RailSmith - 5501819 - Passenger Car, Lightweight, Pullman, Coach, 64-Seat - Great Northern - 1209

Specific Item Information: Great Northern Coach 1209. Built by ACF in 1951 for the Empire Builder. This car, 1209, is lettered ‘Empire Builder’. Only one car like this was assigned to each EB consist. This coach was generally used for short distance coach travelers. The other three coaches in the consist were called ‘Day-Nite’ coaches. New tooling for that version is coming late 2019! What you see different from the Walthers release are: Road number, window trim & Empire Builder lettering. This is the only chair car like this to be produced for the Empire Builder as the EB carried only ONE (short distance ‘Day coach’) coach like this. This is a Classic version of this car. Difference being 64 seats versus 60 seats and builder.

Model Information: First released in 2009.

• All-New Tooling based on PS Plan #7484
• Prototype Specific Details: With or without Skirts, Corrugated or Smooth Sides as appropriate
• Working diaphragms
• Blackened Metal Wheelsets on correct GSC 41-N style Trucks
• Come with decals permitting multiple car number and names
• Drop-In Lighting Kit will also be available, item #933-1099

Prototype History: With big plans for its post-war streamliner fleet, the New York Central placed an order for 153 coaches with Pullman-Standard in May 1944. Deliveries of the cars (plan #7484) began in February and continued through October of 1946. At the time, this was the largest equipment order delivered within a single year. Although intended for general service, the cars were delivered with fluted sides that would allow them to be used with Budd cars. On delivery, these were truly state-of-the-art coaches, complete with air conditioning, deep reclining seats, individual lighting, large windows, full-width diaphragms and more. These cars led long lives and were later converted for commuter service. Others were acquired by Amtrak(R) in 1971 and continued in service for several years. A few survive today.

The 64 Seat coach from Pullman was designed as a short-haul commuter coach. The cars were built in the late 1940s using lightweight construction technology which significantly reduced their weight when compared to the older pre-war heavyweight cars. This Pullman design featured smooth sides and was purchased in large numbers by the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads as well as many other roads.

Road Name History: The Great Northern was born in 1881 with the consolidation of several railroads of the northern plains under the leadership of James J. Hill. By 1893, the mainline from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to Seattle was complete.

The GN had two distinctly different characters. The eastern half was a largely flat, grain producing region serving cities like Fargo, the Twin Cities, Grand Forks, Duluth, Sioux Falls, Sioux City and even Winnipeg in Canada. The east end also included the iron ore rich regions of Minnesota. Half of North Dakota was blanketed by GN branchlines (21 in all) serving every imaginable grain elevator.

The western half is the mountainous portion that most people identify with Great Northern. This included crossing the northern Rockies and the even more difficult Cascade ranges. Cities on the western half included Billings, Butte, Helena, Havre, Spokane, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. In 1931, a connection to the Western Pacific was completed from Bieber north to Bend, Oregon. This line was disconnected from the rest of the Great Northern. They used trackage rights on the Oregon Trunk and SP&S to bridge the gap. The Cascade Tunnel, the longest on the continent at 7.8 miles, wasn’t completed until 1931. Construction included a massive sluiceway and hydro-electric power station to feed the electrified line through the tunnel and several miles of railroad on either side. This replaced the original Cascade Tunnel which was a third as long but 500 feet higher up the mountain. That replaced the original route that was another 700 feet higher, had 4% grades and 50 miles of snowsheds. All told, Great Northern had about 8,300 route miles.

The steam era was especially unkind to the Great Northern. They seemed to go out of their way to make their locomotives ugly. Belpaire fire boxes were the norm (made famous by the Pennsylvania, made hideous on the GN.) Headlights were often mounted just above center giving them a spinster look. Cab fronts were often at odd angles. The tender coal bunkers were often taller than the engines. But it wasn’t just aesthetics. GN had a knack for buying the wrong engines for the job. 150 Prarie type 2-6-2’s were so unstable at speed that they were busted down to branchline duty almost straight away and none survived after about 1930. Their first 4-8-2 Mountains built for passenger and fast freight were such a disaster, they were rebuilt into 2-10-2’s. Many railroads had built Mountains out of Mikes but no one had ever started with a Mountain and had to build something else from it. The first 2-6-6-2’s were so under-powered, the boilers were used to make Mikados instead. They did manage to build the largest, fastest, and most powerful Mikados in the country however. Their articulated fleet included 2-6-6-2, 2-6-8-0 (later rebuilt into Mikes), 2-8-8-0, 2-8-8-2 types as well as a pair of Challengers originally delivered to SP&S. Many engines were dressed up with green boilers and boxcar red cab roofs.

For the first generation of diesels, GN bought like many large railroads did: a sampling from everyone. Cab and hood units from EMD and Alco and switchers from EMD, Alco, and Baldwin populated the roster. GN’s first generation geeps and SD’s were delivered with the long hood as the front. This included their GP20’s which had high short hoods and the long hood as the front. Aside from an early black scheme for switchers, the GN fleet was delivered in Omaha Orange and green with yellow piping.

Beginning with the arrival of GP30s in 1962, the paint scheme was simplified by dropping the bottom orange band and the yellow piping. For the second generation, General Electric replaced Alco as a supplier of new road engines.

In 1962, some GN freight cars began to appear in Glacier Green which ran along side the vermilion paint adopted in 1956. In 1967, they went for a major shift. Sky Blue, white, and dark gray were joined by a new version of the Rocky the goat logo. There was talk that this would become the paint scheme for Burlington Northern. The GN name and logo was painted on a steel panel bolted the the hand railings of hood units, making it easier to remove after the merger. For whatever reason, they went with green, black and white, a version of which was simultaneously being tested on the Burlington Route. In 1970, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Spokane Portland & Seattle, and Burlington Route merged to form Burlington Northern.

Brand/Importer Information: RailSmith is a brand launched by Lowell Smith in 2019. Lowell acquired the toolings from Walthers.

With each release, RailSmith will bring passenger cars from across the spectrum of North America’s railroads, with the goal of building entire trains over a period-of-time. It is our plan to release cars that might be for a specific train, but you can use these cars as you see fit, as did the railroads.

Production plans are grand, but we believe they are also achievable. We do not have the capabilities to release an entire train at once, but being able to focus on one release (two-or-three cars at a time), we can build a train over time.