Cascadia Union Station is a busy hub of passenger train activity in the mid-50s, and sleeping car operation is one of its busiest. Being a terminus for several railroads in a major city with many attractions, Cascadia is both a destination and a busy interchange point for the many railroads it serves. Especially during the peak Christmas season, where mail and express volumes keep their terminals humming around the clock, passenger trains are swollen with holiday travelers that add extra sections and special trains to the timetable.
Yet a major player in American railroading in the 1950s - one that made Cascadia one of its western centers of operation - was actually not a railroad. For a century ending in 1968, the Pullman Company operated the sleeping, parlor and specialized restaurant cars for nearly all passenger trains for American railroads. Although the railroads owned most of these cars from 1949 onward, Pullman maintained and repaired, staffed, cleaned and provisioned, and booked passage on sleepers for the railroads. This required dedicated facilities at major stations throughout the country, which were an adjunct to coach yards.
Due to the popularity of the Depot jobs in last year's operating sessions on the layout, Cascadia's passenger operations are expanding to include coach yard and Pullman facilities jobs. Because mail, express and interline car transfers are more than enough for two crew positions, these expanded facilities will add three more roles to operating sessions. After spending the better part of the past year researching Pullman operations in relation to passenger trains, Cascadia has a new set of coach yards.
Here we take a look at the new coach yard additions at Cascadia, then take a closer look at the role of the Pullman Company in passenger train operations of the era. As a new hub of Pullman activity, Cascadia gives operators and visitors a glimpse into an exciting but nearly forgotten dimension of railroading in the Transition Era of the mid-1950s.
The Coach Yards at Cascadia Union Station
Being a terminus for the Northern Pacific, Milwaukee Road and Great Northern from the north and east, for Southern Pacific and Western Pacific from the south, as well as a through point for Union Pacific and SP&S, Cascadia needs coach yards to service and turn trains for these railroads. In the coach yards trains are inspected, repaired, cleaned, provisioned, and staffed for their next assignments. Coaches, lounges and dining cars are serviced here as well, but the busiest part of the coach yard is its Pullman facilities. The two coach yards are laid out in such a way that its shared facilities are centrally located. These include commissary, Pullman Building (providing crew quarters, laundry, provisions and administration).
Here's a view of the newly completed Powell Street Coach Yard, named after the famous street in Portland:
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| View of the new Powell Street Coach Yard with Downtown Cascadia in the distance. In the foreground are its main tracks, commissary, placeholders for Pullman Building, shops and non-railroad buildings on the edge of the coach yard. To this yard's left is SP/UP/Milwaukee shared coach yard on the Cascadia Depot property. Both are stubbed, as was often the case with urban coach yards, where land is at a premium. |
The neighboring coach yards at Cascadia are both stub-ended. Real estate in the hilly downtown area being at a premium, together with the harbor industries taking up valuable space along the vast shorelines of this peninsular city, the Cascadia Depot Railway laid out its yards to take full advantage of its balloon track for switching and turning trains in and out of Union Station. Though through yards were more common, many railroads - especially in urban settings such as Portland - used stub-ended coach yards to maximize capacity while using shared wye tracks for turning trains and cuts into the neighboring depot.
The Powell Street Yard is strategically located so that cars being serviced are backed into the yard and the depot, avoiding the need to turn them. Such see-saw moves may seem awkward, but they were typical of the moves between depot and yards at many passenger terminals. Its lead, located on the balloon, allows crews to back cars into the yard, then pull cuts to back into the depot for assignment, as prototypes often worked.
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| View of the lead into Powell Street Yard showing the main balloon track and future Downtown warehouses and their tracks. The yard has two sections: 3 tracks at right for passenger cars, 2 all-purpose tracks at left for holding freight and/or additional passenger cars. Eventually, the Powell Street Bridge will cross over this yard. Union Station and Mt. Hood are at the upper left. |
Cascadia Depot & Railway Company operates all freight and passenger traffic in Cascadia proper, so Powell Street Yard is dual-purpose with extra track for holding freight cars as needed to serve its downtown customers. The yardmaster oversees both passenger and freight in this yard, keeping track of the passenger train timetable and the cars in its service, as well as the town's freight assignments. During peak season or when special events, such as conventions, come to town, the yardmaster is kept busy juggling the extra movements of Pullman sleepers - many of which serve as temporary hotel space for the overflow of travelers.
