Mixing Train Cars

The answer to each and every one of your questions is,,,,,,,,,,,,,,YES!

That is why many, MANY model railroaders operated "mixed freight" trains, i.e. just like the real railroads.

Arnold; the short answer to all of your questions is “yes”.  It would not have been at all unusual for a shipper served by the New Haven, for example, to have loaded a New Haven car destined to a customer served by the PRR. In short, any railroad’s equipment would have been found in any other railroad’s trains. And the same is still true today.

Curt

Thanks Hotwater and Curt, but what about passenger cars?

Did railroads commonly run passenger cars from different railroads?

If so, which ones?

Or, did they ever do it?

I re-read your replies, and a careful reading of Curt's above reply suggests that the answer to these questions is also Yes. Is that true?

Yes again.

I think passenger cars did not go off line as much - except for express cars which are considered passenger cars.

coaches especially stayed on line in most cases.   They were generally used for shorter trips and were lower priced accomodation.

Pullmans run by pullman, or by the RRs after Pullman was broken up, probably did move around but on specific patterns.    For example trains on the PRR from NYC might have a sleeper or 2 for Florida that they take to washington DC.   the sleeper would be transferred to the Southern, ACL or SAL to continue to Florida.     Stuff like that happened in Chicago too with through cars going to the SF or UP or somebody else I think.

Freight cars went everywhere however.     Remember, the majority of manufacturing in steam days was in the East and probably the north.    PRR, NYC, B&O and a few others were probably the source of a lot of goods flowing west and south.    PRR had over 40 thousands X29 boxcars alone, more that the entire fleet for some RRs.    It would be possible for them to go anywhere in the US I would think.   Reefers probably flowed the other way loaded.   Fresh produce from the west and south flowed to the major population centers in the norht and east.  

Hoppers most likely did not move as far afield.     Gons and flats somewhere in between moving heavy goods.  

Look at videos of RR operations and note the mix of cars.    Study pictures of freight yards.

There was more interchange of passenger cars in the northeast, because several trains ran their route over several railroads.  Examples I can quickly think of were trains that ran between Boston or New York City and Montreal or Toronto, as well as through cars which left the New York area on Lackawanna or Lehigh Valley, and continued west of Buffalo on other railroads to Chicago.  One who posts here rode a through Pullman that originated on the Lackawanna and arrived in Chicago on the Nickel Plate when he was a college student.

Storage mail cars were often interchanged at Chicago, and the secondary passenger trains operating east and west of there frequently had at least one foreign line head end car, and often had several.

Coaches and chair cars were not often handed off in interchange, unless the entire train operated over more than one railroad.

Looking at some of the Greg Scholl videos (Overland Route and SP Vintage Steam) Southern Pacific had some trains that were quite a mix of colors from the various roads Pullmans that were in the consist.  With his Union Pacific Classic steam you had a mixture of various roads passenger cars for the troop trains.

Mark

ACL, SAL and Southern all had passenger trains that originated in the northeast and were handled by PRR to Washington.

PRR had two trains from Washington, the Federal and the Senator that were handled by the New Haven from New York to Boston. Both carrier’s equipment was used in those trains.

PRR’s Penn Texas ran from New York to St. Louis with through sleepers to San Antonio handled by the MP. MP equipment would also show up in this train east of St. Louis.

PRR’s South Wind originated in Chicago and operated over PRR to Louisville thence L&N, ACL and FEC to Miami. Equipment from the L&N, ACL and PRR, including engines, ran through over the entire route.

There were also transcontinental sleeper services offered on alternating days that had SP, UP and RI sleepers handled between Chicago and the east coast by PRR and NYC.

This is just a couple of examples.

Curt

So interesting. Thanks Hot Water, Curt, Jim, Tom and Mark for sharing this information.

One more thing: what about cabooses?

For instance, was it common for the PRR to have a train with a NY Central caboose?

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

One more thing: what about cabooses?

No.

For instance, was it common for the PRR to have a train with a NY Central caboose?

No.

Jack / Arnold; I can think of one exception. Lehigh Valley had a handful of their cabooses painted white that served in a through pool service with the NKP over Buffalo. NKP would turn them around at Bellevue, OH and send them back east to the LV.

