A traveling environment free from temperature extremes and noxious vapors is taken for granted aboard today's streamliners but 50 years ago it was quite another story.
According to John H. White in his excellent book, The American Railroad Passenger Car, many forms of so-called air conditioning methods were tried starting as far back as 1855. These schemes were variants on using ice for cooling and letting the motion of the car move the "cooled" air through the car. Various fans and blowers evolved and the Santa Fe equipped as many as 33 diners with ice activated systems and electric fans. Ice, however, was simply not the answer as it could take 4,500 pounds of ice - per car - to travel 360 miles! Mechanical air conditioning, as such, began to develop in the late 1920's with one man named Willis Carrier and the Santa Fe Railway in the lead.
In 1929 Carrier installed an ammonia refrigeration compressor system aboard a dining car belonging to the Baltimore and Ohio (Martha Washington). The system was so successful that by the end of 1930 the B&O had equipped enough cars to make the Columbian the first completely air conditioned train in the United States.
A few months later, the Santa Fe installed a similar system on diner 1418 and, while a success, the Santa Fe ordered no further cars with Carrier's mechanical system but instead jumped whole-hog into a steam ejector system developed by Carrier and manufactured by the Safety Car Heating and Lighting Company and the Vapor Heating Corporation. By 1932, the Santa Fe had ten diners working with the steam system.
The Santa Fe's transcontinental route undergoes significant extremes in altitude from Chicago to Los Angeles. Consider that the temperature at Dearborn station on a given day may be 70 degrees, but by the time the train stops at Flagstaff it may be below freezing; further west in the desert at Barstow, it may be over 100 and upon arriving at Los Angeles the temperature may be back to 70.
These extremes, coupled with the availability of good steam producing locomotives convinced mechanical officials to select steam ejector air conditioning exclusively on the heavyweight cars (and until the late 1940's on most of the lightweights) of the passenger fleet.
Critics of the system said it was a "steam hog," but at the end of 1936, the Santa Fe had converted a total of 187 passenger cars to steam ejector air conditioning. By the beginning of 1939, this total was up to 306 and all but one car (diner 1418) was equipped with the steam ejector system.
A complete description of how you get cold air out of hot steam is beyond the scope of this article but if you are really interested, check out the fascinating treatise found in White's book, the 1931, 1937 and 1940 issues of the Car Builders Cyclopedia and the new Pullman Plan Book on the Santa Fe from RPC Publications. I have included a diagram (Figure 1) that shows how the system works to get an idea of the components.
Beyond that, lets accept the fact that hot water is made to boil at a low temperature in a vacuum and it worked. Further, by opening and closing some valves, the system was easy to switch to heat the cars as well. That flexibility (remember, you can be freezing in Flagstaff in June) was put to the test on the Santa Fe.
From a modelers point of view, the Santa Fe's decision makes a big difference. Many modelers are now building layouts with minimum track elevations in excess of 50 inches from the floor. This is great for operation and a multitude of other reasons but it makes the roofs of the cars-- especially passenger cars-- very noticeable. And with steam ejector air conditioning what you notice most is the wealth of roof detail on the heavyweight cars.
When I built my Scout passenger train, I used Walthers kits for the lounges, dining and chair cars. As you may know, the Walthers roofs are made of ABS plastic and totally devoid of any detail whatsoever. Modem brass car models, B.C.Y. (before Coach Yard), really did not put much detail in their roofs either.
My research on the Scout cars (and other Santa Fe heavyweights) indicates that the air conditioning details were present on virtually all name-train revenue cars by the end of the 1930's.
I gathered every picture I could find of the roof hatches and underbody detail from photo collections and books and began a systematic review of the air conditioning system. Further, I examined, measured and photographed two Santa Fe heavyweight cars in a museum collection. Since I had quite a few cars to model, I made patterns of the roof hatches and underbody details and made RTV molds to make polyester resin castings from them. What I did, and how I did it could make for a great improvement in your passenger car fleet-- unless you can afford it all in brass!
