I was wondering exactly WHOSE engines were used to haul REA specific trains, or were the REA cars mixed within larger consists. There were REA, railside warehouses and REA trucks for road deliveries, but I have never quite understood who handled the REA boxcars along the rails.
Also, as I fine tune my ideas for a layout, I would like to model the ATSF, UP, and SP on the same layout. Each would own a yard, all would share common mainline tracks, and [I guess] they would exchange rolling stock at nuetral sites [perhaps grudgingly] and share the duty of hauling either individual REA boxcars or entire consists of REA boxcars.
Does this seem reasonable [or at least within the realm of nearly plausible] during the 1950's?
mc snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote: > Also, as I fine tune my ideas for a layout, I would like to model the
The only place the three railroads were in proximity to each other is Southern California. and I can think of no place that had the exact arrangement that you envision. The closest is probably the San Bernardino-Colton area. You had UP running on trackage rights over ATSF from Barstow over Cajon Pass to Riverside. The SP mainline crossed the ATSF mainline in this area as it headed east over Beaumont Pass. ATSF had a large yard in San Bernardino and SP had its yard in West Colton. You would have to use modeler's license to add a fictitious UP yard there somewhere. Interchanges existed near the diamonds between ATSF and SP.
I'm not sure that REA cars moved with freights. My recollection is that most passenger trains, (at least in the Lincoln, Nebraska area) had REA cars and the station platform had hand trucks for moving REA freight from them.
Are you sure about that? 'Round here (SF Bay Area East Bay), I know at least that SP and Santa Fe had parallel trackage around the bayshore. There were both SP and Santa Fe yards in Richmond, perhaps elsewhere as well. Not sure about UP, but since they terminated in San Francisco (actually Oakland), they must have had tracks/yards here as well.
With some modeler's license to stray a bit from reality, it seems that my idea will be OK based on your individual accounts of the track and yard locations for the three aforementioned RR's to co-exist.
I am fully committed to the ATSF with both rolling stock and numerous engines. Likewise, I have an F3ABA for the UP thus creating a lesser, but equally compelling reason to model some form of the UP as a freight line. I also own a number of REA boxcars with several more desired. Hence, the REA is a given as a colorful, thematic inclusion on the tracks though I only have plans to operate the ATSF Super Chief as the only dedicated passenger train on the layout. I will limit the REA by using some of my ATSF freight engines [blue & yellow F3's] with a few ATSF post office, baggage, and odd ball passenger cars.
The SP is the wild card. My passion to eventually own a Cab Forward and a large consist of PFE refrigerator cars is inescapable. I love that engine. It's my all-time favorite. To buy one, I'll need to skip meals for a few months, but it'll be worth it. I will try to isolate the SP by creating a single purpose yard for the PFE. The Cab Forward can arrive on the scene, make its PFE deliveries and pick-ups, maybe haul a few odd SP boxcars and tankers for immediate, yard area use, do some type of eye catching exit around the entire layout, and then disappear to hidden staging until its next scheduled return.
The OP mentioned the early 1950s as the time frame for his layout. UP did not have any significant presence in Northern California (to my knowledge) until decades later when they absorbed the WP and SP. In the
1950s UP had to rely on WP and/or SP to get their passenger trains and freight to and from the coast from connections in Utah. The only line UP had into California at that time was the Los Angeles & Salt Lake, running through Las Vegas to Barstow, with the aforementioned trackage rights over Cajon Pass to Riverside, then into LA through Pomona and the San Gabriel Valley.
Rick, thanks for this information. This makes my decision to integrate the ATSF, SP, and UP within one layout a bit easier to manipulate.
I can minimize the UP presence by keeping to the one UP F3ABA freight consist as an (on stage-off stage) participant via hidden staging while adding one UP switcher at their remote yard (on stage) whose single purpose is to retrieve, shuffle, and dispense cars on and off the layout by way of the UP F3ABA and a SP Cab Forward.
