The Rip Track

Southern Pacific 4449 running past the former Sturtevant, Wisconsin, depot on August 2, 2009.

Today on the podcast, we're going to take a look at the history of Southern Pacific 4449 and some of the trains it has pulled.  We'll also hear a song about some "difficult" passengers that porters have to deal with.  After that, we'll talk a little bit more about passenger trains and how you can model them.  So, all aboard!

• Daylight locomotive and train history
  • Coast Daylight inaugurated on March 1, 1937
  • Noon Daylight inaugurated in 1940
  • San Joaquin Daylight inaugurated on July 4, 1941
  • Shasta Daylight inaugurated in 1949
  • 4449 donated to Portland on April 24, 1958, remained on static display until 1974
  • 4449 restoration completed April 21, 1975
  • For the most current information on this locomotive, visit the official 4449 website.

• "Porters on a Pullman train" sung by Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan.
  • 1923 Edison Blue Amberol recording number 4685.
  • The digital recording was made available through the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project of the University of California, Santa Barbara Library, and, according to the project licensing page (retrieved July 30, 2009) was released there under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

• Modeler's Moment: passenger train consists
  • Typical passenger train consist: RPOs and sealed mail express cars, express freight and baggage cars, coaches, diners and/or lounges, sleepers, observation
  • Platform doors previously mentioned in: Modeler's Moment - Passenger train consists.
  • The Denver Zephyr consist was listed in the book Burlington's Zephyrs by Karl Zimmerman (Andover Junction Publications, 2004, ISBN 0-7603-1856-5), on pages 61 and 64.  (note that The Rip Track will receive a small percentage if you purchase this book using the link on this page; thank you for your support)

Listen to episode 8