Connecticut Company Car 193, East Haven, CT, July 1985 (Beyer Patton) Dispatch "Office" at East Haven, CT, July 1985 (Beyer Patton)
Valley Railroad 2-8-0 97, Essex, CT, July 1985 (Beyer Patton) A D&RGW Caboose hop, near Winter Park, 1981 (Beyer Patton)
D&RGW Steam Generator 253, Winter Park, CO, 1981 (Beyer Patton) D&RGW Coach 1014, Winter Park, CO, 1981 (Beyer Patton)
That's a great modeling reference image for me--1981 is right in my ballpark for #253, and those EMD trucks look gnarly on a PA B-unit!
How cool -- a real deal marked U.S. Mail car trailing the steam generator car. Even though routine mail cancellation aboard trains ended in 1967, it's neat that the D&RGW carried mail in the traditional way at this date.
Amtrak Superliner Sightseer Lounge 33002, Denver, CO, 1981 (Beyer Patton) Amtrak Superliner Coach 34064, Denver, CO, 1981 (Beyer Patton)
Santa Fe Coach 2867, Colorado Springs, CO, 1970 (Beyer Patton) AT&SF Train 101, Pueblo, CO, 1970 (Beyer Patton)
Wow! Noticed the two trailing engines are F45s (no extra space behing the radiators, and a hint of blue and yellow).
The F45s did not have steam generators but were equipped with steam pipes to pass steam between the FP45s with steam and the train.
With three 3600 HP units, that train would really fly! The F45s didn't wear Warbonnet paint back then, did they?
And so we get another view of a steam generator baggage car. No, only engines with steam generators did.
Santa Fe Hi-Level Lounge 579, La Junta, CO, 1970 (Beyer Patton) Santa Fe 10-6 Sleeper "Pine Arroyo", La Junta, CO, 1970 (Beyer Patton)
CN did the same job on some GP9s back in 50s, adding pass-through pipes to avoid having a freight engine at the head of a prestigious train like the Super Continental. Makes roster management a little easier in case a passenger engine needs some TLC and no other suitable replacements are available. Looks better too. Then CN bought a whole gaggle of steam generator cars to make any locomotive a passenger locomotive in a pinch, usually on commuter trains or short trips (like Toronto-Niagara Falls). It's also handy to have extra steam capacity when hauling a long passenger train on the former National Transcontinental that ran across northern Ontario in a near beeline from La Tuque Quebec to Winnipeg Manitoba in winter, with some -40C temperatures... I get the chills just thinking about it...
Good thing of the electrics here in europe is that you do (did) not need any of these.... electric heating and aircon (much less common) were already almost universally adopted already in the 70s. Passenger diesels from the late 60 all had HEP only, as almost all passenger cars built since the late 50s. Yet some steam and diesel generators were still in use until the 80s (late 70s for the steam) but in very small numbers. Below a model kit of the very last HEP generator cars built in Italy in the late 80s. These were used for really a few years in some lines where the diesels with HEP could not run because of the axle load or tonnage. Most of these lines were electrified in a few years; after that the cars were used by the civilian emergency response in case of earthquakes and/or flooding to provide HEP when sleeping cars were used for temporary accommodation for the evacuees. These could provide 400KW and were compatible with push and pull ops as well as speeds up to 160kph, there is also a compartment for the conductor and another for 6 tons of baggage (on the left on the picture).
Forgot to say that a few are still used for historical trains allowing steam locos to haul carriages with electric heating. Carriages using steam heating have virtually disappeared, even most of the 100 years old models used in historical trains are electrically heated being refitted in the 50s and 60s.
Here in North America, HEP started appearing the the late 1960s on some trains, and the changeover continued in earnest in the 1970s. So just about every first-generation passenger diesel (and the dual-service types) were equipped with steam generators. The transition from steam to diesel also lasted until about 1960, when the last steam locos were retired from regular service (excluding the occasional preserved ones in excursion service). The fleet needed to be able to switch between steam and diesel locos anytime. Even the mighty FP45s of the late 1960s had steam heat. Also, a large part of their passenger car fleet was nearly new, or still had some usable lifetime left, and they were steam-heated. To toss out those cars would have been a huge loss - passenger train operations were always marginally profitable, kept afloat mostly by mail contracts. Converting them to electrical heating (and lighting) by HEP would also have been very costly (and would have put a substantial part of the fleet out of service for a while). So when came the time to replace the aging passenger car fleet, HEP was the best option. Basically, a business decision.
