Head End Cars?

Paul:

Yes; express reefers and boxcars would be considered head end equipment.

Curt

Milk cars, both reefers and tanks.
Lee Carlson

In the late 1960's, there was a small number of special flatcars with through steam lines, signal lines, and high-speed trucks, which carried containers of storage mail.

Yup.  Sometimes boxcars were equiped with high speed trucks and used as head end cars, particularly for package freight service like REA.

 

Paul Fischer

Some roads also ran piggy back trailers on flat cars  fitted with steam and signal lines as head end equipment.  I don't recall the names for these roads but i do recall seeing photos of passenger trains with piggy back flat cars.  

Also, the HEP (head end power) car. Needed to power the passenger cars before the unit was built into the engines.

 

Here's some examples from Alaska RR

HEP cars or even steam generator cars aren't really "head end" cars as they extensions of the locomotive(s) and are non-revenue.

 

Rusty

Rusty, thanks for the prototypical perspective. I didn't think of it that way. I just considered that it wasn't a B unit.

Rusty,

Thank you for the Alaskan HEP link.

These are great cars for modeling, I enjoy unique and unusual RR. equipment, which is made special for RR work.

Ralph

A number of railroads purchased Pullman troop sleeper and kitchen cars from WW II and converted them into Baggage/Mail/Express cars, employing them in head end service. W/o doing research, the following roads come to mind: CB&Q, NYC, C&O, and Rock Island. These cars were equipped with Allied Full Cushion trucks, but, alas, the Burlington found that they "nosed" and tended to pick switch points, which caused a number of serious wrecks. The rather formidable looking Allied Full Cushion trucks were replaced with more conventional Bettendorfs.

mark s:  interesting about the truck problem on troop cars....were those problem trucks the original trucks the cars went through WWII on, or were they later CB&Q

installations?  And I would think of Bettendorfs (common freight trucks) as being of too short a wheelbase and of a lesser load rating....but maybe not?  Rock Island and

others did not have the same problem?  (I like these cars, from Weaver, but can't

use them, as my period is 1940..pre-war)

CO HI Railer - Yes, it was the original Allied Full Cushion trucks that gave the Q the problem. I was quite disappointed to learn that, as I remember seeing those BME (Baggage/Mail/Express - hate when people use abbreviations w/o translation, but BME is what the Q called the cars) cars flying through my home town on the Burlington, on such trains as the combined Coloradoan/Nebraska Zephyr. Thought those trucks looked quite formidable and quite capable of high speed. Bettendorfs were used on 40' boxcars that were equipped with steam and signal lines and were the predecessor BME's on the Burlington. They apparently were quite successful, plus the troop cars equipped with Bettendorfs remained in service on the Burlington until the mail contracts started evaporating in the late '60's.

Addendum: do not recall the troop sleeper cars and their Allied Full Cushion trucks causing any wrecks during WW II, but, then, "main" trains (troop trains) ran at slower speeds.