Pennsylvania’s Admiral, 1941-c1949

 

Fred Klein, 2010, 2016

The Pennsylvania railroad was the largest in the US by revenue and traffic, and called itself the standard railroad of the world. The Admiral was one of its second tier trains in the New York to Chicago run, behind the exclusive Broadway Limited. The eastbound Admiral (train # 70) started on April 27, 1941 but the westbound (train # 71) waited until April 26, 1942. The Pennsylvania Railroad started this new train in 1941 because of the high demands of wartime traffic. The name Admiral was chosen as a counterpoint to the General, a similar second tier train that made the Chicago to New York run starting 3 years earlier. The Admiral left New York at 9 in the evening and arrived before lunch the next day, hence a need for mostly sleeper cars. Admiral’s sleeper cars were owned and operated by the Pullman Company until Pullmans’ divestiture in 1948 forced railroads to buy the cars and lease them back to Pullman, who continued to staff and operate them. After 1948, the large name the letterboard of the cars began to change from “Pullman” to “Pennsylvania”. Unlike the Broadway Limited, the Admiral carried coaches for most of its life. It made only a few stops until it was downgraded to a local in 1956. Brief information on the Admiral plus relevant links can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_(train).

 

Second string trains like the Admiral retained many heavyweight cars in the 40s and 50s in addition to newer lightweight cars that gradually replaced them. At the time of the Admirals’ founding in 1941, the conversion of the “blue ribbon fleet” of cars from older, plain heavyweight cars of the 1920s to lightweight cars painted (starting in 1938) in the two-tone pinstripe “fleet of moderninsm” scheme designed by Richard Loewy was in full swing. Many heavyweight cars were gradually repainted in the Loewy FOM scheme, but leightweight cars delivered after 1938 were all in the Loewy scheme. After the war, starting in 1948, cars were gradually repainted in a simpler scheme of one shade of Tuscan red with three yellow pinstripes. The Admiral in the early to mid 40s would be a mixture of plain Tuscan red and Loewy FOM schemes, with modern post-war solid Tuscan with stripes appearing in the late 40s. The common 12 section-1 drawing room heavyweight Pullman initially appeared in solid Tuscan paint in the 1920s, many were repainted in the FOM scheme in the early 1940s, and repainted again in solid Tuscan with three yellow pinstripes after 1948. When the California Zephyr started service from Chicago to San Francisco in 1948, an additional CZ sleeper was often in the Admiral for transcontinental runs to New York. The Admiral generally retained its sleeping cars along the route from New York to Chicago, but baggage cars were often switched in and out at Harrisburg during the engine change.

 

Electrification of the PRR from New York to Washington and from Philadelphia west to Harrisburg was completed in 1938. The Admirals’ power during this time would have been the GG1 electric locomotive east of Harrisburg and a K4 Pacific 4-6-2 west of Harrisburg. Some of the K4 Pacifics were given streamlined shrouds. When trains were too long for the Pacific to handle, a 4-4-4-4 sharknose duplex locomotive was used.

 

The Admiral at Valparaiso, Indiana in 1942, behind a K4 Pacific. Photo by Richard Cook from Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, The Trains We Rode, page 539.

 

This is not a photo of the Admiral, but it a good photo of a Pennsylvania K4 Pacific pulling a PRR baggage car.

 

Modeling the Admiral in N scale is becoming easier in 2010 with the availability of several sleepers in the FOM scheme from Centrailia Car Shops (thanks Ron Sebastian!), and with heavyweight cars from Micro-trains. Most specialty cars like diners and combines (especially those unique to the PRR) are unavailable, and stand-ins, substitutions or kit bashing is required. I am not a PRR modeler, but I am assembling a fleet as best I can. I find the pre-1938 heavyweight cars easy to paint a solid Tuscan color and decal using available “PULLMAN” and car name decals. I used Pullman car names on the cars I painted from Microscale decal sheets that were assigned to the Pennsylvania wherever possible, but the names I use here probably were not from Admiral trains.

