Being a Yank, I not very familiar with European Prototype Practices.

Does the baggage car go behind the engine or at the rear of the train?

If their's two baggage cars, is it one at the front and one at the rear?

What is the protocol? Does the dinning car come next and then the sleeping cars?

Thanks!

Chuck

Hi, Chuck!
That varies from state to state and from era to era.
In early era II there had to be a car without passengers between the locomotive and the first coach with passengers. Back then the Rheingold always had a baggage car right behind the loco - and between Frankfurt and Mannheim (both terminus stations) there were two baggage cars on the train.

Later baggage cars could be anywhere in the train - sometimes even between coaches.

Dining coaches were sometimes at the end or near the end of the train - e.g. if they weren't going the full way. Coaches carried on, but loco and dining car were taken off the train.

Hello Everybody.

I had the same question as Chuck did, so all your feedback was very helpful to me also. Thank you for that.

I have one more similar question though (I am fairly new to our hobby). Is there a front and a back side on the baggage cars? And the same question goes for passenger cars also. I have some lovely "Hechtwagen" era II cars, but don't know which is the front and which is the back of the car (silly ... I know!!!). Finally its the same on freight cars with a brakeman's cab. Where does the cab go? Looking to the front or to the back?

Kind Regards

Paris

Apropos Rheingold 1962: the dome car and the dining car had a "fixed" combination (fixed by convention) where the kitchen of the dining car was next to the bar of the dome car. Thus they could easily serve snacks to visitors of the bar. So on your layout place the hump of the dining car next to the bar (note the missing window) of the dome car.


With terminus stations on the route, trains went in one way and came out in reverse. Hechtwagen can run in both ways and that's how they were used.

And AFAIK freight cars were used as they came. I don't think they turned them around to bring the cab into a certain position.

They say 1925 for the 42757 set. I'd run the baggage car behind the loco.

Great thread with a lot of good input. Thanks everyone!

When the baggage car is in the centre of the train, as mentioned by Jaques, could passengers walk through it?
I have seen pictures from the fifties where it is, with a delightful mix of sleeping cars, CIWL, and DSG, along with a restaurant car, and some dy coaches. I like to think my passengers can get to the dining car, no matter where it is relative to them.

Well of course anything goes on a model train layout.
But in reality, train compositions often had rules.
For example, the dining car may have had a baggage car between it and part of the train, because day passengers were not allowed access to the diner.
In some trains, it was reserved for those who paid a premium fare, and so on.

But certainly I have seen pictures (post 1946) where baggage cars are in different parts of the train.

regards
Kimball

Do recall that in older Marklin catalogues,say mid sixties,the coach set pulled by the steamer series 01 (3048) was having the bagagecoach just after the loco.
Have never seen two bagagecoaches in expresstrains.
The Rheingold before WW2 was having one after the loco and the other at the end,this because the train needed to go in the reverse direction at Hook of Holland (Hoek van Holland),it saved shunting of the bagagecoach to the other end.

There was also a safety aspect. In era II many passenger coaches were still wooden constructions built on a steel frame. This meant that such a coach could easily be turned into toothpicks in case of a train crash (and you can figure out yourselves what the fate of the passengers would be), in particular if squeezed between a solidly built steam engine and the rest of the train pushing forward. For that reason, a baggage coach or a freight wagon was between the engine and the passenger coaches. These rules could be removed when all coaches were built from steel and that is a reason for why train on photos from era III and later eras can have the baggage coach(es) at other positions in the train.

For the restaurant coach, it was if possible located in the middle of the train for the comfort of the passengers who had fewer coaches to walk through compared to when it is first or last coach (not counting any baggage coaches).

Nowadays we have the Venice-Simpleon Orient Express, using refurbished orient Express coaches, that externally look very similar to the ones in last years sets.

The Marklin model reflects the train as it was in 1921.

Here you can find information about the composition of the Rheingold in 1951:
http://www.heinrich-hank...ildung/e3a_rheingold.htm

Between Cologne and Mannheim the baggage car was the third car in the train, from Mannheim to Basel it was the last car in the train.

There was a documentary on TV recently about the VSOE, and showed them loading the kitchen supplies in through a window on the kitchen car. I forget the amount of time available to load it, but it wasn't very long, a figure of 40 minutes comes to mind.

Hello Charles,


I do apologise for repeating my post of Feb 2015.....


At least in Epoch II, I understand regulations (ordnung forever !!) required the baggage car to be directly behind the locomotive:


see 2nd paragraph of : http://www.dbtrains.com/en/epochII.6


Regards,

PJ

Just to add my 2 cents worth

I do believe that for the German railways the placing of the baggage car behind the locomotive was for safety

I think cars carrying flammable liquids were also put at the rear for similar reasons

In Australia I don't think it mattered they just put the baggage car in the most sensible spot

When freight trains had guard vans they could occasionally be behind the locomotive but it was very rare

That's where I like to put my dining coach.

What about the sleep coach? Should it be in the middle as well?

I thought of putting it at the end, but if it comes off the train, when the passengers wake up....

For long distance trains, it was common to find the baggage car situated at the front of the train at departure. On many of those trains, the route involved stopping at kopf bahnhofs along the way and in some cases, additional coaches might be added to the train, so the baggage car could find itself at the front, at the rear or somewhere in the middle. Some trains might even have included baggage and mail cars which may have been together or at different places in the train.
As far as the restaurant car, my experience has been that it is usually positioned between the first and second class sections, so that passengers from both classes can get there. The other reason for this is so that the second class passengers don't traipse through the 1st class coaches on their way to the diner. Some classic trains even contained separate restaurant coaches for 1st and 2nd class passengers, in which case, the restaurant was in the 1st class part of the train and the other car would be in the 2nd class or between the 2nd and 3rd class sections (before 1957).
Many times, the restaurant cars do not travel across certain borders (due to power supply issues, or contracts). In this case, the restaurant might be positioned in a non-standard position. For example, the IC Tiziano and Verdi had the DB Speisewagen at the rear end of the train as it was detached from the train at Chiasso along with one or two coaches while the bulk of the train continued to Milano. The coaches would wait there for the return trip.

Sleeping cars, couchettes would often be attached to other trains for certain routes. They would be attached to the open end of the train and could be found at the front or the rear of the main consist.
As the train would be pulled into a kopf bahnhof by a locomotive, that would then be detached and the train then pulled out from the other end, it was complicated to add the coaches at the rear as this would require shunting the train from that track and then backing it into another platform track where the coaches were waiting. I did see this kind of operation once or twice in Switzerland as the sleeper passengers could have more time to embark this way than the usual short stop for the through train.

I also remember an Intercity from Frankfurt(M) to Paris in the 1980s which had the then standard second class - restaurant - first class composition and then had the baggage/bike coach at the lead, behind a couple of French Corail coaches. But that was a long story that involved the Gendarmes on arrival in Paris, so I won't go into too much detail.

Regards

Mike C

My area of interest is era III and later. Postal cars can be at either end of the train, like the baggage car.
Often they do not go the full journey and are added or removed when the locomotive is changed, so they can be right behind the locomotive.

Postal cars can be on the same end as the baggage car, but they can also be at opposite ends.

Many baggage cars have gangways and can be (and were) between coaches. But I think postal cars did not have gangways and I think I never saw them between coaches.