Pullman front end cars

Did Pullman ever have RPO's or Baggage Heavyweight cars that were used with Coach and Sleepers cars.
I was thinking of a total Pullman Consist, but I can not find any pictures or references to front end cars. I am guessing that Baggage and RPO's and REA cars were owned by the
paticular Railroads. What about Dinners or other cars Pullman had besides Coaches and
Sleepers.

Happy Holidays

 

In a word... NO.

Pullman never involved itself much in head-end traffic simply because it was more lucrative for them to handle the first-class accommodations on trains. Mail cars (be they straight mail or a combination baggage - mail) were mainly home road cars (occasionally an off road car would show up) which would swap off mail and express at their end points if it were going to another road, while express and storage mail cars would include home road cars but also cars that were primary connections with the road as well as whatever foreign cars that the Railway Express Agency would send their way. About any road could see one or more of the Pennsy's X29 express boxcars and B60b 60' baggage cars as these were from the largest fleets but many other roads had cars running through.

There were trains, though, that operated without head-end cars, typically having a baggage - buffet lounge or baggage - smoker lounge car and all Pullman consists (on occasion one of the few Pullman-owned diner included) with an all Pullman consist (sleepers and a lounge car or recreation car). On occasion such would also include a mail car that would be home road owned.

I would recommend joining the Passenger Train Consist group at Yahoo! Groups. In the files section and in some of the messages posted are consists of a variety of trains from a number of eras.

 

The only example of Pullman built head end equipment that I can think of is the troop sleepers that they constructed during WWII. After the war, many railroads turned these cars into head end equipment. MT makes this car; you'll have to blank most of the windows out to get it close to what the railroads did to them after the war. Refer to prototype photos for and exact match to your railroad.

Nate

Nate

 

There's a lot more than the troop cars. Pullman Car Mfg. built all the famous "Harriman" cars for starters and if you would go through most railroad's passenger car diagrams you would find huge numbers of head-end cars that were built by them.

"They did not operate coaches for anyone that I know of."

There were a total of six coaches built and operated by Pullman. They were rebuilt from Plan 2416 parlor cars in 1935 and were all leased to GN who later purchased the cars in 1938. They carried the numbers 990 - 995, and I beleive that they also carried these numbers on GN.

 

Did Pullman build any RPO cars? Did RRs own RPO cars and lease them to the Post Office, or did the PO own the cars?

 

The RPOs were owned by the individual railroads and leased to the postal service. Workers within those cars were contract workers who would work for the postal service while not actually being an employee... much like the rural mail carriers that we have today.

As far as what RPOs were built by PCM, I have a large number of passenger car diagram books scanned to a CD but am having to use my son's laptop right now and can't access what is on it. If you want I can try to get some of the ownership up for you but it will take a while.

 

Thanks Jerry, and don't worry pulling up your data. I became curious about how RPOs were handled when this topic opened, but don't want to hijack it.

I can understand why RPO clerks were contractors. Since they worked to the RRs schedules, I assume they were paid for hours riding and not for an 8-hour day.