Curt

Arnold,

In addition to all the great answers from the "real pros" here on the form, let me tell you about one of my favorite pastimes. I have a small library of books with marvelous pictures of Northeastern railroads (many by Morning Sun Books) and I always scrutinize every car in these photos, especially yard shots and freight service. Sometimes I have even taken to using a magnifying lens to try and make out more distant, out of focus elements of pictures! I am always amazed at the variety of roads showing up 'far from home' and the various types of rolling stock.  Growing up, this also helped me to learn a great deal about US geography (e.g., "Route of the Zephyrs? Soo Line?  Where is that? What is that!"). Such "sloganeering" or just plainspoken origins ("Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon") were, and continue to be, gateways to my imagination and interest.

Some folks have presented various basic formulas such as 70% home road, 30% other for mixing up freight consists, which seems to work well. Nowadays, I don't worry about it so much--if I like a car (or a "unit"), I'll run it.  That's playing by my homefield advantage!

Not only is it common to see mixed freight cars, but also throw in mixed locomotive power as well. It's very common to see various combinations of power from foreign railroads as either borrowed power or paying back "horsepower hours".  Although I live near a CN line, I've seen every other Class 1 railroad either leading or trailing a CN train.

Rob

Some thoughts on what the Pennsylvania Railroad did.

During the steam to diesel transition, the Penny owned about 10% of all freight cars in interchange service, so everyone should have a Pennsy car or two in their freight trains.

Depending on the era, Pennsy freight trains were 40-60% Pennsy cars with the rest of the cars from other roads.  Probably the same with other large roads like the NYC, SF, UP, etc.

As Curt stated, many roads would have agreements with other roads for passenger through car service, either between the Gulf Coast and East/West Coast, and between West Coast and East Coast. For my Pennsy passengers trains I have two cars for coast-to-coast service.

First is a Golden State sleeper that was carried over three roads.  Going from west to east: SP from Los Angeles to Tucumcari, the RI to Chicago, and the PRR (NYC on alternating days) to New York City.

My other coast-to-coast sleeper is a California Zephyr car.  This car started out in Oakland (bus from San Francisco) and via the WP to Salt Lake City, the D&RGW to Denver, the CB&Q to Chicago.  From there, again on alternating days, the Pennsy or NYC took it to New York City.

Like all the major roads, the Pennsy had several other agreements that had sleepers go to the Mid-West and Gulf Coast.

The Rutland’s Green Mountain Flyer had a mix of cars. The train went from NY City to Montreal. NYC power to Troy NY. Then Rutland power to Montreal. Although sometimes B&M power was used to Rutland where engines were switched out. Mostly NYC coaches with Rutland on the head end. Although I have a consist list from the mid 40’s with a B&A coach. At Rutland B&M equipment would be added and the Rutland Pacific would be switched out for a 10 Wheeler.

Another mixed train. The East Wind.  Ran only in the summer from Washington DC to Maine. Pennsy, NH and B&M power and equipment was used. The one caveat is all the equipment even though owned by different RR’s was painted to match. MTH did the set a few years ago.

In the late 1960s there was a large troop build up in Viet Nam. Troop trains came into Oakland on the Santa Fe where the troops were transferred to ships. The trains were made up with sleeping cars from all the eastern railroads all mixed together. I do not recall how food service was handled.   After the trains were unloaded they returned to Richmond, CA where the cars were cleaned. This is where I had an opportunity to go through all the cars and see the interior decor. Another thing I remember about these cars was all the newspapers that were left behind and all the different cities they were from.   After a while, due to the protesters that started to meet the trains, the arrival time was shifted from early afternoon to 3:00 AM.   After this change the only opportunity I had to see these trains/cars was in the coach yard.  

As for cabooses, some states had individual regulations governing minimum requirements for cabooses.  California had requirements for cabooses that included things like first aid kits, stretchers, seats, toilets, heating, etc.  Due to these requirements many cabooses from out of state roads were turned at state line and not allowed in the state. On the road I worked for, this occurred at Elko, NV. The UP had cabooses designated as “pool” cabooses, which met most of these individual state requirements. They were marked with a large red “P” painted on the cupola ends, and were run through.   Caboose run through were by individual agreement.  There were not a lot of cabooses out there and a caboose shortage could be a real problem. I recall using a GP7 as a caboose once because we had nothing else available.  

