for some 3-rail GGD Pullman 12-1, 10-1-2 and 8-1-2 myself to mix and match. 

Um-mm, Citrus!!!

 

Seaboard also had cars painted in other RR colors.  The had some cars painted in IC colors for those trains they were assigned to, they had gray and maroon painted cars, and like Larry Neal said they had heavyweight cars painted aluminum/silver/gray to blend in with the newer streamlined Pullmans and Budd cars of the period.

 

IMO nothing could be finer than (to be in Carolina ) the Seaboard's Sun-Lounge cars, the ones with the windows going up onto the roof, vice a vista-dome.  What elegance

Heavyweights have real class over the streamliners

Like you and Eric C, I run mixed-consists (except for my "20thCentury"). That is the way I saw passenger trains in real-life when I was a boy during the 50's in the Pittsburgh, PA metropolitan area. I like that look.

Frank

Perhaps, that can be discerned a little bit here....

 

...and on the part of the PRR train visible here...

without question, Heavyweights just have the right look.

I like both and at times will run them together in the same train.

As Keith said, I also like both types of cars and will occasionally run them together in the same train.

I can't help but give my allegiance to clean, unpainted stainless steel streamlined cars.

My number one favorite train was the 1935 Hiawatha, the first train to use streamlined, full length, lightweight, welded construction.  Also, the engine was the first steam engine to have been built as a streamlined locomotive.

 

That said, while I do have a set of seven of these 21" cars behind my Weaver Atlantic and run it regularly, I also have earlier trains of heavyweight cars, the 1939 Hiawatha train behind an F-7 Hudson, and even the Brooks Stevens designed post war Hiawatha and Olympian Hiawatha trains. 

 

And, yes, there are times when I do mix heavyweight cars into trains of lightweight cars.  The Olympian Hiawatha ran such a mix for several years before Pullman got around to delivering the last of the streamlined cars.  The trains ran with heavyweight observations with open platforms, heavyweight diners and several other cars.

 

Usually, but certainly not always, you'd find the riveted steel heavyweights as the head end cars, baggage, storage and RPO, but also intermittently spaced throughout the trains you could find coaches, diners, parlor cars, etc. particularly when the streamlined cars were out for service or repair.

 

One of my favorite types of trains, and I always tried to get our manufacturers to offer a set like this, was the "fast mail" train.  It was a train with passenger train priority, but it was made up of RPO cars, baggage and storage cars, and maybe one passenger car as an accomodation.  I've "borrowed" head end cars from other passenger trains to make up my own "fast mail", and believe me, there is a neat mix of different car types.

 

Paul Fischer

While I model a short line that will only operate heavyweights, but that connects with Class 1's, which will service a main postal facility with light and heavyweight RPO's, I won't be running other lightweights. I am a fan of the California Zephyr, and wish somebody would model its Rio Grande predecessor of steam pulled heavyweights, in the prewar dark colors (not silver/orange). An often short train of mixed passenger cars was the Grande's Yampa Valley Mail that ran up into north central Colorado, sometimes pulled by an Alco PA and containing maybe a heavyweight RPO/baggage and a streamlined coach, but a lot of other combinations were seen depending on need.

Streamliners all the way - the drab Pulman green that so many heavyweights wore was pretty uninspiring compared to the colorful smoothside and flashy stainless lightweight cars.

Heavyweights make a definite statement!

I have both, though most are streamliners because these are the ones I prefer.

Santa Fe's Chief in the Streamliner era with Northern steam power and one heavyweight head end car: