SP Shasta Daylight (10 July 1949)SP Shasta Daylight (10 July 1949)
Many details of the Shasta Daylight were unique,
at least amongst SP's extensive fleet of passenger trains. Most visible were
the taller windows (34 inches, versus 28 inches on most other passenger cars)
to provide a better view of the spectacular scenery, though the
parlor-observation car was from the 1941 Daylight
and did not have the larger windows.
A more esoteric detail was that the nine chair cars in each train were built
to four distinctly different plans yet were lumped together as class 83-C-1.
There were also numbered seqeuntially in train order for the first train, then
the second, so the two 46-seat chair cars with news-agent space were numbered
SP 2381 and SP 2390 rather than being numbered together as was usual
SP practice.
All of the cars Shasta Daylight cars built in 1949
were construted with aluminum bodies atop a steel frame, a design unique to
this train on the Southern Pacific.
Overview
This page depicts the consist of Southern Pacific's Train 9,
the westward (Portland to Oakland and San Francisco)
Shasta Daylight,
when it debuted on 10 July 1949.
The postcard at right (courtesy John Mosbarger) shows a photo
of one of the original trains (eastward train 10, from Oakland to Portland,
powered by E7A 6003 and two E7B units) on Cascade Siding at Odell Lake, Oregon.
Consist
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SP 6004A (EMD E7A, class DP-4, later EP620A-2) was delivered in August 1947 with Shasta Daylight markings nearly two years before the train's inauguration. The E7s only lasted a few weeks in Shasta Daylight service, replaced by Alco PAs equipped with dynamic brakes after three additional ABA PA/PB sets arrived in August 1949. The lack of dynamic brakes on the E7s required use of retaining valves plus stops for wheel cooling on heavy downhill grades in the Cascades. SP 6004A became SP 6004 in late 1949 when the B-units were renumbered and the letter suffixes were dropped. | ||
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SP 6004B, 6004C (EMD E7B, class DP-4, later EP620A-B) were delivered in August 1947 as part of an ABB set led by SP 6004A; that the set was intact on 10 July 1949 is a guess as B-unit numbers were too small to be legible on photographs of the train. These units were renumbered SP 5908 and 5909 in late 1949. | ||
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SP 5000 (83-BP-30-1), baggage-postal car. Delivered by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7568), these cars had a 30-foot RPO appartment in front while the rear portion was used for checked baggage and express. | ||
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SP 2381 (83-C-1), 46-seat chair car with space for a news agent and a conductor's desk, equipped with a radio antenna on the roof with an AM radio receiver, recorded music, public address microphone, and amplifier. Built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7569, SP plan 1105). | ||
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SP 2382, SP 2383 (83-C-1), 48-seat chair cars with a forward vestibule, built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7571, SP plan 1106). | ||
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SP 2384 (83-C-1), 48-seat chair car with a rear vestibule and radio antenna, built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7571A, SP plan 1107). | ||
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SP 2385 (83-C-1), 38-seat chair car with a crew locker room and a roof-mounted radio antenna built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7570, SP plan 1108). This car was entrained immediately in front of the triple-unit diner to provide convenient access to the locker room for the dining crew. | ||
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SP 2386 (83-C-1), 48-seat chair car with a rear vestibule and radio antenna, built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7571A, SP plan 1107). | ||
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SP 2387 (83-C-1), 48-seat chair cars with a forward vestibule, built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7571, SP plan 1106). | ||
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SP 2388 (83-C-1), 48-seat chair car with a rear vestibule and radio antenna, built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7571A, SP plan 1107). | ||
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SP 10316
(83-T-1),
Timberline Tavern lounge car, inspired by the
Timberline Lodge
on Mt. Hood east of Portland,
built by Pullman-Standard in May 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7575).
This car and twin SP 10317 were used in the heavyweight
Cascade for a few weeks until delivery of the
Cascade Club cars,
after which they entered service on the new
Shasta Daylight. They were replaced in mid-1955
by dome-lounge cars.
(Interior photo courtesy John Mosbarger.)
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SP 2389 (83-C-1), 48-seat chair car with a rear vestibule, built by Pullman-Standard in June 1949 (lot 6805, plan 7571A, SP plan 1107). | ||
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SP 2954 (79-PRO-2), 22-seat parlor observation built by Pullman-Standard in 1941 (lot 6638, plan 7419A) for the Morning Daylight. This car, along with sister SP 2955 in the other train set, was unique amongst Shasta Daylight cars in several regards: it was the only car with fluted sides, and it also had windows 28 inches tall, compared to 34-inch windows on cars built for the Shasta Daylight. An extra 6 inches was added at the top of the orange band, compared to the original Daylight livery, so the striping matched the other cars in the train. |
These train images are in a scale of 1 pixel = 12 in and were created by Karl L. Swartz. For more information about them, please see Not Quite Train GIFs.
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Daylight drumhead courtesy
The Coach Yard.
Animation implemented using Brian Clough's
Train Gif JavaScript Project
in conjunction with
Dr. Clue's DHTML library
.