Pullman's Role in Cascadia's Passenger Operations of the 1950s
One of the most famous names in passenger train travel, and a major force in its operation, was not a railroad. Sleeping cars, and virtually every facet of their operation - from reserving and ticketing to cleaning, provisioning, maintaining and servicing - was the job of the Pullman Company. Although the railroads owned most of the cars, it was Pullman who operated, staffed and maintained them. And this fact added an interesting dimension to passenger trains that is fascinating to model.
The long and rich history of the Pullman Company is too long to recite in this essay; rather, its complex operations at Cascadia add an interesting dimension for operators to experience. Because it was Pullman, rather than the owning railroads, who managed the sleeping car fleet, coach yards freely mixed sleeping cars of all different types and colors. In addition to regularly-scheduled trains, it was often the case that special all-Pullman trains were run to accommodate extra holiday travelers (in which case, all-Pullman sections were added to existing trains in the timetable), special trains were created for events, such as a Boy Scouts Jamboree, conventions, tourist specials.
Cars for these special train movements were often supplied by the Pullman Pool, which was comprised entirely of heavyweight equipment. Also, railroads could earn extra money by leasing out their surplus sleepers for special trains. This leasing was brokered through the Pullman Company, and it was not uncommon to see cuts of sleepers from one railroad appearing on competing roads in this service. The new coach yards at Cascadia support the full variety of these cars and their operation on its passenger trains, giving operators the unique opportunity to learn an aspect of railroading not represented on the layouts where I live.
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| A view down the newly-completed Powell Street Coach Yard from the Cascadia Depot Coach Yard gives an idea of this yard's large capacity for Hill Lines (primarily NP's Mainstreeter), as well as extra Pullman sleepers for seasonal and special needs. The front tracks also can hold freight for the busy industrial switching in and around Downtown Cascadia. |
The Coach Yard as Part of the Urban Landscape
For as long as I can remember, I've hated yards on layouts. Usually modeled badly, they often struck me as a big waste of prime space that always could be put to better use with great scenes and other more interesting railroad activity. The more I learned about passenger operations generally, and Pullman specifically, I began to see yards in a different light. After seeing photos of coach yards in the major cities and seeing how they worked, I began to see the beauty of these yards as part of the fabric of the city, literally as mobile hotels occupying the rails. Once I learned about the Pullman Pool of heavyweight sleepers as a ubiquitous part of passenger travel in the 1950s, it became clear that having coach yard operations adds both interest for crews and an aesthetic dimension to the city I am modeling.
There's something intrinsically beautiful in the image of yards full of heavyweight passenger cars in the middle of a busy city. These images show heavyweight cars as fluid urban spaces with a decidedly utilitarian purpose. As the needs of travelers swelled and contracted in the 1950s, the Pullman Pool was called into service to meet these needs. An image of the Mission Street Coach Yard in Los Angeles makes the point, and the site where I found it (http://coastdaylight.com/mission.html) is worth visiting for more excellent pictures and background.
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| Mission Coach Yard, Los Angeles, early 1950s, from Mission Road Coach Yard - Part 1, Los Angeles, California, Early 1950s, Photography by Lou Cross (source: http://coastdaylight.com/mission.html) |
In 1955, while the dome-equipped name trains were getting the publicity, it often was the secondary trains that made the money, and sleeping cars and their operation were an important factor. At the heart of sleeping car operations in the 1950s was a major force in railroading that was not actually a railroad: the Pullman Company. For a century ending in 1968, the Pullman Company was the operator of sleeping cars, parlor and restaurant cars on American railroads. Yet most modelers of the 'Transition Era' focus on the transition of power from Steam to Diesel and overlook this fascinating transition in passenger operations taking place at the same time. For me, passenger operation generally, and sleeping car operation specifically, are an exciting, though often overlooked opportunity for the modeler of the 1950s. Future essays will detail the role of Pullman operations in passenger trains of the 1950s and what makes them fun to model.
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