California Fast freight Line
I'm interested in learning more about the California Fast Freight Line, a private car line operated in joint ownership by several different railroads in the 1880s.
So far I don't know much – an illustration of a 28' car lettered for the line and bearing the initials of the Southern Pacific appears in Kyle Wyatt's article on 28' Central pacific boxcars in the Nevada State Railroad Museum publication Sagebrush Headlight, along with a photograph of a train with a similar 28' car bearing the initials of the Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific.
How many railroads operated this line, and where did the cars run? How long was it in business, and did it have established routes and specific schedules, like a stage or steamship line, or was it operated on another basis? And what colors were the cars, did they have a company specific scheme?
—Jim Wilke
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 8:13 PM
2 Comments:
From: KyleWyatt@aol.com
The California Fast Freight Line included a number of roads, each apparently contributing cars to the service. Here is a list of roads I know participated:
CP Central Pacific
SP Southern Pacific
O&C Oregon & California
C&NW Chicago & North-Western
CRI&P Chicago Rock Island & Pacific
UP Union Pacific
CM&STP Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul
A number of SP subsidiary roads (in addition to SP itself) also participated in the Southern Pacific Fast Freight Line, but no non-SP roads were part of it.
Mostly these two fast freight lines seem to come in in the early 1880s and go out about 1897 (although C&NW seems to have used the CFFL name much longer).
The cars were standard boxcars in standard railroad colors. They used their owning road's reporting marks, but were lettered for the CFFL and SPFFL.
—Kyle
I haven't seen any CRI&P cars with CFFL markings - if they did I would like to get more information on that. Would also like to see CRI&P in consists with SP or CP lettered cars. Rock Island had thousands of 36' cars built by Michigan Pennisular in 1890-1892 - these had the C.R.I.& P. RY. ROCK ISLAND ROUTE emblem the right side.
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