City of Los Angeles (COLA), 16th Train, 1950

My modeling project is to re-create, in H0 scale, the Union Pacific Streamliner "City of Los Angeles" 16th train as it looked in 1950. Why pick just this train, someone might ask? It all started back in 1966 when I took a Greyhound bus from San Francisco to New York. Somewhere on the prairie the bus was passed by this yellow streak, one of the eastbound City trains on the Union Pacific (almost like the title image on this page, although that is not a City train, but a modern-day excursion train). That sight has remained in my head all these years, and when the time came to model a passenger train, this was a very natural choice.

I had purchased an H0 scale brass dining car (a SOHO model of the Union Pacific 4000 series Diners, actually called "Lunch counter-Diner" by Union Pacific) back in the mid to late 1970's during a visit to New York City. A couple of years later I had bought the now classic book "The Union Pacific Streamliners" by Ranks and Kratville. As I mentioned on the front page, one thing always seems to lead to another, so with that car and the book, I set out to build a train. At the time I lived in Los Angeles, so it seemed natural to build a City of Los Angeles instead of a City of San Francisco. If it hadn't been for those two (and the memory of that train on the prairie) I probably would have built a Santa Fe Chief train instead. And, as it turned out, my SOHO diner was not part of the train I decided to build.

This version of the City Of Los Angeles (COLA) is the last train without dome cars. It is also noteworthy that it is the only COLA from this time period that had an all-UP consist as far as I can determine. The other COLA trains had cars from the cooperating railroads (Chicago & North Western, and Southern Pacific - both of which, interestingly enough, are absorbed by Union Pacific) in them.

The term "the 16th Train" refers to an internal numbering of the different Streamliner train sets that UP used. The time table numbers of the COLA were 103 (westbound) and 104 (eastbound). The train set numbering started with the M-10000 streamliner back in 1934, which became the first train, and ended with the 20-something train. By the time the 16th train was created, the Streamliners had a daily schedule which required five train sets to each of Los Angeles and San Francisco (the COLA trains were the 7th, 9th, 16th, 17th, and 21st train sets).

The train's power was originally from three E6/7 units (A-B-B) which pulled 13 cars. After the E8 engines were delivered beginning in 1950 these took over as power for the train. Models of the engines and most of the cars are readily available, while others are considerably more difficult to find. The car list on this site shows what I have found on the market today.

Please sit back and scroll through the pages. I have mixed prototype and model information so you can get a picture of what the original train would have looked like and what my model will be like.

Acknowledgments

The trademark "Union Pacific" is used with permission of Union Pacific Railroad.