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Southern Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Vol 3
Southern Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Vol 3 by James Kinkaid
Hard Cover w dust jacket
128 pages Morning Sun Books
Copyright 2006 Reflections from the lights on some photos.
CONTENTS
Business and Official4-18
Passenger19-72
Caboose73-88
MofW89-119
Intermodal120-122
Auto Rack and Leased.... 123-127
The Rear End128
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Volume Three of Morning Sun's three volume set Southern Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. Volume One, by Tony Thompson, dealt with company archival images from the railroad. Volume Two showcased Southern Pacific and St. Louis Southwestern (better known perhaps as the Cotton Belt) revenue freight cars. This volume will focus on passenger cars, cabooses, non-revenue equipment (such as business and maintenance of way cars) and cars leased from outside sources.
BUSINESS CARS
Over the extensive history of the Southern Pacific the railroad utilized a large number of business and other official cars, well in excess of 100. The railroad often reused favored names as cars were added and removed from this fleet, making accurate histories quite challenging. Thus, in this book several San Jose's for example will be shown. While the T&NO and SSW did have some business cars, during the era that this book encompasses, almost all of those cars had been assimilated into the SP reporting system.
For the purposes of this book we'll include all cars numbered 295 and below. Not all of these cars were "true" business cars. Some were assigned to various operating departments, the motive power department being one, or like SP 250, the railroad police. Others were conference or training cars but, nonetheless, this section is a convenient location for this low-numbered equipment.
PASSENGER CARS
This book's focus is on the railroad from circa 1955 to its demise when acquired by the Union Pacific in 1996. Thus, when speaking of passenger cars, the primary scope is on lightweight streamlined equipment. This can be further broken down into pre-war and post-war acquisitions. Cars purchased before World War Two were predominately of Pullman-Standard manufacture. They had corrugated stainless steel exterior sheathing applied over a Cor-Ten frame. This design ended up causing the railroad considerable grief due to extensive internal structure corrosion encountered and resulted in the SP rebuilding a number of cars with smooth stainless steel sides in the early 1960's. Pre-war buying also saw the use of articulated cars, both two and three unit sets.
After World War Two the railroad began purchasing more cars. SP returned to Pullman-Standard but the new cars built were of smooth sided construction, a result of the corrosion issues experienced on the pre-war corrugated cars. In addition, the railroad also acquired cars from Budd, which were of all-stainless steel construction.
In the era of this book, the bulk of SP' s passenger cars were painted in what came to be called the Simulated Stainless Steel (or "SSS") scheme, which was light grey paint (or natural stainless steel if so equipped) with Scarlet letterboard and SP's ball and wing emblem centered on the lower sides. This paint scheme was originally conceived for the SUNSET but eventually became standard for the fleet at large. In addition some cars continued on with their DAYLIGHT scheme (used on all DAYLIGHTS and the STARLIGHT, as well as T&NO' S SUNBEAM) of red, orange and black. Other cars carried UP's Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray for joint CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO service. There were also two-tone gray cars, used on the LARK, the CASCADE and the OVERLAND. And for the heavyweight cars still in service, there were cars with all of the above schemes as well as SP Dark Olive.
In addition to the intercity passenger cars, SP operated an extensive commute service in the San Francisco bay area. For this, the road relied on many 60' and 72' arch roofed cars. Beginning in 1955 the railroad began purchasing a number of bi-level "gallery" smooth-sided commute cars from both ACF and Pullman-Standard. All of these cars stayed in San Francisco Peninsula service and were not used elsewhere on the system.
Some of SP's passenger car fleet was acquired by Amtrak in 1971, particularly the Budd cars. Most of the pre-war cars either were scrapped or placed in maintenance-of-way service. The San Francisco Peninsula commute service and car fleet was transferred to a government agency in 1985.
The SP did not necessarily number their passenger cars in any strict order, rather relying on classes to sort things out. In addition there were several renumberings over the years, particularly when the T&NO fleet was folded into the SP system proper. Unlike Volume Two wherein we presented cars by series order, this cannot be done here, so cars are presented in roughly numerical order.
CABOOSES
In the era of this book, virtually all caboose cars operated by the SP were assigned classes. However, early cabooses were not classed but built to a Common Standard, as is indicated in several of the captions within. The Cotton Belt, a more-or-less independent road prior to circa 1960, did not use classes, though this began to change in the post-1960 era as they began to order caboose cars alongside parent SP. Cabooses are presented in numerical order.
MAINTENANCE OF WAY
Like all railroads, the SP and SSW utilized maintenance-of-way equipment of widely varying designs. This makes neat categorizations impossible. For convenience we've broken this area of equipment into several sections: snow removal equipment, relief cranes, general MofW and so forth.
INTERMODAL AND AUTORACKS
The SP owned and leased numerous trailers with SP markings (much more on the SP's early trailer fleet can be found in Volume One). Although in later years these markings were more for accounting purposes than to separate the "real" trucking lines (as they had been in years past). Here are some of the following markings used:
PMT (later PMTZ): SP's trucking company west of El Paso.
SPT (later SPTZ): SP's trucking company in Texas and Louisiana.
SWT (later SWTZ): SSW's trucking company in Texas, Arkansas and Missouri.
PFT: vans operated by PFE.
SPL (later SPLZ): trailers leased by SP.
RSPZ: trailers leased by SP from Realco.
XSPZ: trailers leased by SP from Xtra
In addition the road also was part of the Trailer Train flat car pool arrangement wherein the SP supplied the automobile racks for use on Trailer Train-marked flat cars.
LEASED FREIGHT CAR EQUIPMENT
Neither the Southern Pacific nor the Cotton Belt was particularly aggressive in the lease market. However, the SP did operate a subsidiary called Bankers Leasing wherein Bankers Leasing purchased cars and leased them back to the SP (through an entity called The Commonwealth Plan). Besides the SP, cars were also leased to the Katy (in some cases cars went to the MKT marked with SP classes!) and to several private car owners. The BLCX covered hopper on page 125 is a good example. Both SP and Cotton Belt also leased small numbers of cars from companies such as General American, and some examples are also shown herein
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