Did these heavyweight coaches have names of famous Southerners on them? Does anyone have a complete list of the names?

-- James R. Bright (jrbright@bellsouth.net), December 08, 1999

Answers

Bob Wayner listed all the names used on the Crescent's heavyweight Pullmans years ago in one of his early books. I think it was called "Car Names and Consists".

Ben Lee

-- Ben Lee (Bengineer7@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

The ones I can remember had State names like " The Tennessian"(sp) Those were pullman sleepers, I think. The others? "The Pelican"??

-- Doug McWhorter (DMcWhorter@charter.net), March 14, 2004.

At the Southeastern Railway Museum, we have the "Thomas Ruffin," the last surviving car from the original trainset. I've been told that he was a prominent Southerner, but don't know anything else about him. I have heard that there was a "Joel Chandler Harris," and "Nathan Bedford Forest" in the set as well.

-- Andrew Durden (gapower97@yahoo.com), March 15, 2004.

The name "Southern Crescent" only applied to the train from the period 1970 to 1979. That was when the streamlined Crescent and the streamlined Southerner were merged into one train. These were streamliners, no heavyweight cars were built for them. As for names like "Tennessean" and "Pelican", those refer to actual Southern railroad trains, not train cars.

When Amtrak took the train over in 1979 the name "Southern" was dropped and it became known simply as the Crescent.

The original Crescent,(called the Crescent Limited) 1926, was a heavyweight train and I suppose some of the cars could be found in the books listed above. It was re-equipped as a streamliner in 1949.

-- bill haithcoat (bhaithcoat@ajc.com), October 26, 2004.