I simply cannot help myself. The color schemes of these three RR's are too appealing to relegate one or more to the display shelves in my office. And, as a bonus for the layout's eye candy, I am creating a fictitious, local RR that will handle one and two car deliveries along the main line at various sidings and small towns. The plan is to run an all black engine inventory of small steam and diesel engines. They will handle under sized freight cars: i.e. 8000 gallon tankers, logging equipment cars, ore cars, etc. - the small, eye catching items that are fun to scratch build and/or assemble via kits.
One thing to remembdr is that back in the '50s, locos were not interchanged between roads. Often they had differing layouts and hookups which made such difficult. Thus, in San Fran, the WP handled all of the UP traffic to there. On the LA route, UP and ATSF ran seperately on ATSF tracks from Barstow to San Beradino. SP didn't have the Cajon tracks until late '60s so htat is too late for you. It's route goes east over Beamount Pass to Yuma. Thus, thee SP crossed the ATSF tracks but that is all. The reefer trains mostly rn out of centrl Calif. as this is where the produce came from. Also, the cab forwardds mostly ran on the hill to Reno. As to REA, they were usually run at the head end of passenger trains and all had pass piping on them. Even in a solid block, they ran with the road's motive power, which in such a case, could be freight units. Also note that in those days, an A and B unit ran as a pair. SP was probably one of the first roads that started realizing that a B unit was just another loco rather than part of a cab unit.
Well, not quite. The S.P. interchanged with both the Santa Fe and the U.P. at the old Colton yards, so it wasn't too unusual to see Santa Fe and U.P. locos running parallel to the S.P. rails, and vise-versa as well. Also, both the westbound and eastbound S.P. lines were -and still are- inter-connected to the north and southbound U.P. and S.F. tracks at Colton junction: the intersection isn't just a simple "X" crossing.=A0
If you Google-Earth "Colton, CA" and zoom in on the crossing, you can clearly see the remaining two connecting tracks, and see where the two that are now missing used to be.
There were also times when Cajon Pass would be closed for short periods of time due to storms, and the U.P. and Santa Fe would then "borrow" the S.P.'s Sunset Route tracks for their vital trains. Likewise, Santa Fe allowed the S.P. to use their Cajon Pass tracks when normally placid (not to mention practically dry) San Timoteo Creek would periodically rise up in wrath and wash out the S.P.'s Beaumont HIll mainline.
"Mostly" is misleading in this case. Southern California was -and still is- a big produce-load creator for the railroads, and loaded 100- car PFE reefer trains=A0powered by three or more AC Class articulateds were a daily sight on the eastbound Beaumont HIll tracks in harvest seasons during the 1950s. The empty westbound trains were equally common as the cars poured back out west to collect their next loads.
Another misconception. From the end of WW2 until steam finally bowed out in the mid '50s, most AC classes were common sights all over southern California in general and on Beaumont Hill in particular. You could have easily seen a dozen different AC locos working Beaumont HIll in a single day's train-watching, and John Signor's fine book "Beaumont Hill" documents their constant presence during this period with literally dozens of photos.
Where was the connection between ATSF and SP east of San Bernardino that allowed this? I know of no north-south connection between the relatively parallel mainlines east of the passes to the Colorado River. Was the connection that allowed running on each others' track at the mentioned times of pass closure all the way into Arizona somewhere?
The S.P. and Santa Fe met in a number of locations: Phoenix, AZ., Deming, NM., El Paso, Alpine, Sealy, Houston, and Beaumont TX. all come to mind right off the bat.
There may well be -or have been- others, but I'd have to dig through my library to find 'em.
OK, that's what I thought. In order for each railroad to use the other's pass they had to arrange it quite a distance out from San Bernardino. No connections between the two railroads from that point to the California-Arizona border.
Not as far as I know. But taking a somewhat lengthy detour via another road's rails is better than stranding your passengers and vital freight while the normal right of way is restored.
Besides; such real-life occasions give modelers a prototypical excuse to run S.P. locos on Santa Fe rails -or vice-versa- back during times when that was an uncommon occurence.
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