SP Diners 1937-1960 - Combined Timeline Graphic Including Repaints and Rebuilds

This is a research update for my other SP Passenger car researching.  This is ideally for us to get a better idea of what the SP's passenger roster looked like during our modeling era, so we can better evaluate what models we should be looking for.

It took about 15 hours to consolidate all the data from SPH&TS books into this graphical form. I want to get this data displayed in a better form to show how the SP was seeing their Dining car fleet from the 1937 A/C rebuilds through WWII and the post-war name train's LW diners arriving, then into the 1954 cutbacks in passenger train schedules, and the 1955 Hamburger Grill conversions.

SP Dining Car Timeline 1937-1960 graphical chart - by Jason Hill

THE KEY

The color coding is fairly obvious.  Obviously see other books from the SPH&TS such as SP Painting and Lettering Guide.  This chart is simply meant as another way to see the info.

No color = Standard Dark Olive Green at the time.  During the pre-June 1946 time, this would be "SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES".  After June 1946 the cars would be getting repainted into SOUTHERN PACIFIC letterboard scheme.  

Light Green = Special (unusual) assignment or lease, but still in SP Dark Olive Green.

Gray = TTG  Usually for Lark/Golden State/Overland in 1942, or General Scheme for HW cars starting in 1954.  Many of the SP's HW diners went to scrap still in DOG, as we can see from this chart.

Red = Daylight  I'm specifying some of the major assignment changes in the notes.  Post-1946 all Daylight cars used the same train logo on the car side.  SP 10200-10201 were used on so many various assignments during their "Daylight Pool" period, it's impossible to list them all on this chart.

Yellow = SP Armour Yellow/Gray scheme for Overland/CoSF.

Red (thick) and Gray (silver) = Golden State 1947 Red/Silver scheme.  Cars repainted to 1953 "Sunset-style" scheme over about 3-6 months for cars still assigned to the Golden State.

Red (thin) and Gray (silver) = Sunset Limited, post-1953 Golden State, & post-1958 General Service (SSS/NSS) Scheme (aka "Tomato Stripe" without black trim on the stripe.

Blue = In Car Shops under repair, rebuild, or awaiting disposition (out-of-service).  Many cars retired or vacated I'm showing in blue until they were sold for scrap (S/S), broken up (B/u), sold off, or converted to MW or other rebuildings.

Brown = Reassigned to MW company service.  (I need to do more research for each car when it was retired from MW service in Ken Harrison's book, but that's for future digging.)

NOTES

Not shown in this list is the 1949 Shasta Daylight cars, as they were regularly assigned and would draw cars from the Daylight Pool to protect them when they went into the shops.

The 1949 83-D-1/2/3 class cars are shown, just to show the effects of them relieving the requirements of as many HW diners after 1954, as the SP cut back on the passenger trains.

IN CLOSING

I will say that some of the SP's earlier 72ft steel diners aren't shown here, mostly because they were either on their way out of front line service by 1940 and I do not believe any received any of the special "Premier" paint schemes after 1942.  I may end up doing something with them in the future, or as some of the cars were converted into Cafe-Lounges , I'll be doing another of these charts for the SP's Lounge cars, which will be its own blog post.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Pre-review of the Prototypes for GGD's 2025 Common Standard Harriman Passenger Cars in HO Scale

Modeling Owl (Part 3) & Photo Analysis (Part 7) - Sept 26, 1953 Consist for No.58