Very typical of passenger trains up to the sixties. The Express boxes, Express reefers, RPO, RPO storage/baggage and baggage cars are what really paid for those trains.
Excellent find, John! Thanks for sharing it with us. Springfield looks to have been a very interesting place during that era.
The first scene of the Meteor at Webster Groves depicts a unique baggage car. Ahead of the lightweight Baggage-RPO is the Frisco’s only six-door baggage car, which began life in May 1925 as Point Polo, a Plan 3584, Lot 4846, 10-2 Pullman. It was rebuilt in Sept 1939 as Magdalen Tower, a Plan 4090, 8-1-3 Pullman. The Magdalen Tower and sister, Rathaus Tower were assigned to trains 3 & 4 during the mid-50’s. As a result of the 1940 anti-trust action against Pullman and the following 1944 decree, the Frisco purchased the car in Dec 1948, and leased it back to Pullman. It was withdrawn from its lease in June 1961, and shortly thereafter rebuilt into baggage car 446. Even after rebuilding, the car retained its distinctive Pullman roof lines. After passenger service ended, the car was placed in company service as a “tool car” in the Springfield wrecker consist. Love the River Division scenes and the Mars lamp. Lots of memories there. The scenes at Springfield post date September 1965.
In 1961-62 the Frisco modernized and redefined the purpose of the Kansas City-Florida Special. The dormitory-coaches were removed, and the three diner-lounges were rebuilt with crew bunks at the end of the reduced lounge section. In addition, the head end was modernized and upgraded to handle the increased mail and express business. The two 60 foot full RPO cars were retired and two existing 70 foot baggage cars were upgraded to full 60 foot RPOs (plus ten-foot utility storage) as cars 2054 and 2055. To augment the express business, two new baggage cars, numbers 444 and 445, were built from the RPO-baggage cars retired from the Wichita trains, and car #446 was rebuilt from the sleeper as noted above. I have modeled the complete modernized KC-FS, with photos in the HO modeling section of this forum. Kansas City-Florida Special 105 and 106 Ken McElreath
