Tennessean article.

I noticed that the writer said the cars were painted.

AFAIK they were stainless steel and not painted.

Heavyweights were repainted

Due in part to the prewar restrictions, Pullman was unable to deliver all of the sleepers Southern ordered for their stainless streamliners. As a compromise Pullman painted some heavyweights silver with gray "Shadow Lines" to make them look somewhat better when tagged onto the end of the consist.

As a youngster (Age 0 and up) my siblings and I regularly rode the Tennessean from Knoxville to Memphis and a couple of trips to DC (often as an unaccompanied minor(s)). Of those I remember I never had a bad trip (except dealing with ramifications of the Jim Crow Laws which is a whole other story). They often stuck us in the lounge where the porter could keep an eye on us (and saturate us with sodas and sweets).

Tennessean article

This has been my favorite article in MRH since I subscribed.  I applaud the author, who is obviously busy at school, in finding the time to do the research that went into this piece.  I have been interested in the Southern's passenger trains for many years, but very little about them exists in print.

Thanks again for an interesting article about an interesting, little-known train.

Robert E. Oliver

Why do manufacturers ignore trains like the Tennessean?

We keep getting Santa Fe, Pennsylvania, Milwaukee Road, and UP trains. Why not regional trains from other roads?  Walthers and Bachmann seem stuck in Chicago and New York. Maybe Rapido, who showed that Canadian roadnames can sell, would consider proving wrong, again, the lazy manufacturers who think everything worth making had to star in a movie from the 50’s! I bet a southeastern name train like the Southern’s Tennessean or Pelican, or the ACL’s Champion could sell well too!

Thanks for showing us the info is there to model lesser known but just as fascinating passenger trains.

Dave

Availability of Tennessean Equipment

Three to four decades ago Southerner, Tennessean and other Southern train cars, engines and kits were produced by several manufacturers. I have a box full of HO and N LifeLike E6 ABs, DL109's (other than brass no DL110's were produced) and representative cars. My feeling is that the market was saturated and the manufacturers moved on to more profitable (popular) rolling stock. With a little effort all of these old LL Proto 1000 and 2000 engines can be updated with DCC decoders, but at least for the E6's, E7's and E8's modern units are available. Finding cars can still be a bit of a problem even if you are willing to kitbash or build kits.

That is an unexpected and very welcome article.

I certainly enjoyed that article. I took something of an interest in that train and it’s siblings on a little-known routing. I was surprised to learn not long ago that the Washington-Roanoke-Knoxville-Chattanooga-Birmingham-New Orleans routing was almost the same distance as the better known routes via Atlanta and Birmingham or Montgomery between the same end points. The Pelican ran the entire route and for a long time even carried a Washington to Shreveport Pullman that was transferred to the IC at Meridian, MS. The Birmingham Special also served this route from Washington to Birmingham. So Washington to Chattanooga had three through trains including the Tennessean. At that junction city the streamliner headed west to Memphis and the other two trains headed southwest for Birmingham and New Orleans. 

Knoxville would be a good town to model with these three trains serving a good sized depot along with the Cincinnati to Dixie Carolina Special. In fact the Tennessean was timed to connect with the Carolina train, providing excellent service all the way from Memphis to Charleston, SC and other cities in both directions. A lot of dropping and adding cars took place there, diners, sleepers and most of all headend cars. 

Good article of which we could use several more.

Barry P

Mainline Modeler articles

There was a two part article on the Tennessean with plans in the December 1991 and January 1992 issues of Mainline Modeler.  I was surprised that this fact didn't make the bibliography.

Robert

Nice article

Great article. I've noticed over the years in the hobby press a large vacuum of southern-orented articles (and I don't mean just the Southern RR, more so the region). It's nice to read about stuff in the 'bottom right' corner of the country!

It also goes to show that you don't have to be past retirement age to contribute!

Hey, the guy can't know every single article that ever got printed on the topic. And even if he could, would he have gotten any more info from it? His article was pretty well-done.

I did a magazine article for something non-RR-related once and the editor got emails from people asking why I didn't cite obscure stuff they (alone in some cases) had. The thing is, you cite that which assisted you, not just everything you ever read on the subject. There's a lot of ho-hum or bogus stuff out there.

If he's a college student...

He hadn't even been thought of when Mainline Modeler published those articles. 

Heck, he might not have been out of grade school when Mainline Modeler folded.... 

Interesting to think of how much of our history is really... history.

Mainline Modeler isn't indexed very well ...

I just did a Google search for Tennessean train magazine article and came up totally dry as to any reference to Mainline Modeler.

I think Jeff is right ... the author in this case is a college student and if it was published 20+ years ago and not well indexed online somewhere it might as well not exist for him.

I'm not surprised at all the author missed something in 30 year old issues of Mainline Modeler about this train.

