ERIE LACKAWANNA PASSENGER EQUIPMENT-PROTOTYPE AND MODEL

BY JOE LOFLAND AND MARTIN OBED

Over the years television and movies have romanticized rail travel and one theme is usually common: The quintessential rail experience is typified by traveling in a. sleeping car. On-screen romantic encounters, intrigue, even slapstick rarely occur in the confines of a mere coach; you need that special atmosphere that can only be found in a sleeper room. While TV and movies sometimes exaggerate reality, in many cases they simply mirror the emotions of our society. This is especially true of the sleeping car experience. While other modes of domestic transportation can boast various advantages, the ability to travel in a private room has always been the domain of the railroads.

Erie Lackawanna was no stranger to the sleeping car business. Both Erie and Delaware, Lackawanna & Western brought sleepers into the new railroad and, at least for a short time after the merger, EL boasted a number of trains offering sleeping-car service. The December 1960 OFFICIAL GUIDE, for example, lists the following trains as offering sleeping-car service: Erie-Lackawanna Limited, Lake Cities, Pacific Express, Phoebe Snow Westerner, Owl, Atlantic Express, New Yorker and New York Mail. By the end of 1966 many of these trains were gone and the only one with sleeper service was the New York-Chicago Lake Cities. In this last installment of the EL passenger car series, let's look at some of the sleepers used by Erie Lackawanna on its overnight trains.

Heavyweight sleepers

When Erie and DL&W merged in October 1960, they offered to the new railroad 31 heavyweight sleepers that had been purchased following World War II. Included in this group were the following types of cars: 12-section 1-drawing room; 10-section 1-drawing room 1-compartment (two of which Erie rebuilt to 4-section 6-compartment 4-double bedroom cars in 1951); 10-section 1-drawing room 2-double bedroom; and 10-section 1-drawing room 2-compartment. Few of these cars lasted the merger period and all had been taken out of revenue service by 1966. Table 1 profiles some of the more-interesting heavyweights used by Erie Lackawanna.

Lightweight sleepers

The principal lightweight sleeper type used by Erie Lackawanna was the 10-section 6-double bedroom car (commonly referred to as a "10-6"). Both Erie and DL&W purchased examples of these in 1949; between the two roads there was a total of 16 such cars brought to the merger. Erie 10-6s were named after that road's former presidents and superintendents, while Lackawanna car names were geographic. Table 2 lists all of the lightweight 10-6s that were on the EL roster.

The easiest sleeper to model is the 10-6. Simply use an AHM car and paint it using Accu-Paint or Scalecoat colors. For EL or DL&W maroon-and-gray use Accu-Paint Maroon No.23, Gray No.47 and Yellow No.23 (for striping) or Scalecoat Maroon No.42, Gray No.41 and Yellow No.43. For Erie two-tone green, Accu-Paint offers an exact match with Green No.55 and Gray-Green No.56.

All of the ex-DL&W cars were white-lined in 1969 and 1970. Five of them were subsequently sold to James E. Strates Shows, Inc. In December 1966 five of the ex-Erie cars were purchased by Canadian National, and a sixth car, the Eleazor Lord (named after Erie's first president), was scrapped. The remaining Erie 10-6, William Reynolds, was apparently wrecked in 1966 and languished in storage unil white-lined in September 1969.

There were two other types of lightweight sleepers used by EL. Four were built by Pullman in June 1942 to a 6-section 6-roomette and 4-double bedroom configuration. They where purchased by Erie in 1945 and all lasted well into the EL period. These cars were in Erie's American series and sported patriot names obviously spawned by the country's immersion in World War II. Table 3 (below) briefly outlines the fate of each of these cars in EL service. You can model these cars by using Eastern Car Works 6-6-4 sleeper or you can get 6-6-4 sides from Brass Car Sides.

Erie also had two 10-5 sleepers.manufactured by Pullman in 1954. The cars were named Pride of Youngstown and Spirit of Youngstown and both were repainted and relettered for EL in 1962. Pride was white-lined in January 1970 and sold to James E. Strates Shows, Inc. Spirit became a non-revenue executive sleeper in 1970 and today is still in service on the Conrail inspection train as car No.11. Modeling the 10-5 sleeper is not as hard as you think. The basis for a 10-5 modei is an AHM 10-6. All that is required is to fill certain windows in and to swap sides with some window arrangements.