We've all seen the photos of the two tone green Southern crescent consist from the 1920s, however the train was jointly operated with other railroads.

My question is during the late 20s was the crescent always the two tone green cars or was it a mix of Pennsy, Sou, AWP, L&N cars perhaps painted in other schemes?

Would a Ps-4 have been seen pulling mixed cars lettered for the different railroads? What about a Pennsy k4 pulling green Sou cars from DC-NYC?

Just curious how the consist worked during the steam era.

-C

I hope this helps some
http://www.hosam.com/srr/clhist.html

Thanks! That's a very interesting read.

I'm still a little confused about what happened during the heavyweight era when the train reached Atlanta or DC. Was the consist left intact other than mail/dining car/locomotive? Or were cars from other roads added?

I can't talk about the Crescent, but in the late Fred Westing's book, "Apex of the Atlantics," about the PRR's E6s class, he describes some of the operations on what is now the Northeast Corridor in the years before electrification, with the Atlantics apparently the dominant power.

Those chunky 4-4-2s could pull pretty well on a line a level as that one is, and had plenty of pep with 2,400 horsepower available, an astounding 1,200 per powered axle. He describes trains being consolidated for the run to New York, and such a train might have red Pennsy cars, green Southern cars, and--at the time--orange and maroon C&O cars! That would put this description in the pre-WW I era.