Santa Fe Drovers cars and mixed train caboose: 1931-1953

In 1931, the Santa Fe’s Cleburne shops built the rst 10 all-steel 47’ caboose cars as drover cars to accomodate the cowboys accompanying their stock with Santa Fe’s heavy volume of cattle shipments. These rst cars were assigned road numbers as Series D930-D939, with an additional 8 cars built in 1935 as Series D940-D947. Then began a series of recongurations beginning in 1941 by adding a baggage door and renumbered as Series 2310-2314. In 1944, 8 drover’s cars were converted for use to rider cars behind the fast mail trains. These cars were repainted from mineral brown to olive passenger green with gold leaf lettering and were equipped with steam lines, electric lights and high speed steel wheels, and renumbered into 2593-2599 Series. (See Protocraft Decals “Santa Fe Rider Cars”) In 1946, the cars were rebuilt once again into combines and renumbered into 2315-2320 and painted mineral brown. One car, D939 remained in company service until 1971, and D935 until 1956, but most were retired in 1946. Of the original 2310-2314 combines, 2312 is seen in Santa Fe’s Topeka shops in 1953.

 

Paint & Lettering: Repainting was done as needed and consequently new paint and lettering schemes were introduced gradually, over a long period of time, and were themselves rendered obsolete before they had been applied to all the intended cars. With the exception of the mixed-train caboose used to carry passengers that were painted Coach Green, (a gloss dark olive green) with gold leaf lettering, all the drover’s and mixed train caboose used in conjuntion with livestock transportation were painted Santa Fe mineral brown* with simple reporting marks in white stencil paste. Taking into consideration the repainting time periods, one would nd all three reporting mark schemes on the same cars during the same period; i.e.: pre-1938 “A. T. & S. F.”; the later 1938-1943 “A. T. S. F.” and finally, the post-1943 “A T S F”

 

*Note: Santa Fe’s “Mineral Brown” shades varied considerably depending on the paint shop’s formula and the percentage of lamp black added. Later when pre-mixed synthetic paint was supplied the color mixing formulas varied from year to year and manufacturer. Added to that is the variation between repaints in a Santa Fe shop. Accurate color for these cars are TCP-019 for pre-1945, and TCP-251 for 1945+.

 

Decal set designed and created at Protocraft Decals

O scale model was Hallmark Model’s MIxed Train Caboose

Printed by Microscale Industries

For more information on Santa Fe’s Drover’s cars, refer to John B. McCall’s “Coach, Cabbage & Caboose” volume, pages 119-127