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| SP 4258 leads No.58 across the LA River in the last mile of the trip to LAUPT. John Shaw Photo - James Salkeld Collection |
A Scramble for 60ft RPO Cars
In 1950, the Lark's regularly assigned 60ft RPO cars disappeared.
According to the consist sheet (published in Southern Pacific Passenger Trains: Vol.1 Night Trains of the Coast Route, by Dennis Ryan and Joseph Shine, 1986 Four Ways West Publishing) for the Lark, the three upgraded 60ft RPO cars were removed from the assignment on the Lark and replaced with 70ft (30ft Apartment - 40ft Baggage) RPO "Combine" cars. The question is why?
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| SP 4119, the 'protection' 60ft RPO for the Lark, upgraded in 1941. |
The only SP cars really suitable for high-speed operations on the Lark would have been the three 70-BP-30-2/3s (SP 5069, 5070, & 5124) upgraded in 1941 for the San Joaquin Daylight.
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| SP 5124, upgraded in 1941 with high speed derail-guards, etc as the 'protection' car for the San Joaquin Daylight. |
In 1950 the SP started rebuilding three 80-BH-1 horse-baggages into 60ft RPO Apartment cars with a 20ft baggage section for use on the San Joaquin Daylights.
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| SP 5217, one of three 60ft Apartment cars rebuilt for the San Joaquin Daylight starting in 1950. |
During this time the San Joaquin Daylight regularly used two 70-BP-30s in each consist to fill out the 60ft Apartment contract. This is not surprising, since the SP only rebuilt one 80-BH-1 in 1950, and the other two came in the following years.
Where'd the 60ft RPO Cars All Go?
So this brings up several questions...
1. What did the SP need the 60ft RPO Apartment cars for if not the Lark and the San Joaquin Daylight?
Well, I should mention some other interesting tidbits at this point. The SP 5217 or 5218 was photographed in the Argonaut, running east of Los Angeles during this time. So it would seem that even though it was rebuilt for the San Joaquin Daylight, it was operating on other trains on the Sunset Route.
2. Were there other SP trains that were using the 60ft Apartment cars borrowed from the Lark and the new upgraded San Joaquin Daylight cars?
It would seem from other photos that 60ft HW RPOs were still operating on the Overland and Shasta Routes as usual, so why the sudden need for at least five more 60ft RPO cars?
3. What happened to all the 60ft RPOs that the SP owned from the early 1910-1920s?
When I went digging in the SP Passenger Cars Vol.3 book and compiled up all the service dates for the older 60-P-1/2/3/4 class and six 60-P class rebuilds, I found that several had been retired over the years, but a HUGE number of them were converted to Postal Storage over the years. Five were on long term lease to the Southern Pacific de Mexico, which then became FCP in 1951 and were sold off with SPdem/FCP.
4. If it was simply an upgrade program and reconditioning of the Lark's cars, why was the SP not able to do a more elegant job of timing it so they didn't have to replace at least 5 (SP 4117, 4118, 4119 - Lark, SP 5217, 5218 - San Joaquin) cars for 18 months.
This possibly would have cause a lot of issues if these cars were forming the SP's protection pool and if the sale of the SPdM came sooner than expected, overlapping with the RPO contract changes in 1949-1951. Basically the SP was OUT of 60ft RPO cars.
SP 60ft RPO History After 1949
The SP originally owned about 36 RPOs in the various 60-P-series classes. However over the years most had been converted to PS (Postal Storage) service. Only a very few were left in 1949. Let's look at the SP's 60ft RPO fleet disposition as of 1949.
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| SP 4114, converted from a 60-B-10 baggage car in 1940. |
The following six cars were converted from 60-B-10
SP 4114 Converted in 1940 from 60-B-10 SP 6049
SP 4115 Converted in 1940 from 60-B-10 SP 6053
SP 4116 Converted in 1940 from 60-B-10 SP 6238
SP 4117 Converted in 1940 from 60-B-10 SP 6239, Streamlined for Lark service in 1941
SP 4118 Converted in 1940 from 60-B-10 SP 6240, Streamlined for Lark service in 1941
SP 4119 Converted in 1940 from 60-B-10 SP 6241, Painted for Lark protection service in 1941
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| The earlier 60-P-1/2/3/4 class cars had this window arrangement. |
The following cars were among the last 60-P-series cars in regular postal service which were removed in 1949.
SP 4108 Converted to PS in 1949
SP 4110 Converted to PS in 1949
SP 4112 Converted to PS in 1949
The following cars were on lease before 1951 or sold to SPdeM in 1951
SP 4249 Leased to SPdeM in 1927, Sold to SPdeM in 1951.
SP 4250 Leased to SPdeM in 1943, Sold to SPdeM in 1951.
SP 4251 Leased to SPdeM in 1943, Sold to SPdeM in 1951.
SP 4259 to SPdeM in 1951
SP 4260 to SPdeM in 1951
I'm uncertain about the following cars:
SP 4097 (Converted to 60-PS, unknown date)
SP 4087 (Restored to Postal - unsure of date)
SP 4245 Converted from 60-B-6 6356 in 1936 - unclear disposition
SP 4246 Converted from 60-B-5 6417 in 1936 - unclear disposition
SP 4247 Converted from 60-B-5 6418 in 1936 - unclear disposition
I have no information about the floor plans of the SP 4245-4247 series of three cars as rebuilt. Given the 1936 rebuild date, I wonder if they followed the earlier 60-P-1 floor plan or the 60-P floor plan as used on the 4114-4119 series four years later.
