Texas Is Special!
I am excited to say the announcement that ‘we are producing this train’ has been met with much enthusiasm and support.
This is a photo of a pre-production sample, hence no couplers. Soon, we will be announcing three Texas Special coaches.
The Texas Special’s paint scheme is a real eye catcher, as you can see. As I dig deeper into the history of this train, I see connecting cars to the east by the B&O, Pennsylvania & New York Central – all cars that would be fun to bring to this series. According to the book ‘More Classic Trains’, there were two lightweight consist sets for this train in 1948, but three train sets were needed to operate the San Antonio to St. Louis line, so heavyweight cars were brought into service.
According to Steve Goen’s book Miss Katy, by Four Ways West, there was a total of eight of these older cars that were painted red and silver, and shadow-lined to blend into the consist. Although it is hard to say that any heavyweight car can ‘blend in’, it was the common practice in that era to enlist older cars, and it served well to fix the schedule problem. These heavyweight cars were interspersed into the streamlined consists so as not to have one train set be all streamlined or all heavyweight.
Although I plan to produce a complete streamline Texas Special, it would be accurate and fun to bring some of these shadow-lined red and silver beauties, as well.
Aren’t trains fun!