Finding Copies of MM

Even if the author had found the reference to the Mainline Modeler articles finding copies can be a real pain. The NMRA does have copies in their collection (anybody for a road trip), the Indexes are available on Kalmbach's web site (just the indexes), and there are several outfits that provide copies just not 12/91 and 1/92. I checked the club library last night and found that several of the 91 and 92 issues are missing (Duh - I am in Tennessee). Anybody have copies that they can share with the author?

Flamed again!!!

There are some people who REALLY have an attitude problem on this forum.

I guess MM or other past magazines are verboten on MRH.

Robert

Not so

Not so. I LOVE Mainline Modeler and bought the digital archive disk. And I’m the top dog around here, so you won’t get any remarks from me about other magazines being bad or forbidden. That said MM is a hard magazine to find these days and there’s no good back issues index for it.

That’s not a statement of disdain, on the contrary, it’s an unfortunate reality for this nicely produced fallen flag magazine. A great service to the hobby would be for someone who is passionate about Mainline Modeler to put together an index for it that could be posted online.

We would gladly post said index if no one else would. But we don’t have the bandwidth to put it together.

Trainlife

Trainlife.com (the brick and mortar plus side of ExactRail) has the following fallen flag magazines online:

• RailNews
• Model Builder
• Model Railroading
• Prototype Modeler
• Railmodel Journal
• 1001 Model Railroading Ideas

Sadly, Mainline Modeler is not among them. 

Flamed???

I don't see any attitude problem at all. It's a reasonably obscure publication from almost 20 years ago. Heck, I'd forgotten about the magazine entirely until you mentioned it.

Wow, some of those I'd never seen and I'd forgotten about the rest. I got out of the hobby in the 90s and never had any decent hobby shops around me (MR and RMC was all you could find where I lived), so many of these came and went before I ever heard of them.

A year ago, I found a book of cartoons that ran in one of those magazines (I think it was Model Railroading, but it was done by the guy who does the cartoons on the Bar Mills website) and it mentioned the magazine in which they had run. I bought the book, never having heard of the cartoons or even the magazine itself!

Attitude problem?

I agree with Lee.  I just don't see it.

Google is not the be all - end all

MM is fully indexed on the Trains Magazine Index. Results:

I too have the MM PDF DVD you could buy at one point. I copied the contents to my computer. Between the Trains Index and the PDFs, you can read everything.

Also, for the times I have wanted a physical magazine (maybe for a fold-out plan), I just purchase the back copy on ebay. 

http://trc.trains.com/magazineindex/?view=ViewAllMagazines

A Couple Notes on the Tennessean

Folks, for those who are really interested in this train it’s worth mentioning that the WB Productions video, “Blue Ridge Steam”, has a good deal of coverage of this train on it’s N&W segment. The motive power is N&W streamlined steam but otherwise all Southern. Many run-bys are included with a review of the entire consist, Great for modeling. Quite a few views show a modernized heavyweight combine behind the headend cars, and once in a while a modernized coach as well. There may be other coverage on YouTube.

Also, weren’t the IHC passenger cars that came after the Rivarossi cars based on Southern prototypes? The combine certainly looks like the car used on this train. Perhaps the other cars are good as well, I don't know. I expect some of the car sides made by AMB, Lazer Horizons and certainly NKP Car Works are suitable. Check their websites.

Barry P

The Trains website index

Yes, I'm aware of this index but I bet many modelers are not -- my point was unless the younger modelers know about this index, they're likely to miss fallen-flag publication references now and then. Trains did come out and say that as of like 2005 or so, they stopped keeping this index up-to-date for non-Kalmbach publications still in business. So as time goes on, this index is getting less useful for anything much past 2005 except Kalmbach publications.

Speaking of younger modelers, more and more of the submissions to MRH are starting to come from younger folks -- proof the hobby is far from dying out. YouTube is awash with model train videos made by younger guys, for example. And this superb article is another example of a great article done by a young guy!

Bold emphasis is

Bold emphasis is mine:

Indeed!

I'll be 50 in 2 months and most times I get together with any other model railroaders, the median age drops at least a decade by me just walking into the room most times.

It's great to see someone nowhere near retirement age on a byline. I actually did a double-take when I saw Jonas's pic, as I'm sure a few of other readers likely did as well.

Joe, it's also great how welcoming you are to new blood. MRH doesn't seem to suffer from the "editor pals only get published" club that other magazines did (or still do) suffer from.

Congrats to Jonas

Attaboy, Jonas on the nice article!  Gosh was I shocked when I got to NCSU 40 years ago to find out that Electrical Engineering was more about math/calculus and had nothing to do with being the engineer of an electric train (ha!).  Come to the Raleigh train show at fairgrounds in November 9 & 10 and you'll see some buildings you'll recognize from NCSU on my module.  Go Pack!