Baggage-Mail-Express #3 - #5

DESCRIPTION

We can’t be sure exactly what Colorado Central baggage-mail-express cars #3, #4 and #5 looked like originally, as we have no early photos of them. Our best guess is that they probably looked pretty much like the 1894 photo above, except they may have had a different contour to the platform roofs. At 40'-0" over endsills, they were substantially longer than most of the early cars on the CC. They had end platforms at both ends, a moderately wide letterboard into which two arch-topped doors extended considerably. The central and larger of these was the baggage-loading door, and the smaller one, with elevated threshold, was the mailroom door. The elevated threshold seems to have been designed to allow handing mail bags in and out from ground level while providing some element of safety. The windows were single-pane and had arched tops. It is impossible to know whether they opened up of down (or even opened at all). Considering that the letterboard was later widened considerably (see photo #2) we would guess they opened upward.

HISTORY

Baggage-mail-express cars #3 - #5 were built for the Colorado Central by the Union Pacific Railway in December 1880. They were renumbered #1323 - #1325 by the Union Pacific in 1885. They kept these numbers in the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf reorganization, but apparently were renumbered #28, #29and #30 sometime before 1894.

The Colorado and Southern numbered them #110 - #112 in 1899, then renumbered them #10 - #12 in 1906. By this time they apparently were no longer used for express service as they were designated “baggage-mail” cars on the 1906 roster.

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