Interchange of freight cars was common and the AAR car service rules encouraged reloading empty cars for return movements. The return movement did not have to be back to the home road, only generally in that direction. Pool cars were a more interesting arrangement. If a railroad had a large industry, like an automobile stamping plant, they could set up a pool. Each railroad that was going to get traffic from that plant could be ask to assign cars to it based on the estimated traffic that was going to be generated to that road.  But the pool cars were loaded and shipped without regards to the car ownership. The pool operator was also responsible for maintaining the cars. A short western railroad might have a dozen cars assigned to a pool in Buffalo, NY.  Those cars could run for years without ever returning to the home road.  Originally pool cars were known for having a yellow square on each side stenciled “when empty return to agent at ……”. These were replaced with computer data and the yellow blocks starting disappearing in the mid 1960s, I believe.  

@Dave_C posted:

Another mixed train. The East Wind.  Ran only in the summer from Washington DC to Maine. Pennsy, NH and B&M power and equipment was used. The one caveat is all the equipment even though owned by different RR’s was painted to match. MTH did the set a few years ago.

I was totally asleep when that MTH East Wind set came out and missed it.  FYI on its operation and consist, after WWII the matching paint was dropped and only the B&M/NH operated the train.  Mixed cars in NH, B&M could be found and even an Atlantic Coast Line diner was leased.  Passenger train consist books can sometimes be found on ebay.  I find researching prototype info fascinating even tho i do not plan to implement it in it's truest form on my layout. It still helps give a reason to what youre doing and if anyone ever asks why your cars dont match in your train you have a legit answer!

I think some people missed that you are asking about passenger cars - not freight cars. Unlike freight cars, passenger cars rarely travelled off their home rails. As noted there were exceptions, but generally this would be amongst railroads that were somewhat affiliated with each other, or where they had worked out an agreement to run a car through on both roads. Competing railroads wouldn't 'mix and match' passenger cars.

For the first exception, the CB&Q was owned by Northern Pacific and Great Northern. NP and GN only went as far east as St. Paul MN, so their Seattle-Chicago trains (Empire Builder, North Coast Ltd.) were pulled from St. Paul to Chicago by the Burlington (using Burlington engines and crews). For the latter, there was a New York Central - Santa Fe agreement to run a sleeping car from LA to New York, so the car would go LA-Chicago on Santa Fe, and Chicago-NY on the Central.

Boston & Albany was part of the New York Central System so shared equipment and trains. The 20th Century from Chicago going east split at Albany, with part of the train going on the B&A to Boston, with the rest turning south to New York City.

However, there were many agreements where a Pullman car (owned, lettered, and operated by Pullman) would be routed over several railroads going from one city to another distant town.

I realize that OP Arnold is primarily interested in the northeast. But out west in the pre-Amtrak years, Union Pacific city trains would often have Pullman sleepers in their passenger train consists from other railroads.

I rode on UP trains to California from Idaho when I was in high school back in the 1960s (yes, I’m THAT old ). When connecting in Salt Lake City, I remember seeing Pullmans from other railroads on trains I took to Los Angeles. They were painted in Union Pacific livery, but had the railroad’s name on them, like Wabash and The Milwaukee Road.

I guess these were Pullmans from midwestern railroads that hooked up to UP trains in places like Omaha for thru-service to California.

@David Johnston posted: ...snip...

”. These were replaced with computer data and the yellow blocks starting disappearing in themid 1060s, I believe.  

Just before the Battle of Hastings, as I recall.

The D&H which took over for Canada bound trains from the NYC/PC at Albany carried their sleepers to Montreal. PC sleeper is just visible in this photo I took. We took this from Montreal to NYC after a CN steam fan trip in the winter.

What's so cool about all the above posts is that now we can run trains on our layouts which have a similar combination of mixed train cars that the real real railroads have run. Arnold

Being a railfan in the midwest, before moving to NY want to add a comment about the Western Streamliners.  As previously noted most passenger equipment ran mixed under specific agreements.  Trying to keep this short, just an overview.

UP Streamliners ran west from Omaha, the Chicago-Omaha portion was handled by CNW until 1955 and then by Milw until Amtrak.  Milw changed their passenger paint scheme to UP Yellow and Gray from Orange and Maroon so cars would "coordinate".

