Lionel NYC Mail Train - NYC help needed

This video shows a number of mail express trains. Many show streamline and heavyweight styles together. I didn't specifically find TT Gray and all gray smooth sides together but expect it would have been common if not recorded. More research could find examples.

Pete

If you are talking about a mail/express train, it would have been a hodgepodge of assorted styles.  Box cars for mail storage and express cars, all with high speed trucks as well as various style baggage cars.  The train may, or may not, include an RPO.  Many of these trains may have had a coach or combine on the rear and, maybe, a caboose.

If you are looking to add express and/or an RPO to a passenger train, initially the baggage and RPO may have been ordered at the same time as the cars, so they would match.  After photos and some run time, many trains would succumb to everyday railroad life and gradually get a mix of available equipment.  Notable exception was the 20th Century which was meticulously keep in original equipment.

It's your railroad; do what makes you happy.

Thanks everyone.

On the Streamlined baggage cars did the solid painted scheme come after the stripes? or at the same time on other named trains.

Norton - I enjoyed the video

Joe

I can't say but would bet the solid scheme was later. Likely when the diesels became mostly black, cigar band, etc.

Probably very little overlap with the Niagaras but others may know. You should join the NYC Historical Society. They would know for sure.

Pete

I don't have the catalogue "open" right now, but aren't the new ones dark gray/light band? That would be the 1948 "diesel" scheme, as opposed to the 1938 "Dreyfuss" light gray/dark band steam scheme. They were both Dreyfuss-designed, actually. Not sure if this is relevant; just thought that I'd add it. I'm a very casual passenger-train-follower, so my knowledge has lots of holes among the data.

I'm going to have to re-visit the NYC passenger offerings in the new catalogue. This often costs me money. Thanx a lot...

BTW - who is ordering the Niagara wearing gray Century Hudson clothes? Disturbing. But I should have seen that coming.

D, they are offering the post '48 TT gray scheme along with another set in all gray, no bands. 

Pete

D500 posted:

BTW - who is ordering the Niagara wearing gray Century Hudson clothes? Disturbing. But I should have seen that coming.

Not me, but have you seen the Daylight cab forward, and soon to be delivered Hiawatha S3?...............

You are right, Pete, multiple stripes came first.  Solid stripes came later as loses began to mount.  It's cheaper to paint one wide stripe rather than 5 smaller ones.  Next was bilious green, then black.

I'm checking on this in Wayner's Car Names Numbers And Consists.  That is the definitive book on streamlined cars.  It lists at least 99.98% of all streamlined cars ever built for U.S. and Canadian railroads.  I worked on the NYC between 1959 and 1968 and saw many M&Eand rode on several of them.

Wayner shows the following NYC streamlined head end cars.

4 ACF RPO

2 ACF Baggage-Mail

21 Pullman/Budd Baggage-dormitory

 All of the above cars were for specific trains.

 100 Baggage cars were purchased from ACF in 1946-47.  It’s most likely these were all solid gray.  They were most likely assigned to through passenger trains and 100 was not enough cars for those trains.  So the likelihood of them appearing on an M&E train was pretty close to zero.  They won’t look right behind a Niagara except one assigned to a passenger train too heavy for a Hudson.

I never saw one of the baggage cars in the striped paint scheme shown.  That was beginning in 1959 when they were only 13 years old and very unlikely to have been repainted.

Danr posted:

If you are talking about a mail/express train, it would have been a hodgepodge of assorted styles.  Box cars for mail storage and express cars, all with high speed trucks as well as various style baggage cars.  The train may, or may not, include an RPO.  Many of these trains may have had a coach or combine on the rear and, maybe, a caboose.

If you are looking to add express and/or an RPO to a passenger train, initially the baggage and RPO may have been ordered at the same time as the cars, so they would match.  After photos and some run time, many trains would succumb to everyday railroad life and gradually get a mix of available equipment.  Notable exception was the 20th Century which was meticulously keep in original equipment.

It's your railroad; do what makes you happy.

 

The above comments apply generally to M&E trains nationwide but not to the NYC.  Anything that looks like an ordinary box car would not be seen in M&E service on the NYC.  There were express box cars rebuilt from US Army hospital cars, but thye look different fro box cars used in freight service.  In contrast, the PRR had cars that appeared to be ordinary box cars equipped mwith high speed trucks for express service.

NYC did not AFAIK use cabooses as rider cars on M&E trains.  That was another PRR thing.  There were two kinds of riders.  One was a beatup old standard coach without air conditioning.  Insides were a wreck, rode one once from Syracuse to Albany.  There were also cars rebouilt as riders with the center windows covered.  Here's a link to a photo of one

I found this through a website that has many thousands of passenger car photos - http://passcarphotos.info/

There are few railroads and interesting cars not on that site.  IT's run by Jerry LaBoda whose hobby is cataloging old passenger car photos/

. 

Mine will be a total mixed bag, and I’m just fine with that.  I’ve got a new Williams steamer (the gray one), the MTH Railking jade green baggage car, a CCC&STL coach and combo, aluminum streamliners to choose from, and I’m gonna buy two of the new Lionel RPO’s.  The NYC (previously Big Four) ran through my hometown on the way to St. Louis.  I’m not quite old enough to remember any mail or passenger trains other than the one engine/one car trains that Penn Central ran but my dad took some 8mm of the longer trains in the early 60’s.  I remember that they were sometimes a mix of car type and paint schemes.