In a previous entry we covered the Union Pacific's 1946-47 City of Los Angeles train, so this time we'll visit the UP's 1947-1950 version of the train, when it began running daily with four trainsets instead of two. Then we'll cover some help from others in making buildings for my layout.
First, here's a photo of UP's new E7s arriving in Chicago with the City of Los Angeles train and with blank red banners in April of 1947:
Here are some City of LA (COLA) notes from Jeff Koeller, as I quoted last time:Since early 1946 Union Pacific's postwar City of Los Angeles train had been running only every third day, using just two trainsets (the "7th Train" and the "9th Train") and two sets of power: an E2A-E6B-E6B set and an E6A-E2B-E2B set (they had mixed the E2s and E6s to try to equalize the power for each train).
On May 14, 1947, the UP's City of LA train began running daily for the first time, as it now had four trainsets to use instead of just two, and the number of sleeping cars was reduced to five per train. The two new trainsets were called the "16th Train" and the "17th Train."
Here is Jeff Koeller's table of cars in each of the four trainsets during this May 1947 to March 1950 time period:
It stayed this way until early 1950, when it got a 5th trainset. But the locomotives pulling the train did not change during 1947-1949, until early 1950.
After the E7s were delivered in August 1946, the E2s were more or less relegated to the Los Angeles Limited (because the COLA got all the newest and most powerful locomotives). The power sets were now E7 A-B-B sets on virtually all the COLA trains, and stayed that way until early 1950, when the first E8s arrived.
The use of COLA-lettered power units on the LA Limited eventually led to the elimination of the train name lettering in the red “name banners” on the locomotive sides, leaving just a blank, red banner. This was done at least by spring 1947. Note that E7s 930A and 931A never did have train names in their red name banners, as they were intended for City of Portland service, but were delivered about six months prior to the start of COP daily service.
By the time daily service began, the COLA train name had been dropped from the car letterboards, and only the sleeping cars retained their car names. The names for non-sleeping cars were dropped and just the car numbers were used (applied over the trucks). For example, Sun Valley became LA-901. The non-sleeping cars also received the “Streamliner” logo in the center of the car side.
The sleeping cars simply had the word PULLMAN in 8-inch letters on the letterboard in a rather tightly-spaced arrangement. Individually owned non-sleeping cars had railroad ownership lettering in the letterboards, but all jointly-owned cars had 5-inch UNION PACIFIC at the left end of the letterboard, with 5-inch CHICAGO AND NORTH WESTERN lettering at the right end of the letterboard (same arrangement on both sides of the cars).