The California Zephyr was a joint train run by CBQ, DRGW, WP.  It also had a PRR sleeper in the mix.  The percentages of cars provided was based on "rail miles/expected passengers".

The CBQ owned trackage to the Twin Cities from there split to NP and GN to the pacific northwest.  All of these railroads were part of the "JJ Hill empire".  So even prior to BN the trains were mixed consists Chicago to Twin Cities.

CBQ also had their FWD and CS subsidiaries.

The above gives credence to the CBQ Everywhere West Slogan.

ATSF Was no slouch with Western Streamliner service.  Actually Initially "fought off" AMTRAK (as did DRGW).  However they, along with the fore mentioned railroads ran "through sleepers" from the Eastern Railroads.

Then you have the RI and Katy, also RI and SP that ran mixed through trains.

Also needs to be noted that while SP didn't necessarily run equipment from other roads on the CoastLine they did coordinate schedules and offered "through ticketing" agreements.

Lastly if you really want to run mixed passenger consists just say you are modeling AMTRAK in 1971-73 (anything goes then). 🤣

Cabooses generally did not move from RR to RR.    As mentioned, there were some exceptions probably mostly in later years (post steam) that were set up as run through agreements.     the reasons were many.    In some cases they may not have met all the FRA requirements for interchange.    In other cases it may have been state laws that place restrictions on some cars.  

My opinion/guess is that up into the 60s or early 70s, cabooses did not show up much off home rails.

The same sort of goes for motive power.    I think up into the second generation diesel era, motive power mostly stayed on home rails.     The exceptions would be special run through agreements and transfer runs in big terminal areas.    An example was the PRR and NYC.    There was a coal train that run from Elmira NY, on the PRR Elmira branch to a power plant east of there on the NY Central.   They had an agreement in this case that the PRR would handle it one week and the NYC the next.    They switched off.    When NYC ran it, it had NYC power and caboose and when PRR ran it had PRR power and caboose.    I'm sure there were other such agreements.

Another situation was around Chicago.    Most major carriers went into Chicago, and to do so crossed the Elgin Joliet, and Eastern RR.    Apparently there were many agreements in the 60s and 70s  between the EJ&E and other RRs to allow transfer runs - with a caveat.    The other RR could bring a freight transfer into across parts of the EJ&E and deliver it to an EJ&E yard.    However, the power and caboose had to run back light, just loco and caboose, no cars.    Then the EJ&E could do the same and deliver cars to other RR yards, but also had to run back to home rails light.

Run through power and running off hours is a fairly modern practice I think.    I don't know when it started but was probably in place by the 1990s at least.

Up until about 1960, many railroads assigned each caboose to a specific conductor for their exclusive use. If a train crew had to lay over at a distant town, generally the engine crew ate in a beanery in town and slept in a Railroad YMCA or boarding house. The conductor and rear brakeman (and flagman if there was one) generally cooked their own meals in the caboose and slept in the bunks in it. By the later 1960s, I think most railroads had gone away from that - although I think some early 1970s BN cabooses had a "P" on them to indicate they were in "pool" service rather than assigned to one conductor, so perhaps it lasted a bit longer there?

David noted previously about UP’s pool cabooses being marked with a red P. The PRR, always one to be different, identified their pool cabins (cabooses to non PRR types…) by painting the cupola yellow.

Curt

Guys don't forget about the AMTRAK "Rainbow" era.  Just after formation as AMTRAK took over the passenger service, it had mixed trains made up of everybodies passenger fleet hence the name.  If you model the early 1970's you can run AMTRAK realistically with almost anyone's passenger cars.

Don

Another example of "through cars" on passenger trains: The SL-SF Meteor which ran from Saint Louis to Oklahoma City carried Pullman cars from Boston & Albany, Pennsy, and Baltimore & Ohio.  Only the Pennsy cars were repainted to match Frisco's paint scheme (which is amusing to me since Frisco ran a hodge-podge of colors).  And like many other roads, Frisco ran their cars over other lines to Florida destinations.

Very interesting, and for many passenger cars, as well as freight "anything goes".  As a big fan of the Atlas (and others) beer car boom,  l did a little legwork researching nearby breweries for car ownership.  I found one small but popular southern Ohio brewery shipped beer regularly to Baltimore, but owned or leased no logoed cars, although HO and G fantasy cars have been made.  Several, many?,  small breweries did have logoed cars.  I just wonder how far those cars got from their home sidings? Coors was once popular on SE US college campuses, so l'd guess the reefer in the museum in Golden got far off-line, but others?  A Ft. Wayne (Ind.) brewery reefer in Seattle? A  Mich. U. P. beer car in San Diego?

