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 Post subject: Seaboard Air Line Railway "Jim Crow" Combine 259
PostPosted: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:26 am 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 2:02 am
Posts: 620
Location: Albany, Georgia
Rather than add this to the thread about SR 1200 headed to the Smithsonian, I decided to start a new thread. The main reason for posting this is to show the three-sided signs mounted to the interior wall separating the two passenger compartments in Gold Coast Railroad Museum's SAL Jim Crow combine No. 259. The sign could be rotated to show "COLORED" , "WHITE" or "NO SMOKING". I did not take close-up photos of the signs, but you can see they are 3-dimensional, not interchangeable flat plates.

In any case, I made the album on my Facebook page "Public" so hopefully you'll be able to access and view the photos.

One question I had when I wrote the photo captions was this:
Did the sign indicate who should sit in that compartment or in the compartment on the opposite side of the wall? If the passenger compartment adjacent to the baggage compartment was normally the "COLORED" compartment, then the signs as displayed in the 259 would indicate who should be seated on the opposite side of the partition. Does anyone know if there was a standard convention for this? You'll note in my captions that my initial take on this was that the sign was rotated to show who should sit in that particular compartment, not on the other side of the wall.

Anyway, hope you can view the photos.

https://www.facebook.com/stephen.syfret ... 642&type=3

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Stephen S. Syfrett
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 Post subject: Re: Seaboard Air Line Railway "Jim Crow" Combine 259
PostPosted: Tue Nov 12, 2013 12:48 pm 

Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2005 1:25 pm
Posts: 6400
Stephen -

Beautifully restored car. The segregation of the "WHITE" and "COLORED" sections are obvious from the moveable signs. I wondered if the two passenger sections were of different sizes seat-wise, to reflect varying passenger loads. If they were about the same size, there would seem to me to be no reason to have moveable signs but rather just have painted signs on the wall vestibules.

BTW, is that a Burlington E-unit I see through one of the windows? Curious as to how it ended up at Gold Coast.

Les


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 Post subject: Re: Seaboard Air Line Railway "Jim Crow" Combine 259
PostPosted: Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:39 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 2:02 am
Posts: 620
Location: Albany, Georgia
Les,

When I first walked into the SAL car from the coupled SR 359 baggage car used for display space, my first thought was "this is almost too pretty!" The Steamtown folks did a beautiful job.

As for the "Burlington" E-unit, No. 9913, as far as I know it is the only diesel locomotive in the collection that has a paint scheme original to its heritage. Its history is here:
http://gcrm.org/index.php/exhibits/loco ... -q-no-9913

There are several other diesel locos there, including the Florida East Coast Railway E-unit, parading around in what are essentially "fantasy" schemes, but you must give them credit for trying. I suppose the NASA Railroad S-2 could be considered an "original" scheme since it was donated to the museum by NASA, but all the other locomotives have schemes that were never applied to them when in service, wherever they came from.

A full list of the locomotives (steam & diesel) and information about their histories is here:
http://gcrm.org/index.php/exhibits/locomotives

Actually, the CB&Q scheme was a good choice to go with the western railroad light weight passenger equipment they have in the collection. Whether most of that equipment belongs to the museum or is privately owned I do not know.

From their web site, here is a list of their LW passenger equipment:

Western Pacific "California Zephyr" Vista-Dome Car "Silver Crescent"
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) Sleeping Car "Silver Vale"
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) Slumbercoach "Silver Slumber"
Seaboard Air Line Coach/Tavern Car #6300
Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) Sleeping Car
Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL) Dining Car
Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) Coach "Belle Glade"
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) Observation Bar Lounge #254
Western Pacific "California Zephyr" Baggage Car "Silver Stag"
Ex-Seaboard Air Line (SAL) Sleeper-Lounge Car "Silver Palm"

Most of this is under cover, and I believe the FEC "Belle Glade" is their normally used passenger car for the on-site train ride.

Generally speaking, Hurricane Andrew was good for GCRM. Both the CB&Q and FEC E-units and the SAL combine restoration were funded through money that came to the museum following the disastrous effects of that storm. Other work, including a cosmetic restoration of FEC 4-6-2 No. 153 was also funded through those monies.

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 Post subject: Re: Seaboard Air Line Railway "Jim Crow" Combine 259
PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 12:21 am 

Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 4:32 pm
Posts: 199
Les Beckman wrote:
Stephen -

Beautifully restored car. The segregation of the "WHITE" and "COLORED" sections are obvious from the moveable signs. I wondered if the two passenger sections were of different sizes seat-wise, to reflect varying passenger loads. If they were about the same size, there would seem to me to be no reason to have moveable signs but rather just have painted signs on the wall vestibules.

BTW, is that a Burlington E-unit I see through one of the windows? Curious as to how it ended up at Gold Coast.

Les

I remember reading an article about passengers riding Jim Crow equipment on the Southern and the IC. When they left the Jim Crow territories, usually by crossing the "Freedom Bridge" (unofficial name) at the Ohio River, all the signs were flipped to their non-segregated side. Upon heading SB, the signs were flipped back to White/Black. The railroads had to comply with JC laws, but only when they were compelled to. Not sure why the SAL would need movable signs, unless they figured it would leave their territory at some point.


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 Post subject: Re: Seaboard Air Line Railway "Jim Crow" Combine 259
PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 3:01 am 

Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:41 am
Posts: 3911
Location: Inwood, W.Va.
Link to SR 1200 discussion:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35824

Other threads with "Jim Crow" elements:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6408

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33580

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34539

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34978

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=35005


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 Post subject: Re: Seaboard Air Line Railway "Jim Crow" Combine 259
PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 3:28 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 2:02 am
Posts: 620
Location: Albany, Georgia
Les Beckman wrote:
Stephen -

I wondered if the two passenger sections were of different sizes seat-wise, to reflect varying passenger loads. If they were about the same size, there would seem to me to be no reason to have moveable signs but rather just have painted signs on the wall vestibules.

Les


Les, I realized I never actually responded to this part of your post. I checked Gold Coast's web site and found they have no mention of the number of seats in the car, so I went to a published source by a friend of mine, Larry Goolsby. In Larry's 2011 book "Seaboard Air Line Passenger Service - The Streamlined Era", his charts showing info about the various passenger cars in use on the railroad show that SAL 259 had 42 seats while other 5 cars in the group (254 - 258) built in 1913 by Pressed Steel Car Company had only 36. (Note - another published source indicates the cars in this group were numbered 254-260 for a total of 7 cars, not 6.)

From my 2006 visit photos I can see the first compartment (on the vestibule end) has 24 seats, leaving 18 in the center compartment. Although you can't see all of the seats in the center compartment in one photo, you can see that there is one less seat on the right side than there is on the left side. It looks like there are 5 seats on the left and only 4 on the right, due to intrusion of the toilet enclosure into the passenger compartment on that side. It seems the seat count is correct compared to the published info. I'm sure there is a car diagram for the 259 somewhere out there.

So, yes, the 2 passenger compartments had different capacities, 24 & 18. The Seaboard rostered few center-baggage compartment "Jim Crow" cars, preferring the general design of the 259 with adjoining compartments separated by a partition wall.

Also, summarized from Larry's book, the ICC in December 1955 prohibited "segregation of interstate passengers on trains and buses." Not all states complied with the ban, and federal enforcement stepped up only in 1960, officially ending with the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, the 1955 ICC decision did not affect intrastate trains, so segregated seating technically could continue on trains operating wholly within state borders. The 259 was retired in 1959 and donated to GCRM that year.

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