Nostalgia & History > Maroon Monday, Interesting Commuter Trains

In the 1960s the Rock Island commuter trains consisted of anything that rolled.  Here is an example shot from the Roosevelt Road Viaduct the morning of May 13, 1964 -- intercity cars followed by the Rock's unique old commuter coaches with an RS3 up front.

Enjoy,
Marty Bernard

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I wonder about those lightweight cars up front . . . the first two have an unusual side door, and none of the three have end doors. I wonder if they were deadheading somewhere? Where was the Rock's passenger car shop at that time?

Here are the same cars on an inbound morning train at Englewood on April 21, 1965.  Looks like the consist of the whole train is the same,

Marty Bernard

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The head two lightweight cars, from what I can see of them, appear to be articulated, meaning they were part of one of the original 1937 ROCKET sets.

Do not discount the possibility this is actually the inbound morning Peoria Rocket, which were known to use the air-conditioned 1949 P-S suburban cars for overflow passenger loads on the weekends.
The single RS3 for power would not have been typical, but using commuter power on the Peoria trains was not unusual.

NZ

EDIT: Now that you've posted that second photo, Marty, you have me reconsidering my theory. Certainly could have happened more than once, but the chances you would catch two almost identical consists a year apart are pretty slim.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/15 13:26 by NebraskaZephyr.

Now that NZ mentions it, it looks like all three lightweights are articulated. There also appear to be stairs under those side doors. Since there were 6 TA's, were there also six Rocket trainsets that could have been split up and recombined as we see here?

Hmmm: http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/ri306.jpg
http://rr-fallenflags.org/ri/ri-d401n.jpg
http://rr-fallenflags.org/ri/ri-d404n.jpg

Verrrrry interesting!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/15 14:08 by CPR_4000.

Further to the informative previous posts, these do look like the triple-unit sets built by Budd in 1937.  By 1965, both of them were still in operation, but the 400/306/300 set would be retired that year.  The 401/307/301 set would soldier on until 1969 - a good 30 year+ career for such odd-ball pre-war cars.  The 401/307/301 set had been converted to all-coach seating by 1962.  The 400/306/300 set was all-coach except for the 400, which was still in it's dormitory-diner configuration until retirement in '65.

The trains with the articulated lightweight cars are the "Bankers" which was a limited stop express
from Joliet.

There was a presentation on the "Bankers" at a past Friends of the Rock Island  meeting in which these
cars were discussed.

Of interest to me is that in picture 1 the Bankers is coming north on Track 4 which is normally used for
southbound trains.  There were traffic locks installed at some time between Polk St and 16th St which
allowed for bi-directional running on Track 4.  Local Suburban trains normally ran Track 3 north of Gresham
so they would be along the platforms at Gresham, Auburn Park, Hamilton Park, Normal Park and Englewood.
Express trains like the Bankers would be crossed over at Gresham to run Track 5 which was reverse signalled
all the way to Polk St., allowing them to pass the locals on Track 3.  Photo 2 shows the Bankers coming north
on Track 5 at Englewood.

North of 16th St., trains coming north on 5 would conflict with empty trains backing into
12th St. Coach Yard using the power switches that can be seen in the photo. It can be seen
that the switch on Track 5 is lined for track 2 in the coach yard.  To keep everything moving
16th St would cross the express trains over from 5 to 4. 

By my time on the Rock, schedules and track speeds had changed and 12th St was a pig yard so I never
saw these routings.  The old heads I broke in with had explained how it all used to work, so it is really great
to see it in pictures.

Thanks for posting!!!!!!!
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/15 17:42 by Englewood.

So the rebuilding apparently also included the conversion of the boat tail obs cars to a standard carbody style. That's a bit more involved than moving a few windows.

I'm pretty sure that it was the RI that came up with the simplest solution for converting round end observation cars mid-train use.  On the outside, simply add on a "square end" and diaphram....on the inside, however, the round end configuration still exists because it was never removed.  Anyone ever ride in one of these?  I only saw photos.  AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

Thanks Marty, these 'hit the ball out of the park'.

In photo 1, left background; are the light colored side door box-shaped something early version rail containers?

rantoul Wrote:
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> Thanks Marty, these 'hit the ball out of the
> park'.
>
> In photo 1, left background; are the light colored
> side door box-shaped something early version rail
> containers?

Those are Flexi-vans, a forerunner of containers.