In July of 2012, the Alexander Chapter-NRHS was able to rescue the sole remaining narrow gauge baggage car left with a southeastern provenance (and one of only two extant arch roof NG baggage cars. We moved the car into our shop in March 2013, and just over a year later, I thought I would share some of the progress and ask a couple of hopefully simple questions....

First- on the emergency train line cords/ropes that run thru the cars, how did the cables connect from one car to the next?

Secondly- builders records show that the car body was painted "Pullman". It is explicitly stated so. Well, ok. Unfortunately, the paint left under the siding of this car looks more UPS Brown than Pullman Green. Believe it or not, the siding we removed certainly looks to be the original- no extra nail holes, etc. like we have found under siding in our other wooden cars. Any thoughts/comments on the nuances of "Pullman" (yeah, I said "hopefully" simple question."

Thanks in advance- here are a few photos...

Matt Bumgarner

Matt - I'm not a Pullman historian, but I think I recall hearing that Pullman did use a brown color before the adoption of the green we all know so well. If nobody here knows better, I will try to track it down next week.

dave

As I understand it, the original "Pullman Green" was Chrome Yellow mixed with Black. Depending on the composition of the black paint, the final color could vary, but generally is supposed to look rather like UPS Brown.

If you have any paint samples, a spectroscopic analysis would help pin down the pigments used, and thus what color was attempted.

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

Very impressive. Your team is not easily daunted. I will send you a email back channel as I don't want to spread others email addresses without permission. Bill is the ramrod for much of the coach restoration at Mid Continent. His father Ray and his son Bill are two very respected fellows in the business of wood car restoration. Link included is our own 1870's C&NW Combine. Work has started on this too but haven't see it lately so not sure how much has been done. Very impressed by your work. Regards, John.

http://www.midcontinent.org/collectn/wo ... w1099.html

PS Matt can't find a way to send you email or PM so if your interested PM me. Good luck in all things, John.

OK Matt, found a generic reference in John White's two volume tome:

Pale yellow was the most common standard exterior passenger color before the War. Starting in 1856 a movement was under way to replace the bright and gaudy colors with darker simpler liveries. After about 865 the most common liveries were (in the years referred to as the "Brown decades" by Lewis Mumford) olive green, chocolate brown, plum, and Munich lake. The Victorian conception of Chocolate Brown was lighter and grayer than the dark rich chocolate bar color we think of, more like cocoa powder.

I'm thinking you have an example of Chocolate Brown on hand....except it would be unusual for the siding to have survived without having been replaced over the decades. CRR&B 2 was resided more than once in its history, and there was even a penciled inscription under the siding by a carpenter complaining about his boss making him finish residing the car and missing lunch to finish it.

Check the nail holes and see if it looks like the car was sided more than once.

dave

The story as I understand it is that UPS copied the brown from Pullman. I read that in a history of the UPS company...maybe it is online.

The wooden-era Pullman color was brown and not green. That's a fact.

I would say that if UPS copied the color from Pullman...you could copy it back.

Concerning the brake cord...assuming the car had air brakes (some narrow gauge railroads did not) there would be an emergency brake valve on each car (and maybe more then one). The cord just ran through the car to the valve(s)...not from car to car.

The cord should be cotton with a steel cable in the center of it. Use cotton clothes-line and feed a small steel cable into the center. The cords should be red...so use RIT dye to color it. There were special brass clasps to hook the cord to the valve...you need to look at one to understand. If you don't have the cable in the center it will not hang right and will look limp and out-of-place. There were also special carriers for the cord...they are a little less then 1" in diameter and a flat ring like a wedding band...brass.

At some point they stopped feeding the cable through the entire length of the car and just had it some distance (unknown) into the body of the car and there was usually one valve at each end...I assume this started in the heavyweight car era.

And then there's the conductor's signal cord...was narrow gauge equipment so equipped? (It was usually grey in color.)

T7

First, congratulations on the progress being made! It's hard to believe you essentially started out with just the ends, and look where you are now.

In regard to the other question, about the attachment of the bell cord between cars, the Car Builders' Dictionary of 1909 has references to a "bell cord coupling."

http://books.google.com/books?id=w8pAAQ ... rd&f=false

Figures (click on Page 318):

http://books.google.com/books?id=w8pAAQ ... 18&f=false

This was for a cord that ran through the train to a bell on the underside of the cab roof on the locomotive. It was the communication device used before the invention of the pneumatic cab whistle. I understand Dan Markoff's Eureka is equipped with such a signal bell, or at least has the wood block for mounting the bell in the cab.

It's probably been 40 years since I saw it, but if I remember correctly, the 1940 film "Young Tom Edison" (with the late Mickey Rooney as Edison) has such a bell in use in a climatic scene in which Edison prevents a train from crashing into a washed out bridge. He uses whistle signals from another locomotive to warn a friend on the train the bridge is out, sending the message in Morse code. The friend decodes the message, and tells the conductor its meaning. The conductor stops the train by pulling on the bell cord, which rings the bell in the cab, and the engineer, hearing this, applies the air.

Of course, the train stops right at the edge of the raging river! That's Hollywood for ya!