Santa Fe passenger question

Santa Fe did use PA's. Main problem with the PA is it's long! If you want to run PA's you need to use 18" to full scale 21" cars or the train will look funny. The 15" and 16" cars are shorted than the locomotive.

Prototypes would have been A-A or A-B-A. The cars would probably have been fluted stainless, no "stripes".

Mike:

If you purchased the PA set, I agree with Chuck that you would be better off with the 18" or 21" cars. The 15" cars look OK with the F3 units, but the PAs are long, particularly if you add a "B" unit.

To be prototypical, Santa Fe had mostly stainless steel fluted cars from Pullman Standard or the Budd Company. The original streamlined El Capitan was built by Budd.

None of these cars had painted stripes of any kind, just gleeming stainless steel.

Rusty

Thanks guys,I agree about the 15" cars, shorter than the PA or PB. I'll go with 18" fluted/ribbed streamliners, no stripes.

The Santa Fe will run in the great white north....... No kidding, snow on the ground today

Mike

If you want to run the Super Chief MTH ribbed stainless cars are similar to the prototype, albiet 18". The MTH dome car is the closest match to the Pullman-Standard Super Chief dome.

The Alco PA's in the war bonnet paint scheme are one of the most handsome diesel locomotive ever produced!

MohawkMike... Keeping with your snow warning, lets turn the clock to 1956.

I guess with a handle like SantaFeJim you know something about this. I agree about the PA's in warbonnet, very handsome indeed. I just purchased the PA/B on ebay and it fulfills a childhood dream of mine. A great set to run at Christmas but a little too big for carpet central, methinks. Did SF run full domes or regular vista domes?

Was it the SuperChief that ran to Chicago from the southwest? If so where did it start (gotta get a book I guess). I suppose it would have gone through snow at some point in the winter months.

thanks for all the info

Mike

Click here, it's the Santa Fe Historical and Modeling society



There's a few of us Santa Fe guys here

Santa Fe ran both bi-level superdomes and more conventional dome cars. Super Chief ran between LA and Chicago. It had sleeper's. El Capitan was a coach only version that ran between LA and Chicago. The PA's (and a number of other engines) were tried as head end equipment for the Super Chief/El Capitan. The railroad pretty quickly settled on MU'd F's (3's and 7's) geared for passenger service, usually in ABBA consists.

Did SF run full domes or regular vista domes?

Yes, they ran both. The Super Chief used the vista domes and the El Capitan used the full-domes.

Unveiled in May 1937, the "Super Chief" was Santa Fe's finest diesel-powered streamliner. Racing from Chicago to Los Angeles in just 39 hours and 45 minutes (the fastest schedule at the time), it quickly became the favorite train of the rich and powerful.

As service expanded, the train was updated several times; cars from Budd, Pullman-Standard and American Car & Foundry were in regular use by 1951. To the casual observer, the lightweight, stainless steel, fluted-side cars looked the same.

Typical Super Chief consist:

F3/F7 A-B-B-A

Budd 73' Baggage Car
Budd 63' Railway Post Office
P-S 29-Seat Dormitory-Lounge
P-S "Regal" Series 4-4-2 Sleeper
P-S 36-Seat Diner
Budd "Pine" Series 10-6 Sleeper
P-S "Pleasure Dome" Bar-Lounge
P-S "Vista" Series Observation-Lounge

During the summer months additional sleeper and Dormitory-Loung cars were added as neded.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summer 1956-58
Train #21 El Capitan Chicago-Los Angeles
Summer vacation time actually meant more work for El Capitan, as demand often required additional coaches in the consist.

F3/F7 A-B-B-A
Baggage (storage mail)
Baggage
Baggage-Dormitory (transition car)
Hi-Level 68-Seat Step Down Chair Car
Hi-Level 72-Seat Chair Car
Hi-Level 72-Seat Chair Car
Hi-Level Diner
Hi-Level Lounge
Hi-Level 72-Seat Chair Car
Hi-Level 72-Seat Chair Car
Hi-Level 72-Seat Chair Car
Hi-Level 68-Seat Step Down Chair Car


Post 1958
#17/18 Combined Super Chief & El Capitan
Starting in January 1958, Super Chief and El Capitan were run as a single train during off peak times to reduce costs.

F3/F7 A-A-B-B-A
Baggage (storage mail)
Railway Post Office
Baggage (storage mail)
Baggage-Dormitory (transition car)
Hi-Level 68-Seat Step Down Chair Car
Hi-Level 72-Seat Chair Car
Hi-Level Diner
Hi-Level Lounge
Hi-Level 68-Seat Step Down Chair Car
10-6 Pine Series Sleeper
4-4-2 Regal Series Sleeper
“Pleasure Dome” Lounge
Standard Diner
4-4-2 Regal Series Sleeper
10-6 Pine Series Sleeper
10-6 Pine Series Sleeper

Marker's photo above is one of the best assemblages of Warbonnets yet!
Here ours


My favorite road.

C.Sam,

I see that there are three different freight schemes in your photo, two I recognize but the engine in front I don't.

Another question, MTH made warbonnet E-8's, did they really exist in real life, if so, where did they use them, it appears that they weren't used on the LA-Chicago run.

