There is a persistent concept on the Burlington that I think is
somewhat unfair. That it was (the word everyone seems to try to
avoid) cheap. While it is true that the railroad was certainly
conscious of value, that isn't to say that is the same thing (as
being cheap). There are a lot of cases where the Burlington was at
the forefront of the industry, and those cases were, almost without
exception, cases where the initial dollar outlay was relatively high
but the value was also quite high (compared to industry standards).
The obvious examples are the initial Zephyrs. But they are hardly
unique. Look at the Zephyr pit, the Gallery cars, the Havelock cars,
the line relocations, the later re-equipping for the Denver Zephyr,
the use of diesels in general - I'm sure many of you can add to the
list. When one looks at say, the Rock Island, or some of the other
granger roads, the Burlington was extremely innovative and willing to
spend - if there was value. There were darned few shops that could
repair Budd cars - or any other cars the way the Burlington
could. Was it cheapness that drove that? Some would say so, but it
was value that allowed the company to bring in a high cost service
in-house and create a good return.
That's not to save it was a spendthrift, it's not to say it paid in
the AIG range, it's not to say it purchased over 100 4-8-4s when
existing equipment would work. So, thrifty perhaps, cheap no.
At 08:22 PM 3/30/2009, you wrote:
>Charlie (and list) -
>
>Thanks for the correction/clarification. You're right, of course,
>both with respect to the shorty combines and shorty baggage-RPOs
>(i.e., the ones NKP brought out a few years ago) as well as the
>longer coach/pullman conversions Hol Wagner traces. As Pete said,
>for those who want photos, Spoor's CB&Q Color Guide to Freight and
>Passenger Equipment has a section devoted to some of these cars, on
>pp. 16-17. And of course you can get chapter and verse on the
>conversions, complete with diagrams & pictures, in the Glick trilogy.
>
>What strikes me as significant is not so much that the Thrifty
>Grangers didn't buy or build any NEW branchline passenger equipment,
>but rather that they did make explicit conversions to create
>distinct classes of cars dedicated to that function. (As an aside,
>it's noteworthy that some of the branchline cars even were painted
>in a different color scheme (mineral red) from mainline (or
>commuter) passenger cars.) So the Burlington did at some level(s)
>think of these cars as belonging to the same category of service.
>And branchline service wasn't just a catch-all for old equipment or
>even old passenger equipment. There was an explicit strategy in what
>to use as a starting point and what to do with it. In that sense,
>it's analogous to the Q's converting all those old R-4 and R-5
>prairies into G-10 switchers. Just as in that case, the branchline
>passenger car conversions produced "new" (rebuilt) equipment with
>distinctive appearance and operating characteristics, which became
>part of the railroad's "personality." That's what I was trying to
>get at in the first sentence of my last posting.
>
>Jonathan
>
>--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "Charlie Vlk" <cvlk@...> wrote:
> >
> > Jonathan-
> > An excellent treatsie...
> > ....but I would differ with you on one fine point.....
> > The Q, unlike other roads, really didn't build any cars new for
> Branchline service.
> > For example, the "shorty" steel combines, which were rebuilt for
> branchline service, were RPOs built right before the Post Office
> put mandatory standards in place for Mail Cars.... rendering the
> almost brand-new cars unsuited for their intended use. They got
> rebuilt (a couple of times?) into baggage and RPO/Combine passenger
> cars and because of their size were used in local and branchline
> mixed train service.
> > Same thing with wooden cars. I'd say that the Drovers Waycars
> were the only purpose-built cars that got used in branchline
> service (and I am not talking about the Branchline Combine Waycars
> here... I mean the 30' Waycars that were fitted out with extra
> bunks for drovers service). The Q rebuilt older coaches and
> combines with Cupolas and had several styles of Branchline Combine
> Waycars.... the most known to modelers being the one that Bernie
> Corbin provided a picture of that ran in Model Railroader in the
> mid 50's.... (I think it accompanied an article on kitbashing an
> Ambroid combine into one). These were the CW-7s of 1913. But
> there were earlier types, some of which survived to be photographed
> that had the old reverse curve small cupola .... and there were
> probably even earlier ones that didn't get photographed.
> > Early on some waycars had side doors and some passenger seats,
> and very late in the game a few were fitted out with a baggage door
> and some walkover seats for branchline passengers.
> > The Q was a very... err.. frugal... railroad and nothing was ever
> wasted... and has been pointed out, the branchline mixed trains got
> the hand-me-downs.... in motive power and passenger carrying cars.
> > Charlie Vlk
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Duncan Cameron
> > To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:34 AM
> > Subject: Re: [CBQ] Re: Mixed trains on the Q
> >
> >
> > Jonathan,
> > Very well done. Brief and very helpful to a modeller.
> > The train I'm modelling on the old Keokuk and Western in
> 1962-63 will be pulled by an NW2, includes a variety of freight
> equipment and ultimately will have a kit-bashed model of a Q
> branchline combine as showed in the Freight and Colour guide. A
> good picture of a similar train is in Mike Spoor's In Colour volume 3.
