I was wondering about early steel passenger cars. Who has steel passenger cars that pre-date World War I?

I know that Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has the experimental steel coach #1651 built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1906. This car was different than the production P-70 cars that came in 1907. The first P-70, #1652, was not saved -- it was cut up in 1966 -- did any get saved?

None of the experimental or prototype cars of the Harriman Associated Lines (SP, UP, etc.) from 1906-07 and 1909 were saved. But some early examples survived.

Orange Empire Railway Museum has a baggage car SP 6340 that was completed by Pullman on August 25, 1909. It has an Oregon Short Line coach from 1911; CSRM at Jamestown has a sister OSL coach from 1911. What else is out there?

The Museum of the American Railroad (formerly Age of Steam) in Dallas has an all-room steel Pullman from December 1910. This car named GLENGYLE has 7 Compartments and 2 Drawing Rooms. It may be the oldest surviving steel Pullman. What is the oldest surviving steel Pullman with open sections?

What exists from other railroads?

IRM has Pullman ten section obs INGLEHOME, built in 1910 or 1911 (sources vary) This was originally a “Gothic” Pullman, with upper sash and pressed steel imitation wood sheathing, but was rebuilt by Pullman sometime in the twenties to a more conventional heavyweight look. The car is complete and operable (with solid bearings) and was recently seen in the movie “Flags of our Fathers.”

The Camp 5 Museum in Laona, WI (formerly Laona & Northern) operates two Soo Line coaches: the four axle sixty foot car was built in 1912 by AC&F and is mostly original inside (with two caboose stoves in place of the Baker heater); the six axle seventy foot car was built in 1911 by Barney & Smith and was modernized with a/c and reclining seats by the Soo in the early fifties.

There must be eight or ten other steel Soo line B&S cars in various collections; all built between 1911 and 1914, and all rescued from work service, so the interiors are mostly gone. One of note is at the Colfax Railroad Museum in Colfax, WI, nicely painted and under roof; no seats but the interior is nicely restored and holds display cases.

There's a bunch of them in you include self-propelled (electric) passenger cars. IRT "Gibbs car" 3352 and BER elevated car 0210, both at Seashore, date to 1904 and 1906 respectively; IRT 3662 at Branford dates to 1907 and H&M "Black car" 256 at MOT was built in 1909. There are others built in the early '20s including Pittsburgh streetcars, IER "blimps" and the unique c1912 Harriman-esque center-door car at Orange Empire pictured below, among others.

IRM has 10 steel passenger or passenger-service cars built between 1910 and 1914 shown in the passenger car department folder in the Member's Photo section of the web site.

http://www.irm.org/gallery/passenger-car-dept

Dear Brian:
The Valley Railroad has 3 former Lackawanna coaches built in 1914 & 1915 plus 4 built in 1917 all serviceable. We also have another 1914 which serves as our "Trackside Cafe'".
J.David

I think Ozark Mountain Railcar has some older cars for sale!
www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com

Brian -

At Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in North Judson, Indiana is an open window coach built by the Pullman Company in 1910. It was part of the original order of passenger equipment for the Western Pacific and, after a few years, was returned to the Denver & Rio Grande (later D&RGW) when passenger counts did not meet estimates. D&RGW updated most of these cars with air conditioning but a few, including this one, were never modernized keeping their open windows. After the Second World War, the car was sold to the Algoma Central, eventually went to the Michigan Northern, then the Boyne City Railroad and finally ended up on the Kalamazoo, Lake Shore & Chicago in Paw Paw, Michigan. Found there off of its trucks and in danger of being scrapped, two HVRM members purchased it and eventually brought it to North Judson by truck.

A real boomer, she remains in decent shape as she approaches her 98th birthday!

Les

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum No. 1688 is a 1917 vintage coach that is used in routine service. Aside from typical rust repairs, the car is the same as it was when it was donated to TVRM in 1968. The electrical and heating systems were never modernized and she retains her original clerestory roof with original light fixtures.

At RMNE, our Pullman solarium-obs "Mount Royal" was built in 1911 as "Malatha", a 10-section obs-lounge, with scribed steel sides, gothic transom windows, standing seam roof, and "four-poster" obs platform. It was rebuilt in 1929 to 10-section solarium-obs (and the new name). Almost all of the earlier Pullmans were upgraded to more "modern" heavyweight appearance in the late 20s-early 30s, and few if any survive with the old traits still intact.

We have a 1914 Laconia 70-foot baggage-RPO from Maine Central; this was our "Museum Car" at Essex for a number of years.

Howard P.

Here is another one.

Travel Town in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, has a former SP chair car #2513 that its website says was built in 1910. The car was donated in 1955 to the City with its interior stripped out and it originally had display cases on its side walls for Ravell plastic models.

Now that being said, the work by the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society about SP's coach and chair cars indicates that this car was from a group (#2500-2530) of chair cars constructed in November 1911 through April 1912.

Les,

That reminds me that Orange Empire has a Barney & Smith steel car bought by the Rio Grande in 1910 for the Western Pacific as a baggage-lounge car. It went back to the D&RG and was rebuilt into a straight baggage car (#743).

It is one of two cars that contain our Middleton Collection of Toy Trains, etc. for the story see Middleton Museum

For preservation of the early steel passenger car heritage, volunteers including myself, Al Johanson and Bob Webber at IRM's Pullman Library are constantly upgrading our search and collation of these old items: specifications, drawing lists and virtually all the drawings for the early steel Pullmans, Osgood Bradley, and more recently the very large collection of drawings for Standard Steel Car Company. For instance, I have just culled over 70 drawings of a C,NS&M 1929 SSC order to be copied for another museum's restoration program. As the researchers can tell you, documentation is at places like the Newberry Library in Chicago, CSRM, etc. and photographs exist at locations including Smithsonian and CSRM. Our photograph collection starts in the later heavyweight years so is not pertinent here. Keep an archival record to go along and stay with those physical artifacts of railroad history!
My two cents for our future generations, and hope this is not considered too much of a commercial.
Ted Anderson

Brian,

And then there are the underground railroads.

The Seashore Trolley Museum--Museum of Mass Transit has a steel car from I believe 1906.

It has had a later added door removed so it is pretty much as it entered service on the Independent Rapid Transit in New York.

Ted

The ex-GTW RPO car formerly used by the PM 1225 project at East Lansing was built in 1914. This was, I think, GTW 9683 and originally Grand Trunk Rwy. 13 or some such number. It was a very old-school piece, with a lot of wood in its superstructure and probably originally with a wood-and-canvas roof. That car was demolished at Cleveland in the 1990's and part of its RPO furniture installed in the Post Office Museum next door to Washington Union Station. A twin to this car survives at IRM and I believe another exists on a tourist line in Ohio or Indiana.

For steel interurbans, WRM has Oakland Antioch & Eastern 1019 and 1020 (Hall-Scott, 1913). Also several Southern Pacific "Red Cars" (ACF, 1911).