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In response to the original query, I live on the wrong end of the system to have firsthand knowledge of what was going on on the Texas end, but it should be borne in mind that an 8/5 sleeper is a heavyweight car, most of them being in the "Clover" series, though
there were two in the original 1940 Texas Zephyr consist: one C&S and one FW&D, with the names "Castle Crest" and "Castle Range." The former was purchased from Pullman by the C&S at the end of 1948, the latter by the FW&D. But by 1961 only the FW&D
car, "Castle Range," was still in Pullman lease and thus available for use.
I referred the question to Bill Schultz to see what he might know about the operation, and here is his response:
Aside from the public timetable, I've found nothing to indicate what cars were assigned. Pullman's 1961 list of cars includes 70 Clover-prefix 8/5s (47
cars leased and 23 owned outright by Pullman), which included FW&D Castle Range, Q 654 (ex-Clover Basin), and Q 659 (ex-Clover Veldt), so there were myriad possibilities. To hold costs to a minimum, I'll suggest that one car - FW&D Castle Range - was used
to protect the daily Dallas-Amarillo round-trip.
At the time, No. 2 arrived in Amarillo at 9:05 p.m. (25-minute dwell), theoretically providing enough time to spot the car for early boarding at 9:30 p.m. (the same early boarding
time previously observed for the Amarillo-Dallas car discontinued in '57.). No. 1 departed at 11:40 p.m. following a 21-minute dwell, ample time to cut the sleeper into the train behind the RPO. As a comparison, in the late '50s the Q operated a one-way
St. Paul-Chicago set-out sleeper on the Black Hawk, deadheaded back to St. Paul every afternoon in the North Coast Limited in order to confine the operation (expense) to one car. The assignment of two cars and labor expense of two porters to protect a maximum
of 18 fares (one per section in the lower berth; in 1961, nobody sought upper-berth space) for the Amarillo-Dallas operation would've doomed the service from the start, and my bet is that FW&D's Transportation and Mechanical Departments were told to make this
work with one car.
With no competing Amarillo-Dallas rail service, there was no obvious commercial reason for FW&D to establish the car. Rather than a late-in-the-game magnanimous gesture by FW&D, I
suspect it was done on an experimental basis to mollify influential local interests in Amarillo, most likely a big freight customer, with the understanding that it would be discontinued if it failed to attain a predetermined ridership threshold (and which
FW&D knew all along it would).
And in fact the "Castle Range" was withdrawn from Pullman lease in August 1962.
Hope this offers the probable answer to the original question.
Hol
From: CBQ@groups.io <CBQ@groups.io> on behalf of thomasad65a via groups.io <thomasad65a=yahoo.com@groups.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2024 12:19 AM
To: CBQ@groups.io <CBQ@groups.io>
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Texas Zephyr Southbound Amarillo-Dallas Sleeper Summer 1961
Attached is a page from the May 1954 system timetable. It also shows an Amarillo to Dallas sleeper on southbound number 1. However, note that it shows three
sleepers arriving in Denver on northbound number 2, but only two sleepers leaving Denver on number 1. Perhaps one sleeper was closed leaving Denver southbound, but then opened in Amarillo? Does the 1961 timetable show the same situation?
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