Well, now that the buzz has died down some over AM's new domes, it got me thinkin'.
Sure it's impressive to see a 10 car passenger train roll by on the layout, but such was not always the case in the real world. The domes now allow me to represents two lesser known trains on the Burlington.
The Morning Zephyr: In my youth of the late 60's, I remember seeing a train like this cruising through town on it's way to somewhere. It usually had an E-unit and 3 or 4 passenger cars. I always thought it was kind of cool.
Much later, I found out it was the Chicago-Twin Cities Morning Zephyr. Two domes were in the consist most of the time, one dome sometimes being a dome-observation. Although the first car was always a combine, I have to substitute a coach for the present.
Kansas City Zephyr: A photo in one of my Burlington Route in Color books caught my eye. An E-unit, RPO (although a silver painted heavyweight), dome and observation. It was a truncated version of the Kansas City Zephyr taken in the late 60's. So, again with a substitution of a streamlined RPO (just might have to do up a heavyweight one of these days) I have yet another train.
While both of these trains may look like rejects from a train set catalog, they did exist in some manner as the passenger train in general succumbed to the automobile and airplane.
Using this to my advantage, I can represent reality with what Model Railroader called "pike-sized" passenger trains. And these representations don't eat up 20% of my mainline...
...Although, a 10 car Budd train is still the cat's meow...
Rusty