Mike

Mike -

The Santa Fe E8's, dating to 1952-53, were not the typical E8 but actually extensive rebuilds of the venerable Santa Fe E1's dating to 1937-38. Santa Fe called their rebuilt E1's E8m's. Essentially from all outside appearances the Santa Fe E8m's looked identical to standard E8's. The number series for the E1's were #2-#9. The E8m's were numbered #80-#87.


Below is a picture of a Santa Fe E1




Here is the finished product converted to an E8.

Your best bet is the 18" cars, IMHO. Not too many 21" car sets have been made, and they can also present problems with overhang and clearance unless you have a huge layout with very wide curves.

I would further suggest getting either Lionel of K-Line versions of the 18" streamlined Santa Fe cars. The real cars were stainless steel, and the Lionel and K-Line cars are constructed of bright metal (aluminum), not plastic (which of course has to be painted to try to look like metal).

For the look of unpainted stainless steel cars, nothing beats aluminum construction to give an authentic bright metallic look.

Yellow bonnets did exist. They were mainly run in the Texas area.

Yellow Bonnet

Yellow Bonnets and Blue Bonnets are better looking than War bonnets!

About the Santa Fe E8m's . . .

They were never transcontinental Chief power. Their assignments were:

• San Diegans and San Joaquin Valley service for a short time in 1952-'53.
• Eastern Lines trains other than the Texas Chief. This included Kansas City Chief, Chicagoan/Kansas Cityan, Tulsan.
• Secondary main line locals like La Junta-Denver, Belen-El Paso, Amarillo-Lubbock.

The transcontinental fleet used Alcos and EMD's through the early-1950's and then the top-tier trains were pretty much exclusively pulled by red-nose F's.

Number 90
I thought I remembered that ATSF ran the Yellow Bonnet to make sure that the public did not think the service on the Yellow was the same on the Red bonnet passenger trains. Maybe it had to do with a change in the passenger service?

quote:

Originally posted by Popsrr:
Number 90
I thought I remembered that ATSF ran the Yellow Bonnet to make sure that the public did not think the service on the Yellow was the same on the Red bonnet passenger trains. Maybe it had to do with a change in the passenger service?

The "Yellow Bonnets" appeared in 1972 on F unit's leased to Amtrak. Remaining F's of the 325 class were transferred to freight service and were repainted into the "Blue Bonnet" scheme as the locomotive were shopped.

I have some conficting/hazy information about some of the F's the "Blue Bonnet" scheme being repainted to "Yellow Bonnet" at a later date.

However, between February 1970 and August 1973, 94 F's of any color bonnet received the ultimate shopping by being rebuilt into CF7's.

Rusty

Rusty Thanks, I thought I remembered that the Santa Fe people wanted its customers to know something was different(passenger service now by Amtrak).

John McCall's book "Santa Fe Early Diesel Daze 1935-1953" has pics of just about any PA/PB power combo you can imagine. AA, ABA, AB, ABBA. But my favs in the book are a single PA with one baggage and one coach, a single PA with just one heavyweight coach (the perfect prototype for small layouts). And most odd of all - FM Erie A with an Alco PB on the Grand Canyon in 1952.

Run whatever you want!

quote:

Originally posted by Popsrr:
Number 90
I thought I remembered that ATSF ran the Yellow Bonnet to make sure that the public did not think the service on the Yellow was the same on the Red bonnet passenger trains. Maybe it had to do with a change in the passenger service?

Perhaps so, but it also saved a lot of money to just skip the red coat. Most people are surprised to learn that Santa Fe painted the entire warbonnet on the passenger units -- and the entire carbody on the freight F's -- yellow. The yellow was then masked and the black was applied and re-masked. Finally, they painted the red warbonnet over the yellow or the blue over the yellow on the cat whisker or cigar band freight schemes.

I have never personally seen anything in writing, but somewhere in the ATSF Historical Society archives, there is surely some record of how many gallons of DuPont red Duco lacquer it took to paint a rednose F3 or F7. Was it the image? The money? Perhaps we'll know for sure someday.

quote:

Originally posted by jlm:
John McCall's book "Santa Fe Early Diesel Daze 1935-1953" has pics of just about any PA/PB power combo you can imagine. But my favs in the book are a . . . most odd of all - FM Erie A with an Alco PB on the Grand Canyon in 1952.

Run whatever you want!

The 51 and 52 Class PA and PB units could (and did) m-u with Erie-Built units 90L-A-B, mostly in the 1950's in California. Neither could m-u with EMD passenger units because of differences in sanding control and dynamic brake control. The 90 and the Alco-GE PA's both used GE Amplidyine excitation, electric-pneumatic sand control and potential line control of dynamic braking. They even had the same GE control stand in the cab. The 90 was the fastest ATSF diesel. It would out-accelerate anything else on the railroad. You can tell that I admired the big engine.

My uncle, who was a UPRR (LA&SL District) passenger Engineer in the 1940's and '50's told me it was the same on the Union Pacific.

