On most railroads, back in the days of passenger service, the railroad’s own passenger cars (other than sleeping cars) would form the consist of most if not all passenger trains. A major exception was jointly operated trains, when equipment from two or more railroads operating the route would be a normal sight in the trains. The other exception was sleeping cars.
Pullman-assigned sleeping cars, prior to 1948, were usually painted and lettered for the host railroad. But there were exceptions, such as when a railroad would have requested (rented) extra equipment from Pullman to handle a convention or some other special occasion, or when a railroad’s car had been damaged or even wrecked, and Pullman might temporarily supply a stand-in. Rail photographers loved to get shots of this kind of event, so probably we have more documentation than is statistically correct. Still, these events certainly did occur.
Here’s an example on the Southern Pacific, shown in the SP Historical & Technical Society book on sleeping cars, Volume 2 of the series Southern Pacific Passenger Cars (Lou Cross photo). New York Central 10-6 (10 roomettes, 6 double bedrooms) Perch River is at Oakland in 1949, one of the “through” cars in Overland service. There were also Pennsylvania Railroad cars in similar service, and also photographed in Oakland,
Similar views of off-road passenger cars were seen in Los Angeles, for cars that had moved over the Sunset and Golden State routes, particularly from the Missouri Pacific roads and both Illinois Central and L&N.
As most modelers with prototype interests know, the world of passenger railroading was greatly changed in 1948, when Pullman was obliged by an anti-trust suit to divest itself of either its passenger carbuilding business, or its ownership and leasing of passenger cars. It chose to sell the latter, and in a somewhat complicated financial dance, a great many of its cars were sold to railroads that wanted them, at book value.
Each railroad naturally chose many of the Pullman-owned cars that had been built for that railroad’s specific trains or specific needs, along with a certain number of additional cars for expected needs. All would then be lettered for the owning railroad. The unsold ones remained with Pullman, and many, regardless of paint scheme, then might appear in temporary assignments all over the country.
Although such cars were not frequent on the Coast Route, they did appear. Below is a good example, a Paul Lukens photo from Ryan and Shine’s excellent book, Night Trains of the Coast Route. It shows a New York Central 4-4-2 sleeper on the rear of the San Francisco-bound Lark, and ahead of it, two Budd 10-6 sleepers, one SP and one UP. All three are deadheading. The photo is well captioned as, “The Pullman Pool at work.”
I decided to model a couple of cars like this. One is a Rivarossi streamlined sleeping car (a 10-6), an Illinois Central car in its distinctive orange and brown paint scheme. Like I have done with other Rivarossi sleepers, I added view blocks, weight inside, and both face plates and stabilizer rods to the diaphragms, with body-mount couplers and replacement Central Valley trucks added after this photo (for the procedure I followed, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/06/modeling-sp-passenger-cars-part-20.html ).
Another car that can play this deadheading role is my Pennsylvania 10-6 sleeper, Stoney Rapids, from Walthers. Below you see this car at the back of a deadhead move, sandwiched between SP 9106 at right, a 13 double bedroom car, and SP Clover Mountain at left, an 8-5 car (8 sections, 5 double bedrooms).
These off-road deadhead movements add variety to the limited passenger traffic I can depict on my small segment of the SP Coast Route. And I enjoy depicting this little slice of passenger railroading history.
Tony Thompson
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