> > Duncan Cameron
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: bigbearoak
> > To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
> > Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 12:51 PM
> > Subject: [CBQ] Re: Mixed trains on the Q
> >
> > Until I read these postings, I hadn't realized to what extent
> the character of the Burlington was expressed in its mixed trains -
> much as it was in the distinctive qualities of its steam engines or
> passenger equipment.
> >
> > As the various postings indicate, the Q ran a variety of mixed
> train types. That in itself is no surprise; as a general rule on US
> railroads, there's probably no other kind of train where you'd see
> greater variety, even on trains from the same railroad. But the
> 'mix' of mixed trains on the Burlington wasn't random or a
> hodge-podge of components. There was a definite evolution of
> characteristic consists - which is of interest if, say, you are
> trying to model a mixed train for a particular era.
> >
> > Early on, these branchline trains looked very much like the
> mixeds on any US shortline or branchline - a smaller, older engine
> relegated to the lighter track and traffic of a feeder line,
> pulling a short string of cars trailed by a wooden combine or maybe
> a drover's caboose. There were also a handful of shorty passenger
> cars, both wood and steel, built for branchline service, during the
> early part of the 20th c. Motive power varied, but this service
> was, on many divisions, the last niche for the railroad's Class "A"
> 4-4-0s, what justified their rebuilding and continued service
> through the 1920s. This form of mixed train would have been fairly
> typical from, say, the 1904 renumbering to the 1928 relettering. In
> a few areas, such trains persisted much longer, through the
> Depression and WW II into the 1950s. You could model this type of
> train in HO using a trusty NPP K-2 4-6-0, a LaBelle or Railway
> Classics drover's caboose, and period freight cars of your choice.
> The drover's caboose could be replaced by a NKP shorty combine
> (CF-7). And in some regions, an extra express reefer or cream car
> would be a plausible addition.
> >
> > In the late 1920s and early '30s, economic and technological
> changes altered the appearance and consist of this traditional
> mixed train on most of the Burlington's branchlines. The rise of
> internal combustion technology prompted the railroad to retire its
> aging fleet of Class "A" Americans. The steamers were 35-40 years
> old by then and having to haul freight cars considerably heavier
> than they were designed to. Declining traffic and the frugality of
> the railroad had allowed them to keep working branchline mixeds
> well into the 1920s, but when gas-electrics appeared, the railroad
> quickly replaced them with the internal combustion units. The
> gas-electrics could haul a few freight cars, but normally they
> operated with just a single trailer car - sometimes a baggage-RPO,
> sometimes a combine, sometimes a coach, but almost always an older,
> wooden car (saved fuel, and in truth, the gas-electrics weren't
> that powerful). When traffic warranted, a steam engine would
> replace the gas-electric. Ten wheelers were common, but Atlantics,
> Pacifics, moguls and prairies might be used, depending on
> topography, tonnage, and era.
> >
> > Another set of changes occurred after World War II, the result
> of further retirement of old equipment and changing traffic
> patterns. By this time, the oldest, wooden passenger cars were
> wearing out, as were some of the old gas-electrics. Declining
> traffic led to the abandonment of some routes and trains, resulting
> in a surplus of both gas electrics and steel passenger cars. These
> now became the main source of passenger equipment on branchline
> trains. Some coaches were used as-is, some were converted into
> combines. Some gas-electrics, with motors removed also were
> converted to combines. You can see various examples on the
> Washington, IA branch and the Sterling-Cheyenne line, where an SW-1
> or NW-2 came in as the worthy successor to an Atlantic or
> Ten-Wheeler, or in the case of the Sterling line a gas-electric.
> Center cabs were also used as motive power on some branches. As for
> modeling, you could use a Branchline passenger coach as a stand-in
> for a 6100-series coach, or use the real thing from NKP or Aurora.
> And there are many kit-bashing possibilities for unique branchline
> cars the Q cannibalized out of its own equipment. Throwing in an
> express car or three - either the older wooden express reefers or
> the newer BE-1 troop sleeper rebuilds - would be plausible for some lines.
> >
> > A different solution was developed where passenger traffic was
> light and/or grades heavy, as on the Deadwood, SD branch. There, a
> standard way car was modified with extra seats and side door, with
> the train hauled by a pair of SD-9s. Again, models are available
> for both the front and rear end. I'm sure there were lots of other
> lines where the occasional passenger was accommodated in an unmodified waycar.
> >
> > Hope this pocket history is somewhat clarifying. Various
> Burlington Bulletins have good pictures of CB&Q mixed trains,
> especially BB 30 on Washington, IA. Also see Jones and Coleman's
> book on the Sterling branch and various South Platte Press
> publications on different Mid-western branhes; more pictures are
> scattered through the color books of Mike Spoor and Al Holck, and
> check the Otto Perry archive at the Denver Public Library - and of
> course Bill Glick's comprehensive passenger car trilogy for
> pictures, diagrams, and histories of the Q's distinctive equipment.
> >
> > Jonathan
> >
> > --- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "Dustin" <dholschuh@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Does anyone out there if mixed trains on Q were all the
> same.I know trains 92 & 93 on the Sterling Denrock branch were
> mixed.I'm assuming the passengers were accomadated on the
> caboose.But were there other mixed trains that ran with a baggage
> car or maybe a combine then a caboose.
> > >
> > > Dustin Holschuh
> > > Rock Falls,Il
> > >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Bob Webber
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