The steam ejector system was used on all Santa Fe owned cars and on most Pullman owned cars operating over the Santa Fe. The Pullman Company developed its own type of mechanical air conditioning system in 1935, but cars so equipped were a rare sight on the Santa Fe. Pullman cars in Santa Fe service that did not have steam ejector systems were usually limited to tourist sleepers in pool service found on trains like the Grand Canyon. That is a big point when you are modeling the Scout because these Pullman tourist cars were in dedicated service and therefore had steam ejector systems.
There are five integral detail parts that make up "modelable" system: the air conditioning unit (roof hatch), the refrigeration unit (roof hatch), fresh air intakes, the "conditioned air" duct and the make-up water tank / valve closet under floor assembly.
The accompanying photographs were made of two Santa Fe cars in the collection of the Southwest Railway Historical Society at Fair Park in Dallas. The cars were acquired in the 1960's and, at one time, the SRHS folks had the system working but age and lack of spare parts ended that convenience.
The two huge roof units were mounted in the clerestory portion of the cars and all you can really see of the equipment are the two roof hatches and various vents and such. On some cars, notably lounges and diners, one hatch (usually the refrigeration unit) will be at the end of the car and the other will be at the center. This may have had something to do with other mechanical equipment that took up too much space at the end of the car or for better air flow in passenger areas. Check out specific photographs if this is an issue on cars you are modeling. I have seen some chair cars with this arrangement as well, but not often.
The underbody details are really home-brew. About all there is to model is a "valve closet" containing several large valves and a make-up water tank. This component is almost always on the side of the car with the roof duct, running the length of the passenger compartment. I counted several variations of these valve closets in photographs and, upon inspection at Fair Park, found them to be basically the same inside, but with different outside appearances depending on their placement underneath the car.
The roof hatch patterns were made from .010 styrene. I had a friend use his rivet machine to emboss a row of rivets around the edges and scored the centerline to make a slight bend. I then filled up the ends with putty to make them solid. The details were added with pieces of styrene strip and nut and bolt castings. I drilled pilot holes for the grab irons. I did not attempt to make the hold down clamp gizmos as they would probably not survive in an operating environment. Note how well, however, Coach Yard did in brass with their fine models.
The valve closets/make up water tank patterns were built out of styrene and nut and bolt castings as well. I made two varieties-- one for diners and lounges and one for chair cars based on what I saw at Fair Park and in photographs. While I was at it, I made a water tank to replace the unremarkable one furnished in the Walthers kits.
My pattern was then molded in RTV rubber from Castolite products (see their classified ad each month in Model Railroader) and the parts were made from their polyester resins.
I made the intakes by filing down some Walthers box vent castings (part number 941-950) and round styrene rod.
With one pour, I could make all the parts for one car except the air intakes. If I did it again, I would make patterns for them as well as the RTV casting process (thanks to many experiments by noted modelers like Lloyd Keyser, Richard Hendrickson, Frank Peacock and Eric Bronsky) really yields excellent results.
After the parts have set and been removed from the mold, I let them cure for a day or so before handling. Holes for the grab irons can then be drilled and grab irons fashioned from .015 brass wire. Apply them with ACC.
The Walthers roofs are rounded and our hatch castings have flat bottoms. To solve this incompatibility, I set up my Unimat as a vertical mill and, using a 1/4" carbide end mill, milled out the area where the casting was to fit. This process works very well but you should first practice on a scrap roof (the roofs are available separately from Walthers through your hobby shop).
I then added the conditioned air duct (Walthers part number 944-436) according to the photographs and sanded the assembly smooth. Chair cars almost always had one duct. Other types of cars have one duct on each side but check photos to be sure.
The roof still looked too plain so I applied 3/4" wide masking tape to simulate the slight ribbed effect. This also created some very credible texture when the whole roof was sprayed with Floquil grimy black. Roof grabs and hand rails complete the detail job.
Now that the importers are bringing out super-detailed brass models almost monthly, I'm not sure just how valuable these techniques will be. However, for the Walthers kits - when you can find them at flea markets or dig them out of your closet - these ideas can make a very convincing model for a fraction of the price.
Keep cool!
Many thanks go to John H. White of the Smithsonian Institution, Mike Nick, Charlie Slater, L. O. King, Jr., the members of the SRHS in Dallas, Gordon Bassett and George Traylor for information and advice.
Go to the steam ejector photo index.
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