 

I’m using two published consists to model the Admiral: #1 is November 16, 1943 (Chicago) from Pennsy Stramliners by Joe Welsh (p 57), and #2 is April 6, 1945 (Pittsburgh) from Wayner’s Passenger Train Consists 1923-1973 (p 36). The books list individual car names and numbers, but I am only attempting to model general car types. The table lists the two consists and the cars I used to represent them. Corresponding cars are in the same row. During the high passenger demand at the height of the war in 1943, it seems the train was swollen with coaches and lounges were sparse compared to later after the war. The changes in car demand before, during and after the war, the introduction and availability of new equipment, the inheriting of cars from one train to another, and the evolution of paint schemes make modeling a train a personal choice of how accurate one wants to be for a given date. I only painted heavyweight cars in solid Tuscan. Toward the end of the 1940s some would be in FOM or 3-stripe schemes. My model cars are not fully detailed: the state of air conditioning ducts, truck types, and numbers and car names from the decal sheets are only approximations as close as I can easily get them.

 

Table of prototype consists of 11/16/1943, 4/6/1945, and model train

 

 

Power and head end

 

 

A single K4 passenger Pacific provided enough power for the gentle grades of the Midwest. Note the distinctive shape of the Bellpaire boiler. The K4 model is a fine running Bachmann model with sound. Use a GG1 electric locomotive east of Harrisburg. A Hellgate models B60 baggage car kit is a prototypical PRR baggage car. I do not have a model of the next car, a PB70 coach baggage, but I substituted a custom painted a prototypical Model Power model of a PBM70 with a 15’ RPO in front of the baggage section. Next is an 80’ P70 coach. The number and type of coaches must have varied considerably, but I only include one. The coach model is prototypical for the PRR of a non air-conditioned type in use from 1918 until the early 40s.

 

Diner and Pullman section

 

 

Leading off the Pullman section is a 10 section-1 drawing room-2 compartment Pullman. The prototypically accurate model is from Micro-trains. I’m not sure if a heavy or light weight diner was more typical on the Admiral. The only heavyweight diner I have is the common type made by Rivarossi and based on a Santa Fe prototype built from 1927-1930, custom painted for the PRR. It is an acceptable stand in until research and a better model come along. After the diner, the Admiral had a 12 duplex-5 double bedroom lightweight Pullman in the Brook series. Kato makes a model of this prototype but it is not available in the Loewy FOM paint scheme of this era. I substitute the 12-5 car with the 10 roomette-5 double bedroom Pullman Cascade Bay, made by Centralia-Intermountain in the FOM paint. The first of four 12 section-1 drawing Room Pullmans in this Admiral consist is a custom painted Micro-trains car. Following is another 12-1, an old Rivarossi model without steps or air conditioning ducts. The heavyweight cars in the pre-FOM solid Tuscan color are easy for the modeler to paint, and I lettered these 12-1 cars as Uppworth and Elmfield. The Pennsylvania had hundreds of 12-1 Pullmans.

 

More Pullman cars

 

 

Next is a lightweight 18 roomette Pullman in the City series in FOM paint. You can prototypically model this car right out of the box with a Centralia car, here named City of Akron. A heavyweight 12-1 is next, modeled by a solid color, custom painted Micro-trains car decaled as Lawmaker. The next car in the train should be a lightweight buffet-lounge-6 double bedroom car. I do not have a model of this car, but I substitute a heavyweight 28 seat parlor car, modeled by a custom painted Micro-trains car. Pennsylvania owned several of these parlor cars. The last car is a prototypical 12-1 heavyweight car named Andrew Jackson. Many PRR trains used 12-1’s named after famous people on the rear of the train (that were not used elsewhere in the train), perhaps because these 12-1 cars were always fitted with drumheads and markers on the rear.

 

 

References

Beebe, Lucius and Charles Clegg, The Trains We Rode, Promontory Press, 1965.

Wayner, Robert, Passenger train consists 1923-1973, Wayner publications, c 1995.

Welsh, Joe, Pennsy Streamliners, Kalmbach Books, 1999.

Welsh, Joe, Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited, MBI Books, 2006.

 

BACK TO THE PAGE OF PASSENGER TRAINS