Mixing steam locomotives with streamlined passenger cars?

So how about the reverse? Streamlined diesels like PAs, E, and F units with heavyweights?

@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.

@GG1 4877 posted:

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.

Probably one of my favorite trains to run is my version of Santa Fe's Fast Mail Express. Those trains are great because you can basically mix in whatever express/head end cars you want and have it be prototypical.

I'm currently working on assembling a late 40's version of Santa Fe's Grand Canyon. The train was made up of a mix of heavyweight and lightweight cars along with a bunch of express and head end cars. I really can't find any O gauge heavyweight sleepers painted in Santa Fe's green with black roof scheme with Santa Fe lettering (I keep finding Pullman lettered ones) so I'll end up painting my own to mix in with lightweight sleepers on the train. In the late 40's the Grand Canyon could have anything from the transcontinental passenger pool to power it, so 3460 class Hudsons. 2900/3776/3765/3751 class Northerns, F3s/F7s, and PAs are appropriate to pull the train.

@Lou1985 posted:

I really can't find any O gauge heavyweight sleepers painted in Santa Fe's green with black roof scheme with Santa Fe lettering (I keep finding Pullman lettered ones)

You mean like these Lionel cars?

I do have a bunch of the Pullman ones as well, both out of the Lionel set and some K-Lines.

@Lou1985 posted:

Probably one of my favorite trains to run is my version of Santa Fe's Fast Mail Express. Those trains are great because you can basically mix in whatever express/head end cars you want and have it be prototypical.

I am working on that one too.  I am up to 8 ATSF baggage cars, 4 RPO cars, 6 express boxcars and an 80' rider coach for the ATSF along with through baggage and express boxcars from the PRR, NYC and Erie that also ran on that train.  I just need to get to the club and run it!

For sleepers GGD offered the 12-1 Pullman sleepers in ATSF also.  Not easy to find but they show up on the auction site from time to time.

There is almost no combination of locos and cars that you can put together, from that era, that wouldn't be prototypical. Diesels pulled heavyweights. Streamlined cars and heavyweights could be found in the same train. Although mixed types were usually found on secondary trains. Some heavyweights got modernized and were used on the top streamlined trains of some roads.

Some really great ideas here fellas - how about more photos of your sets running?

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

You mean like these Lionel cars?

I do have a bunch of the Pullman ones as well, both out of the Lionel set and some K-Lines.

The ones that are lettered for Santa Fe aren't sleeper cars, they're diners and lounge cars. The sleepers have Pullman lettering. I want sleepers with "Santa Fe" in place of the Pullman lettering, since that is accurate for a post 1947 version of the Grand Canyon. I already found some cheap that are on the way to me for a painting project to get exactly what I want. I'm not afraid to paint and decal models .

I'm afraid that I mix steamers with streamliner passengers cars all the time, my excuse being that I once saw a photo of an SP cab forward pulling a number of heavyweight passenger cars. There are some diesel-powered passenger trains that I think are too iconic for this treatment, namely the Texas Special, but I'm afraid that in my minuscule empire SP gets the full treatment, as witness this "Daylight Fantasy Excursion Train" led by a GS5 with the Daylight cab forward behind - and out of frame in the photo are three Shasta Daylight Alco's bringing up the rear. Totally unreal, I confess, but I like it. The cars are mostly Lionel 18" aluminum from the Shasta Daylight set but I've mixed in some other Daylight cars I have.

The only heavyweight cars I have are actually pulled by a Little Joe electric!

I always thought streamlined passenger cars were appropriate with steamers......

....from the 1953 catalog.....

....from the 1957 catalog......

I'm sure that I'm not alone when I say that the Lionel catalog had a lot of influence on me as a kid on what I thought( or, thought I knew) about railroads........for example......since the 57-59 catalogs only depicted the N&W J with freight consists, I didn't realize that it was a mainly passenger locomotive until I lived in Virginia 20+ years later......

Peter

I love running my old, inherited 2400 series passenger cars with my old, inherited 2056 steamer. But, since they're Lionel Lines, I wondered if that was more fantasy than reality, but from this thread, it seems like steam with streamliners and diesels with heavyweights were both commonplace.

@GG1 4877 posted:

For sleepers GGD offered the 12-1 Pullman sleepers in ATSF also.  Not easy to find but they show up on the auction site from time to time.

I haven't had luck finding them. I just bought some K-Line cars I'm going to repaint instead. Should be a fun project. Protocraft has decals for the cars as well, thankfully.