Westbound Meteor

6:38 a.m., Frisco's streamlined Meteor follows a single EMD unit across the Creek County hills. Off-color Pullman next to observation is a B&O sleeper from Jersey City to Oklahoma City. Pennsy Pullman from New York and sleepers from St. Louis have just been dropped at Tulsa.

This is a fairly typical consist west of Tulsa for train #9 “Meteor” running from St. Louis to Oklahoma City.  There are a couple of exceptions to the normal consist.  The first exception is that there is only one E7 on the point.  The Frisco bought 6 E7s for the streamliners which were delivered in 1948, 2 for the Frisco “Texas Special” consist and 4 for the 2 “Meteor” consists.  (The following is as it appeared in Classic Trains: Apparently there was a problem with one of the E7s for this train.  The second exception is that the RPO-baggage combine is running directly behind the power.  The normal arrangement was for the baggage-express car(s) to run ahead of the RPO.)  The Frisco never owned any streamlined baggage-express cars so they chose to paint several in silver with a red stripe to match their streamlined equipment.  The red paint on this train was apparently dulled by the use of a colored filter on the lens of the camera.  The next car is a dorm-chair car which had accommodations for the diner and buffet car crews.  Then came a chair-lounge-buffet followed by a reclining seat chair car.  Following the chair cars were two 14-roomette and 4-double bedroom sleepers. First was a Frisco car and then the Baltimore & Ohio car.  The Frisco sleeper was St. Louis to Oklahoma City, car 94.  The B&O car was Jersey City, NJ to Oklahoma City, car 93, off B&O train No. 3. At the end of the train was a diner-lounge-observation, in this case, #1550 “Tulsa”.  The streamlined cars of the “Meteor” were named after communities served by the Frisco except for the sleepers which were named after rivers in Frisco country.

Around 1960, the round end of the observation-diner-lounge cars were squared off.  A couple of years later the dorm-chair-cars were converted into full reclining-seat-chair cars.  These conversions were made in the West Shops in Springfield covered in a previous “Bird’s Eye View” feature.

After the artical appeared in print, a long time friend pointed out that I was mistaken about the use of only 1 E7. In the early days of the streamlined Meteor, the train operated with only 1 E7 west of Monett. The second E7 was used on the train to Paris, TX through Ft. Smith, as seen below, train #709 stopped at Ft. Smith.

Black Gold

7:10 a.m., the Black Gold, with sleepers from Ft. Worth and Dallas to Tulsa steams into Beggs, Okla., behind a Mountain-type Baldwin, built in 1925. These 1500's were the top passenger power of the Frisco for many years, and can still pull a 14-car train at 70 mph.

This train is led by Mountain #1518, a member of the same case as the restored #1522 now at the National Museum of Transport in St. Louis County, MO. The train is the #508 “Black Gold” running overnight from Texas to Tulsa. The first car appears to be a deadheading baggage-chair combine. Next is the full baggage-express car followed by a RPO-chair car. The fourth car is a reclining seat chair car. The next car was a buffet-lounge. The last two cars were sleepers: first the Ft. Worth to Tulsa 8-sections, 1-drawing- room, 2-compartments, car 151, and then the Dallas to Tulsa 8-sections, 1-drawing-room, 3-bedrooms, car 150.