Southern passenger cars on the New Haven

I’ve seen a photo of Atlantic Coast Line passenger cars on the New Haven. Did the Richmond Fredericksburg and Potomac cars visit the NH as well? Did New Haven cars venture onto the RF&P tracks?

Beginning around 1960 New Haven's sleeper fleet was increasingly used in Pullman pool service as the NH's overnight services contracted. So it's conceivable, even likely, that NH cars, particularly the Point and State series sleepers, found their way onto Florida trains during peak travel times.

Dave

RF & P did not have a large passenger car fleet.

New Haven sleepers and coaches too operated south to Jacksonville and probably beyond as well. I remember riding north on what was the Gulf Coast Special out of Jacksonville and we had a couple of New Haven 8600's for cars. Although the view outside was certainly different, I felt right at home in the cars. As for ACL and Southern cars on the New Haven. Heavyweight equipment from both railroads could and did run on the New Haven especially in the winter time when Pullman traffic to and from Florida was quite heavy BUT lightweight coaches and sleepers for the most part were restricted between New Haven and New York because they were equipped with soft springs and this created clearance problems. After the M-2's arrived in the early 70's they modified the tracks, bridges and signals which allowed these cars to run through to Boston on the New Haven without any problems and this became regular on some trains. Actually the Southern Crescent ran out of Boston with a lot of Southern equipment for a period in the mid 70's. Seaboard Coast Line coaches were replaced on the Florida trains by Amtrak with a bunch of former Union Pacific, Burlington Northern and other former western railroad owned coaches and thus these fine former SCL cars ended up on a bunch of Northeast Corridor passenger trains between Boston and Washington. Many of these cars were still lettered for their former owners which made everything all the more interesting. Probably the biggest passenger crunch on the New Haven was when we had camp specials running in late June EB and August WB taking kids to various camps all over New England. Some of these moves were on regularly scheduled trains but a lot of them were on special trains using various freight only lines all over the place to get the campers to the closest rail point to their summer camps. Several trains ran with sleepers to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont over lines that had not had passenger service for a number of years previously. There were lots of overnight trains from south of New York or New York itself to Maine that had long strings of heavyweight sleepers although in later years they were mostly lightweight sleepers. Lightweight sleepers from the SCL and Southern could run on the New Haven but in order for them to do so the springs had to be blocked and after this was done there was a speed restriction of 35 MPH (I believe that is the speed) so it was very seldom that this occurred and the move was slow to say the least. The problem on the New Haven was mostly around Bridgeport as well as some bridges but I don't recall exactly which ones were restricted.
Noel Weaver

Thanks everyone (especially Noel) for the insight. I currently live in Virginia near the former RF&P line, but grew up along the NH in Old Greenwich; hence the interest. Noel could clarify the reasons railroads used different spring types (hard vs. soft) in passenger cars?

Chuck

chnhrr wrote:Thanks everyone (especially Noel) for the insight. I currently live in Virginia near the former RF&P line, but grew up along the NH in Old Greenwich; hence the interest. Noel could clarify the reasons railroads used different spring types (hard vs. soft) in passenger cars?

Chuck

Clearance issues but I don't know exactly what they were for the most part.
Noel Weaver

On a related note, I'm sure many of you know that LIRR acquired seven POINT series sleepers and seven BEACH series sleepers from NH in August - September 1969, for use in parlor car service. I have some photos of these 14 former NH sleeping cars at my LIRR Parlor Cars website:

http://www.dominionrailvoyages.com/jhd/lirr/page1.html

LIRR also leased the PINE TREE STATE and NUTMEG STATE bedroom lounge cars from NH for the 1968 summer season, and they may have leased a STATE series bedroom lounge car for the 1966 and 1967 summer seasons.

http://www.dominionrailvoyages.com/jhd/ ... state.html