I've seen videos of various N&W passenger trains with NYC ( usually 1-2 ) and Richmond Fredericksburg  and Potomac cars ( usually 1-3 ) mixed into the consist.

For a short time the B&O ran a through sleeper via Santa Fe to Los Angeles and Santa Fe through sleeper via B&O to Washington DC from Los Angeles.   The cars interchanged in Chicago.  

For only a few years ( 1913- 17 ) during  the early 20th century the Western Maryland Railway ran through passenger trains from Baltimore to Chicago and visa - versa via the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie, the Erie RR,  and NYC.  The trains were named the Chicago Limited, the Baltimore Limited, the Eastern Express and the Western Express.   The power change to PL&E was made in Connellsville, Pa. which pulled the WM train to Youngstown Ohio then onto the Erie which pulled the train to Cleveland where NYC power took over the rest of the way to Chicago.  The four trains had Pullman cars in the consist.   Although I do not know of any foreign cars ( other than Pullman which was pretty standard in the consists of many railroad's passenger train before AMTRAK )  in the consists of these trains ( very doubtful if there was ) , there were 4 different railroads powering these trains.

Arnold - here is a photo of the Lionel New York Central Passenger/Freight Service Station Set from 1994 (I think). So, Lionel answered one of your questions almost 30 years ago. I swapped out the original Lionel RS3, and passenger cars for an MTH RK NYC RS3, and a pair of RK NYC Madison cars. Lionel also produced an additional 4 car set of passenger cars, and a Lightning Stripe Bay Window caboose to go with this set.

About the Burlington between the Twin Cities and Chicago...generally the trains remained intact so cars weren't mixed together. So like a Great Northern train from Seattle would pull into St. Paul Union Depot, the GN F-units would be cut off, and CB&Q E-units would couple up and take the train the rest of the way to Chicago. Same for Northern Pacific trains.

However, especially as trains got shorter in the 1960s, there were situations where say an NP train and CB&Q train would be combined. I know the GN Western Star was split up in the Twin Cities - the mail cars it carried (after 1960) were moved over to the Milwaukee, who had the mail contract Twin Cities - Chicago, and the GN passenger cars were combined with a CB&Q train (I think the Blackhawk?). So you could see a Milwaukee RPO or Baggage car with mail on GN, or GN cars on the Milwaukee, and a block of GN cars in a Burlington train.

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Arnold - here is a photo of the Lionel New York Central Passenger/Freight Service Station Set from 1994 (I think). So, Lionel answered one of your questions almost 30 years ago. I swapped out the original Lionel RS3, and passenger cars for an MTH RK NYC RS3, and a pair of RK NYC Madison cars. Lionel also produced an additional 4 car set of passenger cars, and a Lightning Stripe Bay Window caboose to go with this set.

Just because a toy company does something it's hardly "answering a question" concerning prototypical equipment usage.

The 1940s were a colorful time for the Overland Route, with several schemes in use by the UP, SP, and CNW.  Secondary trains (i.e. not a Streamliner) and extras would use whatever cars were available, from the pool service or individually owned.  You could have Pullman Green, Two-Tone Grey, or individual road schemes all in one train.  Not too many pics of these trains online, as the most common pics are promotional/marketing shots, but I've seen trains like this in books.  During busy times they'd need an extra diner, that was often an older car not in the most recent scheme.  Particularly for the CNW, even a well-matched train might have an old Pullman Green heavyweight or two on the head-end.

The LIRR often had PRR cars in passenger service in the 1960's. A photo exists (possibly taken by Ron Zeil) of a New Haven passenger car on the LIRR.  I suspect there were a few instances of that happening.

Baggage-express cars used by REA especially would go to other RRs I think.   A lot of the PRR B60s were in express service.     Most express was carried on passenger trains.

One RR I didn't see noted was C&O cars which were  used in PRR trains to NYC. Probably express cars. along with RF&P or N&W cars.

What about during WWII was everything pooled?

Interesting discussion.

Early Amtrak days anything goes.