Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm putting together a Great Northern Mail Train as follows. Overall the combination of mail train equipment, will make up a ten to twelve car mail train. First cars in the MT (mail train): Will be dead headed equipment. GN or foreign passenger cars, RPO, or Mail Storage/Baggage cars. Second: GN Streamline RPO's and HW's either in the Omaha Orange and Green or Pullman Green. I have at least three different styles as in two door, three door or two door with a baggage door. Third: Mail Storage Cars which can be GN or Foreign MTS/Baggage, box cars, reefers, and REA eqipment. Fourth: Flats with either the fore runner of the containers or piggy back cars. Last: Some sort of rider car which can be anything from a coach, combine, to a foreign observation HW/Streamline or GN Business Car. How about a Burlington Business Car. Is someone visiting the railroad to look at it as a future acquisition. How does that sound to you GN Railfans and keepers of the faith? Oddly enough I picked up a Northern Pacific RPO car. I'm tempted to slide it into the GN mail train. Just to see what kind of response I get from the purist up here in GN Country.
Testing my old memory since I spent my early years in GN territory. But the consist varied by the time of the year in length and makeup. A few reefers cut in during the Salmon Season carrying smoked and fresh Salmon East.
John, Even on the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe mail trains I do remember no one mail train was ever the same. A different consist and variety of foreign cars in the consist. You could almost say anything goes, with some perimeters as in considerations to era and practices of the time. Thanks for the comeback.
So few detailed images of mail trains exist it seems you'd be able to get away with a variety of northern lines cars (NP, SP&S, MILW, UP, Soo Line, etc) as express or mail cars. Some connecting roads in Chicago (PRR/NYC, etc) are also plausible. Micro-Trains released a GN express boxcar years ago, in Empire Builder paint. Heavyweight, smoothside or even truss rod equipment might have been used, depending on era.
Most of the steam era Fast Mail photos I have observed had a lot of mail storage cars that were picked up and set out during runs. Most all were express baggage. The express reefers were mostly East bound and seasonable. Train size was about 14-16 cars behind an S-I or S-2 Northern.
You poured a considerable amount of time into helping me research the GN Mail Trans. Much appreciated. There isn't much in the way of photographic evidence to glean from. Concluding here, from what little we've found, that they weren't much different from the mail trains I saw. My dad tells a story about me. He said I looked over at a mail train that arrived in Barstow, Ca., and asked what kind of ugly train is that? Passenger motors on the front and odd looking baggage cars mixed in with reefers and box cars along with some sort of of long flat car with funny boxes on them. Forefather, of the container cars you now see. I've often wondered if the pods the airlines came up with to ship stuff is to blame for the mail containers on long flat cars and later containers that look like truck trailers. Gives me pause to go hummm? At least that's how I saw it happen. I went to the San Francisco International Airport to ship out someone's loved on. The Casket was put into an odd looking pod and placed on the airline. I noticed freight liners loading with various kinds of pods, pallet's and netted loads. Then later seeing more of these box like containers on Santa Fe's Mail Trains. While SP was experimenting with Overnight Piggy-back Service, tractor trailers on flat cars. It was interesting times but I don't remember to many of the then known railroad photographers shooting those ugly trains. They were out to capture the name trains and solid consists of UP Armour Yellow or Santa Fe's all Silver Streamline cars. Those mail trains just weren't pretty enough to capture their attention. Well, thanks for the help. Salute.
I appreciate your thoughts. On a similar research mission for the Santa Fe Mail Trains, I bumped into a picture of two 40 ft., ice bunker reefers being loaded with mail out front of the Santa Fe San Bernardino Train Station. These cars were indeed headed east. Also noting several other box cars of foreign rails being unloaded, from the east. REA was well known for shipping Strawberries from California's fields out of Southern California, to the East. Some of these rode the Chief, Grand Canyon, California Limited and other name trains. Never mind Oranges, shipped via REA and other Reefer cars. Interesting times. My dad having worked for REA had a few interesting stories to tell about his experience. Most of it was the mundane task of making sure loads destined for a certain local got loaded correctly, as it was for unloading certain express packages. Not much time for mystery's and who done it's. REA agents wore side arms for a while. For all good things must come an end, if you believe that. It all came to an end as the mail contract went to truckers and airlines. If I can get some data together. He tells an interesting story of how a baggage care of Seltzer went through Mojave on the SP San Joaquin Daily Mail Train. It was destined for Trona, Ca. The party to receive the load was supposed to send a truck down. It never showed and there was no way to warehouse the seltzer, or a suitable place to set the baggage car out. Team tracks in Mojave was a thing of the past. The yard master at Mojave ordered the train to keep right on going. Things got coordinated later and the shipment was eventually delivered. Most likely by truck out of Bakersfield. Don't ship what you can't handle.