When it comes to War Bonnet Alco's, a single "A" is okay. An "A-A" is better. "A-B-A" is very nice. "A-B-B-A" is awesome and the "A-B-B" shown below is mighty-fine.

Very interesting thread. Where would the FA's and FT's fit in? I have a set of Williams Santa Fe warbonnet FA's, and am wondering if they are correct or fantasy? I also have both the Lionel and the MTH freight versions of the blue and yellow Santa Fe's, and have never figured out which paint scheme is more correct? Hope I'm not getting too far off topic.

quote:

Originally posted by brr:
Very interesting thread. I also have both the Lionel and the MTH freight versions of the blue and yellow Santa Fe's, and have never figured out which paint scheme is more correct? Hope I'm not getting too far off topic.

The blue and Yellow is a nice scheme. We had this one custom painted many years ago before either the Lionel or MTH models came out. I've always liked the red trim...

From the Santa Fe books that I have, it seems that the Alco units were not used on the Super Chief or the El Capitan after the late 1940's. So, the Alco units would technically not be correct on either of those trains with dome cars which debuted in the 1950's (the Super Chief with the "regular" length "pleasure dome" or the 1956+ El Capitan with the Hi-Level cars).

However, it seems that the Alco units were occasionally used on the San Francisco Chief through the 1950's, and later. I believe that the San Francisco Chief had a full length dome car as well as a couple of Hi-Level coaches.

I am not sure if the Alco units were still being used on the Chief in the 1950's when the Chief ran with the full length dome car.

K-Line made decent replicas of the 1950's era versions of these passenger cars in full (nearly) scale (84 ft. - 21"). K-Line did make the full length dome car and the Hi-Level cars in the 21" "scale" length. So, if you could buy up enough of those K-Line cars, you could model a "scale" San Francisco Chief or Chief with the Alco units. But the K-Line cars with their dome cars with the Alco units probably would not be prototypically correct for the other transcontinental trains (Super Chief with dome car and Hi-Level El Capitan with "dome" lounge).

Alternatively, you might want to model one of the shorter non-transcontinental trains since that is mostly where the Alcos were used by the Santa Fe after the late 1940's.

It is my understanding that the Santa Fe did not consider the Alcos as reliable as the F units and thus the Alcos were not used as much on the premier transcontinental trains. So the Alco units were mostly "relegated" to "lesser" trains and in general replaced by F units in the late 1940's on the most important "name" trains (however, there were probably exceptions, and that could always be used as an "excuse" to model those trains with the Alcos). This is in contrast to the Southern Pacific which used the Alcos through the 1950's and into the 1960's on its most important "name" trains. In fact, it seems that the Southern Pacific liked the Alcos so much, they even ordered additional Alco units (PA2's-PB2's in the 1950's).

Having written all of that, it is your "railroad," after all and you can run whatever you want. And the Alco units are really nice looking. I would skip the PB unit and go with a PA A-A set since it looks great and keeps the length reasonable in relation to the number of passenger cars that can be run on most layouts. You could go with an A-B-A, but I believe that it would look too long unless you had a lot of passenger cars behind it.

An ATSF PA "farewell fantrip" on March 3, 1968 included domes.

(And D&H service through the Adirondacks behind ex-ATSF PA's in their blue warbonnets routinely included a dome car.)

quote:

Originally posted by jlm:
An ATSF PA "farewell fantrip" on March 3, 1968 included domes.

(And D&H service through the Adirondacks behind ex-ATSF PA's in their blue warbonnets routinely included a dome car.)

Interesting.

But it seems that a 1950's Super Chief (with "pleasure dome") or El Capitan (with Hi-Level "dome" lounge) would not be prototypically correct behind the Alcos.

The SP tended toward the ALCO's because there F unit production was backlogged at EMD, and the E units traction motors "could not pull the skin off a grape". SP had grade issues the ATSF did not have.

The freight units were painted in cat's whiskers 1&2 and later cigar band schemes. CW ran from WW2-1952 when it was replaced by cigar band. The early CW schemes were done in a paler yellow, almost cream colored. The modifications to the CW scheme had to do with dropping of the red "pin" stripe separating the yellow from the blue. This was cut back and eventually was dropped completely by the time the cigar band was adopted in 52. Cigar band also went with the brighter yellow used on the war bonnet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...TSF_DL_in_Kansas.jpg

quote:

Originally posted by DominicMazoch:
SP had grade issues the ATSF did not have.

Not meaning to be to argumentative, but where? Santa Fe contended with Tehachapi, Cajon, Raton, and Glorieta Passes, plus hundreds of miles of long, steady 1.6% grades across Arizona and New Mexico.

 

A good, prototypical train to pull with your PA's would be a hodge-podge of REA boxcars, ATSF express boxcars, and head-end cars (both heavy weight and streamlined) with an RPO in the mix.  Then you would have yourself a very convincing FAST MAIL.  Also, the train that used to come thru Lubbock, TX (the California Special) was also very heavy with head-end cars, and would often be 18-20 cars long.  That would be an interesting train to model, and it was once lead by PA's.

I would look for a set of 18" or 21" K-Line Sante Fe lightweights.

 

thank you I was wondering what the Williams f3 yellow bonnet looked like