Santa Fe Passanger Cars

Seeing that the AC6000 came out long after Santa Fe got out of the passenger business, the absolute correct answer would be none.

However, with the exception of the Valley series smooth side sleepers (which were originally painted two tone gray) and the Pendulum coach (two tone blue and silver) the bulk of the Santa Fe streamline fleet was either Budd or Pullman Standard fluted stainless steel, minus any kind of striping or window band color.

Rusty

Since the AC6000 in Warbonnet colors is a total fantasy scheme anyway, you can run whatever you want with it.

You might consider the Buy Board to check out what is available. I sent you an e-mail but it did not process.

Thanks everyone, I was unaware of the history behind the Santa Fe, I only purchased the Warbonnet because I though it looked sharp.

Always up for a learning experience!!!

As mentioned above, all streamlined Santa Fe passenger cars were unpainted stainless steel cars (photo below), so if you want to do a passenger train with your engines, those would be best. At least you can pretend (if you want to) that it was the Santa Fe business train, which the Santa Fe had until its merger with the BN, and which used the streamlined stainless steel Santa Fe cars. It was never pulled by your engines, of course, but somewhat similar modern engines did pull it.

To give you an idea of dates, one of the last Santa Fe engines to pull passenger cars was the FP-45, built about 1967 (photo below). The AC6000s didn't appear until late 1996 (and none were ever painted in the Warbonnet scheme, as has been mentioned), 25 years after Santa Fe stopped its passenger service. Most passenger operations by railroads in the U.S. ceased on May 1, 1971, when Amtrak took over nationwide passenger service.

I run a set of MTH El Capitan aluminum cars.  They are very bright, shiny and look great to my way of thinking.  But, as in all things, beauty in in the eye of the beholder, and, in this hobby, I will probably be shunned by many.

George, this is a BNSF Employee special about 3 years ago, modern diesel's pulling ex Santa Fe and BN passenger cars, so using your AC 6000 Santa Fe locomotive to pull some Santa Fe passenger cars would not be too far off prototypical.

Except neither the Santa Fe nor the current BNSF have any "war bonnet" styled/painted AC 6000 units. Come to think of it, I'm not sure the BNSF even HAS any AC 6000 units at all, do they?

Actually the old K-Line Santa Fe HIGH LEVEL El Capitan passenger cars are fantastic also, especially the full set of 21" scale cars. Plus, you can haul them with a nice set of War Bonnet A-B-B-B "F" units, or the war bonnet painted FP45s. All in all, a truly beautiful train set.

The Santa Fe business train:

(close enough to the look, IMHO - actually, extremely close.) 

Thank you everyone!!

I really like the look of the aluminum cars.  Will check out the availability of what's out there.

George

Breezinup, very nice pic, that's what I was trying to convey in my previous post about it being not to far off prototypical, although George has an AC 6000 with a fantasy war bonnet paint scheme, it will make for a very nice train pulling a set of Santa Fe passenger cars. 

Think I solved my dilemma.

I found on ebay someone selling the three passenger cars from the current santa fe ready to run set and I will do a pre order on the Baggage and Diner cars from Nassau Hobby.  The passaenger cars have the war bonnet color scheme.

Thank you again for all your suggestions.

George

George,

I'm not familiar with the exact cars you are referring to here but be careful with the size. Some of the 'Ready to Run' sets had the very short (12"?) 027 type cars while the regular RK Streamliners are 16" long. These are very nice with full interiors and look great. The Premiere cars are 18" and look best with full scale diesels.

Your 048 curves will probably preclude you using the 18" cars but the 16" ones would be just fine!

c.sam thanks for the heads up.

I was mulling over the size issues before too.  My freight cars are about 11 inches or so and they look ok to me given my track limitations.  The passenger cars are about 13 inches,  so we are in the ball park.

Here is a partial picture of the freight cars

George

As c.sam notes, those cars are very short  - way too short for your large engine. They'll look a bit silly, actually. Plus, Santa Fe never had any war bonnet passenger cars. All their streamlined cars were silver (stainless steel) - no paint. You should get at least the 15" length aluminum cars for your engine, which will still work fine on your layout.

This is the best reason to make a purchase in this hobby.   

Re the cars...I'd follow your instincts on those, too...with one caveat already stated.  The shorty O-27 type would look very out-of-place with an engine the size of the AC6000.  On the other hand, the MTH 15" aluminum cars they made during, and as part of, the El Capitan set in 1997 would look really snazzy.  The four-car set was 20-6021, the 2-car add-on 20-6121.  They're basically bright aluminum with a red letterboard stripe, but they also have a narrow red/yellow/black stripe mid-body that complements the engine's warbonnet scheme very nicely. 

No, not a prototypical scheme....but for many of us, after the third rail....who cares?

Hmmm....actually, though, the Santa Fe did, in fact, have a train painted in a similar scheme, The Valley Flyer.  Although it was made up of heavyweight cars, not the Budd/Pullman/ACF modern cars, they were...for a time, anyway...painted basically silver with a red/yellow/black stripe along the bottom edge of the cars that ran up to and complemented the special paint scheme on the special power...a 4-6-2 steam locomotive.  Weaver once did an excellent version of this engine, too!!

Hey, follow your purchasing pulse, pal.

KD (a.k.a., Lucas Gudinov...)

I hear what you guys are saying.  I probably should have thought it out more when I purchased the AC 6000 originally.

I tried mating the freight cars originally and  the ones I found averaged 10 or 11 inches.  I am running it on a 9 X 5 ping pong table and they take up half the layout now when they are all on.  In hindsight, I probably should have looked for longer cars.

At least the passenger cars will be longer at 13 inches each per the catalog, but 15 inch alumininum would have been preferred.

George

Good eye, George.