Burlington Twin Cities Zephyr, 1947 –1970

Fred Klein, 2003

The Twin Cities Zephyr ran the competitive route from Chicago to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  The first (1935) and second (1936) Twin Zephyrs were articulated trainsets of permanently coupled cars.  They were replaced in 1947 with a domed train that offered the flexibility of coupling individual cars as needed.  The Budd Company built two sets of cars especially for this train.  Each of the two trains ran daily and also made a round trip, and also took the names morning zephyr and afternoon zephyr.

 

The consist expanded from a basic 7 cars to as much as 14 cars if traffic demanded.  My model has 8 cars.  The consist changed over time, and I am not sure how long the train would have looked like the one pictured, but certainly until at least the mid 1950s.  The picture below of the entire train shows the basic 7-car consist and was taken sometime after 1953 (photo from Dorin’s Everywhere West, the Burlington Route, page 65 or David Randall’s The Passenger Car Library vol. 1 – CB&Q, page 70).

 

Twin Cities Zephyr

 

Twin Cities Zephyr, first portion.

 

Power for the train was an EMD E7, A and B unit.  In later years E8’s were used.  The E7A model is from Lifelike with factory decoration.  The B unit is an E5B unit (I do not own an E7B model).  I modified a Lifelike E6B with Evergreen corrugated styrene and Microscale decals to simulate the E5B “Silver Mate”.  Power and car substitutions were common on real as well as model railroads, so the model train is prototypical.

 

The train is mostly an easy one to model because all but two of the cars are available as prototypical Kato or Con-cor corrugated Budd cars.  The exceptions to a perfect model are the baggage/ buffet/ lounge car following the locomotives, and a similar but non-exact tail car.  The prototype baggage-tavern cars (Silver Salon and Silver Buffet) were built in 1947 for this train, but are not available in N scale.  The closest I could come to prototype was a corrugated baggage-buffet brass car side from JnJ, which I decorated as Silver Salon.  The door and window placement and number is similar to the prototype, but the corrugation, side and roof details are not.  To me, the car looks close enough to prototype.

 

A string of coach cars follows the baggage-buffet car.  The domeless Budd coaches of 1940 were often added to, or substituted for, the basic four dome cars of the Twin Cities Zephyr.  Cars were added depending on the traffic demands.  I use the Kato model of the 1940 coach “Silver Cloud”, originally built for the Aksarben Zephyr, to increase the model train to 5 coaches.  This 1940 car was often used in the train.

 

Twin Cities Zephyr, second portion.

 

The next car is the dome coach “Silver Glade”.  This Con-cor model is of the 1948 dome coach built for the California Zephyr.  I used the Con-cor dome coach because I did not have four Kato models of the 1947 domes to complete the train, and because the 1947 and 1948 dome cars are very similar.  The next Kato models of the 1947 dome coaches “Silver Vision” and “Silver Island” are prototypical of the 1947 coaches built for the Twin Cities Zephyr.

 

Twin Cities Zephyr, third portion.

 

The scan includes another prototypical Kato model of the 1947 Twin Cities Zephyr dome coach, to total 4 dome coaches for the train.  The following car is one of the two 1947 diners built for the TCZ, “Silver Salver”.  The Con-cor model is prototypical for the TCZ and was decorated by Con-cor with the correct name. 

 

The last car is a dome parlor-observation car.  Budd built the tail cars “Silver View” and Silver Vista” for the TCZ in 1947.  An exact model of this 1947 observation car is not available, but the Con-cor model of the 1948 California Zephyr dome observation is close enough for me to the 1947 TCZ car.  The Con-cor car is the only large-production corrugated dome-observation car available in N scale.  Compare the Con-cor model with the photo above.  Photos of the two observation cars are on pages 87 and 113 of Randall’s The Passenger Car Library vol. 1 – CB&Q. 

 

REFERENCES

 

Dorin, Patrick, Everywhere West, the Burlington Route, Superior Publishing, 1976.

Randall, W. David, The Passenger Car Library vol. 1 – CB&Q, RPC Publications, 1999.

Wayner, Robert J., Car Names Numbers and Consists, Wayner Publications, 1972.