Texas Special ‘Anson B. Jones’ RPO

Description

Texas Special – Railway Post Office ‘Anson B. Jones’

This RPO was built by Pullman in 1947 and was part of three consists of  The Texas Special. The Texas Special ran from St. Louis to San Antonio and had connecting cars to New York City and Washington DC.

This Anson B. Jones, was the MKT’s contribution, with the Frisco providing the RPO ‘Rock Hill’. Both RPO cars were identical. Early on, the railroads realized that they could not turn the inbound consist to accommodate an (always) on time departure. Thus they built a third consist of heavy-weight cars, painted them red and silver ‘shadow-lined’ to match the streamline cars. Then they mixed them in with the streamline cars so that no customer would be disappointed and say ‘oh we got the old train today’!

The consist was as follows in 1948:

One RPO Baggage, three Chair Cars, one Coach Buffet Lounge, one Dining Car, seven Sleepers, one Buffet Lounge Observation Car.  This fourteen car train was jointly operated by the MKT and the Frisco and pulled by two E-7 locomotives. This red and silver train must have been a sight to behold!

This is a Prototype version of this car and does not have skirting. We did that as all of the rest of our cars for the Texas Special, also do not have the full skirting. We like to match!