List,
I think we've beaten Roosevelt's trip to Birch Island to death...
I've run into a couple things recently that tie in with the discussion of
Pullman Co. cars running in CP trains.
First off, reading the latest issue of Classic Trains (Fall 2009) Frank
Rogers "Remembering the C&NW in Madison" (Wisconsin) is the first time I've
ever read a reference to maroon cars, both Soo Line and Canadian Pacific,
in C&NW trains. These would be, of course, the through cars to Chicago from
the Mountaineer, which ran via the C&NW most years from 1933 until 1949.
I also ran into a list of Pullman assignments to the Soo Line and CP in the
files of Tom Madden's PassengerCarList. Tom has spent considerable time
burrowing through the Pullman Co. records now housed at the Newberry
Library in Chicago, and had originally extracted this information in
response to a question I had, and I'm pleased to see that he has now
extracted all the cars. I have uploaded a copy of this information to the
Files area:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cpsig/files/Soo_CP_%20Pullman_Assignments.html
This information is from the Pullman Co. document RECORD OF TRANSFERS OF
AIR CONDITIONED CARS. Pullman began installing air conditioning in their
vast fleet in 1934. By 1937 they felt the need to track the assignments of
the newly air conditioned cars, and did so in a ledger that was kept
current until December 31 of 1943. Between these dates we can see the
beginning and end date of every car assignment to both the CP and Soo Line.
The CP assignments are specifically for the Soo-Dominion and the summer
Mountaineer service; from the dates one can pick out the long term
assignments of the cars used in the base Soo-Dominion service, and also
short one or two month assignments that were extra cars to handle the
summer crowds on the Mountaineer. Unfortunately, if there were additional
cars that lacked air conditioning (such as tourist sleepers) they will not
be listed here.
The Soo assignments are a little more complex, because the Soo contracted
for Pullman service on some routes that did not run into Canada. The
various eight and ten section restaurant cars were used on the Wisconsin
Central routes from Chicago to Duluth and Chicago to St. Paul. Other cars
would be running on the St. Paul - Winnipeg trains, or in a pool with the
CP cars on the Soo-Dominion or Mountaineer. However, it's a good bet that
the short term summer assignments to the Soo were for use on the summertime
Mountaineer.
I should mention two additional resources for information on Pullman cars.
One is Tom's web site at:
http://pullmanproject.home.att.net/
Here can be found a downloadable Excel spreadsheet that lists Pullman's
entire 6000+ car fleet, with dates of construction, rebuilding, repainting,
and various information about brake and a/c equipment. Tom also runs the
fore mentioned PassengerCarList at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PassengerCarList/
Which is a good place to learn more about modeling Pullman Co. cars.
Dennis Storzek
