Kansas City Southern trains #9 and 10, 1957-1968

Fred Klein, 2010, 2016

Kansas City Southern ran passenger trains from New Orleans to Kansas City, including its flagship overnight train the Southern Belle. Amazingly the secondary train on this route was un-named, but only numbered 9 and 10 (southbound). It began as a streamliner in 1949 using the older 1940 consist of the Southern Belle. In 1957, #9 and 10 was downgraded to a connecting train from New Orleans to its Shreveport Louisiana connection with the Flying Crow, which served Port Arthur, Texas. It became a day train and dropped its sleepers. In the early 1960s, it lost some of its cars to lack of demand and had only a baggage car, 1 or 2 coaches and an observation-lounge. Numbers 9 and 10 were completely discontinued in 1968.

Andy Sperandeo highlighted trains 9 and 10 in a Model Railroader article on pike size passenger trains (5 cars or less) in 1981. His model uses an unpainted stainless steel Budd observation car that KCS acquired from New York Central. The train photograph below, however, shows a painted observation that may be a painted ex-NYC Budd observation, or the 1949 conversion of the 1940 PS observation car that train 9 acquired from the 1940 Southern Belle. The KCS also had E8 diesels in addition to the E7 shown in the photo below.

KCS train #10 on the Mississippi River bridge at Baton Rouge Louisiana on January 17, 1966. Photo from page 125 of Mike Schafer’s The American Passenger Train.

Trains #9 and 10 can be modeled from a factory painted E8 diesel from Life like and from generic smoothside cars from Con cor. The cars are similar to but probably not exact matches to the PS and ACF prototypes.

The whole train

The E8 diesel is a model painted to match the spectacular colors of the KCS prototype. The model baggage car is 85’ long and is probably a close match and a bit longer than the 1960 PS prototype. The model coaches are based on a 1947 PS Great Northern prototype but are generic enough to closely match the KCS train. KCS ran trains with 1 or 2 coaches depending on demand. The first coach model is a Con cor single car and I believe the second coach pictured is from their Southern Belle set. The observation car is from the Con cor set and is based on a 1951 PS Great Northern prototype. I am not a Kansas City Southern modeler, but it is nice to have a prototype train in KCS colors assembled from standard models.

REFERENCES

Randall, David. From Zephyr to Amtrak, Prototype Publications, 1972.

Sperandeo, Andy. Kansas City Southern trains 9 and 10, Pike size passenger trains, Model Railroader, 1981.

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