Order of Passenger Cars?

[mhampton]

  Others' comments make me wonder:  I find that model trains being pushed by locomotives are much more liable to derail than if they are pulled by locomotives.  Is this also true of real trains?

Derailmenting while pushing is an often-encountered problem on cars with truck-mounted couplers because all of the push-pull forces (including lateral) are transmitted directly to the axles.  This is a price that must be paid if you are working with tight radius and/or s-curves.  With body-mounted couplers, the push-pull forces are absorbed by the car frame leaving the trucks to more easily follow the track.

[mhampton]

"Derailmenting?"  I guess I haven't had enough coffee this morning.  That should, of course, be "derailing."

[WGL]

 Thanks, pdlethbridge & mhampton, for the information.
 
             Bill

[WGL]

 I wonder how wide a passenger car is inside to seat two abreast on each side of a center aisle.   I also wonder how wide any car can be & retain its equilibrium on a 4' 8.5" track.  I'm continually amazed to see how wide the interior of a passenger car appears in relation to the width of the track.

[Yampa Bob]

Bill
I have some pictures and drawings of old clerestory coaches, inside width 7'3" Narrow aisle, tight seating.  Deodorant mandatory, "wide bottoms" double fare. 

I'll send the pictures to you.

[GlennW]

Take another look at your combine. Some are combinations of baggage/mail then passengers. The RPO & mail must be separate from the rest of the train. There could be a mail storage car in between the RPO & the passengers.

A combine with the seating section in front of the baggage could be a Jim Crow car where some folks can't be seated together. The seats could be flip overs or have the seats turned at the end of the run. You may have to open the car to turn around the seats in this section.  Partitions in the coach cars separated the smokers from other nonsmoking riders.

Very often the diner was used to separate the coach passengers from the sleepers. The sleepers may have access to a tail end lounge/bar car.

[Woody Elmore]

Sad to say but the Southern Railway had Jim Crow coaches. They were entered from the center and you went to one end or the other depending on race.

[Yampa Bob]

Dear Bill, All...
I found this site on one of my flash drives...Lots of coach pictures/drawings. The first two links show coach and rpo line drawings. (scroll down), the other links were of particular interest to me. Site is not well organized (main menu is at bottom of page) so I just tossed in a bunch of links.

On the dictionary page, click "T", interior picture of "two and one" seating arrangement.  Builders section has manufacturers, Jackson Sharpe link shown, but many others.

Enjoy
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/CandS/cs_coach58.htm
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/CandS/dsp-passenger/coach-rpos.htm
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/dictionary/dictionary5.htm#W
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/builders/index.htm
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/CandS/cs_locator.htm
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/

If you get lost, here is the site map.
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/CandS/weblog-cs.htm

[WGL]

  Thanks, GlennW!  I hadn't thought of turning the seat assembly in my combine around.
Thanks, Bob, for the information about the widths of cars.