One other thing I thought of and that's the class of train a Fast Mail, Express Mail or even a Fast Perishable or Fruit Express train operates as. The Class 1 status went to the Primer trains, for example the Empire Builder. A sharp, smart looking train. But even it could be eclipsed by a Fast Mail train despite how ugly it looked. You know those ugly mail trains. The Fruit Express or Perishables as some called them operated on the same status. Often times allowed to run ahead of the crack passenger train or name sake passenger trains. Often times they would attempt to schedule the perishables or fast mail out ahead of the passenger trains. Often times the two types of trains would end up playing hop scotch as the perishables would have to stop for re-icing and the passenger train would then jump ahead. Then the passenger train would have to make a station stop and the perishable would jump ahead. It was interesting times to say the least. Now to complicate things. Ask yourself? When two trains of equal class status meets each other. EB meets WB. A meet! Who goes in the hole?
Speaking of perishables trains, Milwaukee Road ran silk trains, in the same fashion. Higher priority than crack varnish, picked up silkworms in Seattle, sped east to designer clothing mills in Chicago and New York. I read about it in my books. I can't remember what book. I'll check tomorrow.
Hemi, I trust your information. You've been good for any tid-bit you share here. That's not the first time I've read or heard that. I don't know the book, author or wig wag train article either. Thanks again.
I think it was "Electric Way Through the Mountains" by Steinheimer. That's one of my all-time fav books. The story was from the 1920/30s, and IIRC the trip over the Washington Cascades was behind the Bipolars!
Wouldn't you know it. I'm busy looking for a different video then GN mail trains and up pop's a unigue but informative...well...you'll see. I counted three different mail trains.
It was the Steinheimer book, Electric Way Across the Mountains. Pg 31 talks of silk trains. They arrived via steamship at Tacoma tideflats (not Seattle), and went east to market. One caption said the 15 car train was carrying $4.8 million worth of silkworms, and in the 1920s, that was an enormous sum. They traveled in heated cars at "better than passenger speeds" so the worms wouldn't die or eat the valuable cocoons. The caption didn't say how long the operation lasted, though.
1956 Movie. Some of my own thoughts. I went back and re-played the video and found myself questioning some of the conclusions the presenter makes. What caught my attention and had me backing it up, to re-play it. If you do the same you'll realize he kinds of mutters this thought. Your probably wondering what? It is a comment he makes about today's trucking/truckers and the amount of freight they haul compared to railroads saying, " 70% " of the freight hauled he credits to truckers. Pretty sure that's a figure you can turn around and credit to today's railroads. Thirty percent of the long haul to truckers, perhaps. The presenter has other issues as well and points them out. The Puritan thinking that seems to prevail in our country. Back then, men were men and we still are today, while women enjoyed being who they are. I don't think much has changed except for the "Me To" world we now live in. All that said the movie he presents is a very interesting one and full of information you and I can use on our toy train layouts and model railroads. Railroads realized back then they could haul truck loads cheaper then a tractor, trailer and crew. The key/challenge was to eventually find a way to load and get these loads out on the rails efficiently. Piggy Back where for instance SP would send a tractor, trailer and crew out to load the trailer. Once back in the yard, they would load it on a flat car and hopefully get it out of the yard headed for it's destination, quickly. Santa Fe, NYC, Pennysy NS, NW, Florida East Coast, all experimented with truck loads. Santa Fe experimented with a type of boxy container, SP toyed with early containers and ways to ship them. Flat cars seemed to serve the purpose but something better was needed. As you look around today, the results should be obvious. Train after train of containers, trailer loads/piggy backs. Without a doubt today's Truck companies are utilizing the rails like never before. I'm aware of a group of green minded ones that are of the mindset that the railroads have to go. When I see add on's to perfectly good movies I tend to wonder what's up? Off the subject: In the movie see how many stars you can point out. Most of them were looking for work back then before star-Dom. Thanks for all the help. Later.
By now, for those of you who know me. I always have after thoughts. I got to thinking about this train vs. truck thing. That's how we would of looked at it back in the 1950's. Today, it's not driven by competition but how best can we work together. Besides our model railroads need reasons to operate and a better understanding of the real railroads certainly helps make a difference. Toy Train operators don't need a reason. You might be a Toy Train Operator...if! Today, it's hard for most of us to sit down and work-up the numbers. What are the percentages of tractor and trailer traffic on the roads as compared to loads going by rail? So many truck loads go by train, truck loads being picked-up and then shipped by rail. After arriving at a Inter-modal yard they are then delivered to their destination, courtesy of many truck drivers. It's also hard to tell how many long haul truckers are actually on the roads. I'm sure, should I research it I would find data available that is definitive. I'll leave that part up to you. I hope you enjoyed this trip down speculation row and memory lane. Once again, until later.
