Milwaukee Road Hiawatha


Motley

Active Member
All this Milwuakee Road talk has me thinking. Now I want to get the Hiawatha train. LOL

I'm looking to get the Walthers passenger set. The MR E7 AA units, and the full 9 car set. The 1955 twin cities version, with orange, black, maroon.
I found some available on ebay.

Iron Horseman, you mentioned you have the Hiawatha? If so, can you post some pics of it?

If anybody else has the Hiawatha, please post some photos.

This will be (like all my passenger trains), a museum excursion train. And it now stops in Denver and Cheyenne, before heading west to Seattle.
 
Motley-go 'big' or go home - skip the E7's and go for a set of Erie Builts, or a Little Joe.

My 'Hiawatha' is sitting in my display case, with the Little Joe. Although the Walther's version isn't correct for the Olympian Hi, I added a Rapido sleeper, for effect. I'll post some photos before the weekend is over.

I also have the Athearn standard car MILW set(minus the RPO, I believe), which I run with a pair of orange and maroon C-liners.

The orange and maroon is very classy.
 
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I have to admit the Walters set is nice, and I wish I could afford it. If there was an example of the 261 out there in HO, then you could make it a true museum excursion train. I do like the Erie built loco idea, being partial to FM locos.
 
I'm a big Milwaukee fan. I have a full Walthers set in orange-maroon, some coaches and baggage in yellow, Athearn FP7s in both orange-maroon and yellow, and an Erie Built set. Unfortunately, I haven't even opened the boxes on most. Here's an Erie A

milw_21-B_2.jpg
 
Motley-go 'big' or go home - skip the E7's and go for a set of Erie Builts, or a Little Joe.

My 'Hiawatha' is sitting in my display case, with the Little Joe. Although the Walther's version isn't correct for the Olympian Hi, I added a Rapido sleeper, for effect. I'll post some photos before the weekend is over.

I also have the Athearn standard car MILW set(minus the RPO, I believe), which I run with a pair of orange and maroon C-liners.

The orange and maroon is very classy.

If you Hiawatha is just sitting in a display case, send it over. :rolleyes: It can sit along side my North Coast Limited that I really can't justify seeing on my layout. The best I can do is run a few cars for a tourist train.

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I almost splurged on a full Hiawatha but fortunately for my wallet, I passed.
 
Iron Horseman, you mentioned you have the Hiawatha? If so, can you post some pics of it?
No, no photos. I'm not even certain I've had them out of the boxes yet. It is the Walther's train that I did the least research about, so I am also not certain if I have a real train set or just a Walther's "set" of one of each car they produced. In fact that would be very useful to me if someone has researched this and would post some typical consists for the trains.
 
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I almost splurged on a full Hiawatha but fortunately for my wallet, I passed.
I waited until the price dropped. I think I got them for about $39 a car and the DCC/sound locos for $229. For a while they had dropped even lower and I kicked myself for not waiting longer. I think the price has started back up now.
 
Motley-go 'big' or go home - skip the E7's and go for a set of Erie Builts, or a Little Joe.
I've been looking at the Es' in the Olympian scheme, or have been wishing someone would come out with a bi-polar for it. I just couldn't pass the price on the Es, in fact I bought two sets so I could use the chassis for some earlier non-sound Mopac I had laying around.
 
My freelance railroad connects to both the MILW and the NP but wouldn't have a passenger train show up on my route. I fudged history to get the NP tourist train to show up.
 
There were quite a few "Hiawathas" and there really wasn't a typical consist. In one of my books, it shows a northbound Afternoon Hiawatha consist of an express car, 4 coaches, a superdome café-lounge car, a dining car, a parlor car, and a skytop lounge-parlor car in 1953, which would be in the orange/maroon paint era. But in 1964 (UP paint) it shows an express car, dining car, 7 coaches, a superdome, another dining car, and a skytop. In 1944, it shows an express car,4 coaches, a tip-top-tap car, a dining car,4 more coaches , another dining car, 2 parlor cars and a beavertail observation car. The morning Hiawatha consists were different from the afternoon, and the Olympian was different also, but was sometimes combined with the morning or afternoon Hiawathas from Chicago to Minneapolis for yet another combination. There were also some small Hiawathas like the Northwoods and Midwest. You really have to be specific with time and location to get your consist correct .
 
Some good info on the consists, thanks Dave.

Iron Horseman, SHAME ON YOU!! Get them Hiawatha locos and cars out of the boxes and on your layout!

Show me some pics of your 1955 version with the Maroon and Orange with the E7s.
 
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Several years ago, there was a book out on MILW passenger trains. Don't know if its still in print or not.

If I want to run the Olympian Hiawatha, the Skytop Lounge is wrong-configured by Walthers as a parlor or coach car. If I recall right, Overland came out with one of the Hi's in brass-not sure if they had some factory painted or not. I didn't get my Walther's train as it first came out-I waited a while, then got the cars in 1-2's. As I recall, Walthers had several different types of baggage/express cars to the set.

My Erie Builts are an AB set in orange and maroon.
 
Otiscnj......at least you HAVE a skytop that's RTR. I model in N scale, and there's very little in Milwaukee Road passenger equipment that's correct.......just the Fox Valley stuff. Milwaukee Road equipment was very distinct, and most manufacturers have just slapped Milwaukee paint schemes on whatever they had laying around.
 
Mind you, as you perhaps already know, there were two different Skytop observations for the Hiawathas. You had the four Parlor Skytop Observations built for the Morning Hiawatha and the Afternoon Hiawatha.

These four were in the Rapids series.

#186, Cedar Rapids
#187, Coon Rapids
#188, Dell Rapids
#189, Priest Rapids

IMG_20141222_070906_zps8wdpquem.jpg


#12, the Cedar Rapids...

Pullman built six for the Milwaukee Road and these were meant for the Olympian Hiawatha service, these were also somewhat broader over the beam, compared to those built buy the company shops...
These six were in the Creek series.

#12, Alder Creek
#14, Arrow Creek
#15, Coffee Creek
#16, Gold Creek
#17, Marble Creek
#18, Spanish Creek

The Pullmans were 8 Double Bedroom, Skytop Lounge Observations...

IMG_20141222_070828_zps15d3p46x.jpg


#12, the Alder Creek...

They're easy to tell apart, not only because of the window arrangements, those built by Pullman had another row of windows in the observation area, but they also had the usual Pullman-Standard fluting wrapped around the lounge, with the Olympian Hiawatha beneath it, while those for the Morning Hiawatha and Afternoon Hiawatha were smooth and with the Hiawatha written in it...

Now, if someone would please tell me why they skipped over #13 Creek, are they, were they, superstitious at Pullman-Standard?
 
The dome cars were great for seeing the scenery, but the dome cars were something else. I don't think there was anything to compare with them. I did like to ride in them but being a kid, I got dirty looks from grown up for taking up a seat in the skytops. Too bad, they were cool !
 



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