Given the above data (pulled from the disposition notes in SPH&TS SP Passenger Cars Vol.3 Headend cars) it would seem that the SP was down to only 6 RPOs of 60ft length that I can confirm (4114-4119 series). There are possibly as many as 5 more cars that were either converted to RPOs in 1936 or not yet converted, or the data's incomplete.
This would only leave the SP with a pool of around 6-11 60ft RPOs in 1949 which was not enough to cover the Argonaut, Klamath, and Overland during 1949-1953 time frame, and would explain why the 4116-4119 were pulled off the Lark and even the new San Joaquin Daylight 5217 and 5218 were slowly converted and 30ft RPO Apartment 'protection' cars were seen on the San Joaquin Daylight for several years, until 1953.
Speculation Abounds
Another possibility of the retirement of the older 60-P-1/2/3/4 series cars is that the USPS's RPO contracts may have changed and specified that the 60ft Apartments match the newer internal arrangement of having the letter sorting cases between the doors, and not in the blind end of the car with the doors between the two sorting areas.
All the 60ft RPOs that the SP started rebuilding between 1940 and 1950+ were followed the 'newer design' standard, this included the 5044 and 5045 (77-BP-60) rebuilt from dining cars in 1954 and the 5217-5219 (80-BP-60) between 1950 and 1954 for the San Joaquin Daylight.
Rebuilding of the RPO Fleet
I should point out that the SP wasn't loosing out on all of their RPOs in 1949, in fact they're rebuilding many of the smaller apartment cars into larger apartment versions. A coincidence? I don't really think so anymore.
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| SP 5130, a 70-BP-30-1 built to the same plan as the 70-BP-15-3s. |
In 1948 the Southern Pacific started a rebuild program to convert the 70-BP-15-3s to 30ft Mail Apartments, reclassifying the cars as 70-BP-30. This conversion program continued into 1949 and 1950.
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| SP 5148 was one of the rebuilt 70-BP-15- rebuilt as 70-BP-30 class. |
The SP still had a fairly large number of 60-BP-15 and 60-BP-30 series cars, but they rode on 4-wheel trucks, which the SP didn't seem to like to assign to higher speed and long-haul trains. In most photos 6-wheel truck cars were assigned to all long-haul trains which reached high speed, mostly the upgraded 60-P-series, 69-BP-30-series, and 70-BP-30-series cars.
I could go on about the SP's 30ft RPO Apartment fleet, but I'm going to stay on topic about the 60ft RPOs.
The Fall of the RPOs
By 1954, the SP was trimming back the multitude of secondary trains around the system. Many of SP's classic mail trains didn't survive past 1954 and several secondary trains that did only lasted for a few months into 1955.
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| A vanishing era as SP 4350 pounds through Modesto in November 1951 with No.55. Nolan Black Photo - Brian Black Collection. |
The Cascade replaced the Beaver between Oakland and Portland using new RPOs. The SP converted the remaining 60-BP-15-2s to Baggage-Express service between 1952 and 1954, also all of its 60-BP-30-1 series cars in 1954 to Baggage-Express service as well.
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| The SP 5199, a 69-BP-30-3 class, was converted to Baggage-Express service in 1954. |
Even the SP's larger 69-BP-30s weren't immune from the downgrading to Baggage-Express service, with 7 being converted to BE between 1939 and 1954, and most of the remaining cars in that series in 1959.
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| The Baggage-Express car SP 6102, originally SP 5138 70-BP-30-1, was converted in November 1950. |
Many of the converted Baggage-Express cars retained their RPO windows and doors, but the interiors were stripped of the RPO apartment fittings, allowing the space to be combined with the baggage section. Notice also that the 'United States Mail, Railway Post Office' lettering is painted over, indicating that the car is no longer equipped for RPO service and lease to USPS.
The Last of the RPOs
In 1948 the SP bought three new 83-BP-30-1 class cars for the Shasta Daylight. Followed in 1950 and 1953 by the conversion of two 83-B-1s to 83-BP-30-1s (which was a design option for the class) for the Cascade and Shasta Daylight.
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| Budd built Stainless Steel 83-BP-30-2 class cars built in 1950 for the Sunset Limited. |
The Sunset Limited was supplied in 1950 with six new 83-BP-30-2 cars. These cars were originally T&NO 220-225, and renumbered as SP 5005-5010 in 1951.
It wasn't until 1964 that SP couldn't keep up the deteriorating fleet of 1910s & 1920s built HW 'Harriman' cars and built new RPO cars SP 5030-5036 (83-BP-60-1) in 1964 and SP 5020-5029 (83-BP_30-3) in 1965 for general service. These new cars only served 2-3 years before the USPS canceled the RPO contracts with the SP and most railroads in the US, a few in the eastern US continued until around 1979-1982 on selected runs.
Jason Hill
Related Articles:
Railway Post Offices - What and Why - History and info on RPOs
Modeling SP 5199 from a SC&F resin kit (Part 1)
San Joaquin Daylight RPOs (Part 1) - SP 5124
SP HW Passenger Cars - Modeling Index
Modeling a Mail Train (Nos.55/56), the Tehacahpi Mail
Well thought out. Makes very good sense. Kudos!
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