The preservation of Oakland Antioch and Eastern flatcar 2002 has taken a lot of effort by several preservation groups over almost 40 years. This thirty six foot wooden flat car was one of the Oakland Antioch and Eastern's earliest freight cars. The W. L. Holman Car Company of San Francisco built Oakland Antioch and Eastern 2002 in January 1911 for the Oakland and Antioch Railway. It is part of a 2-car series, 2001 to 2002.

Despite all the preservation effort that has gone into this car, it has only recently been on public display and has not been displayed out of doors since its restoration was completed. On September 19 from 1 to 4 pm OA&E flatcar 2002 will be on display out of doors at the Western Railway Museum (http://www.wrm.org). We would like to invite all those who may be interested in seeing this unique car to visit WRM of 9-19 to take advantage on this opportunity to see and photograph the car while it is out-of-doors. At the same time the Museum will try to have Sacramento Northern locomotive 654 also on display out-of-doors. Car House Three will also be open for continuous tours.

Car 2002 was damaged in a wreck on the Sacramento Northern on November 2, 1927. It was rebuilt into non-revenue tool car SNMW 32. SNMW 32 was a tool car with a tool shed on one end of the car and it had an open storage bin on the other end. In 1971 the Western Pacific, owner of the Sacramento Northern, wanted to clean up old equipment still sitting on the Western Pacific and its subsidiaries. When John Miller, the Locomotive Superintendent, ran across tool car SNMW 32 in Port Chicago, he realized that it could not be moved over the Santa Fe from this isolated portion of the Sacramento Northern to Sacramento for scraping. Mr. Miller, appreciating the antiquity of this car, arranged for its donation to the Pacific Coast Chapter of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society in 1972. In June 1978 the RLHS chapter give the car to the California State Railway Museum. During the 1999 Rail Fair held by CSRM in Sacramento, SNMW 32 was rebuilt as a demonstration restoration project by the Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources and the Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology.

At this time the car was so deteriorated that all the wood was replaced. The trucks also require extensive rebuilding including new wooden bolsters. The tool shed, storage box, and other details added to make this into maintenance of way car were removed and not reinstalled. The car has been kept indoors since the 1999 restoration. The California State Railroad Museum no longer had any room to store this car at the Southern Pacific shops in Sacramento and gave it to the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association. The car was moved to the Western Railway Museum arriving in March 2008. Since being at WRM, the stake packets were moved to their original location to allow the full length lettering of the car and the car was repainted and lettered to its OA&E appearance.

Edit: Above text was provided to me by David Johnston. Shoulda mentioned that :)

I plan on attending...

I have the restoration book from the SPCRR/CSRM restoration which I will bring...

Its a neat car, demonstrating "end of wooden car" technology, including mortise pocket castings in place of mortise and tenon joints on the center and intermediate sills, forged steel bolsters, and a SP style truck rather than a California style truck...

Its nice to see that you have taken our work and completed it.

robert,

Thank you for getting the word out about this event. I am sorry that I can not come and help.

I saw the flat car last Saturday and it is looking great!

It would appear that the Western Railway Museum has the largest number of W.H. Holman cars extant in one place.

It also appears that the WRM has one of the best collections of Interurban freight equipment of any of the traction museums. Freight operations were a feature of the Western Interurbans. The Sacramento Northern operated freight trains until 1965; the last electric freight operation in California.

Ted Miles

Are there any online photos available, especially of the restoration?

Thanks,

Rich Cizik
Willimantic, Ct

I was the "Master Car Builder" for the 1999 project.

We restored the car as an exhibit, durring the railfair, wearing 19th century clothing, using 19th century tools...

There are pre-restoration photos, photos of the dis-assembly process prior to the 1999 Railfair event, and photos from Railfair. I also have the original restoration report written for that project. I haven't looked at most of them for years... I am trying to gather them all before Saturday.

There are also drawing of the car done by Mike Collins, documenting each sill and beam.

It was 10 days of H@$L, weather over 100 degrees, a project with materialized on a short timeline... but the result was good, and the process great. We built a car in 10 days... Since we have built a car in 3 days...

We invited Railfair guests inside the roped off area to help... we had 6 year olds drilling holes in sills with brace and bit (aided by dad) and 12 year olds that became car builders...

I look forward to doing it again....

1999 Restoration report available on request... Its a big word file.

There is an article about the restoration of the flat car that Randy wrote at http://knightsia.org/newsletters/Issue10.html. Because the car was kept indoors first by the California State Railroad Museum and then later by the Western Railway Museum, there is a real lack of photos of the car. This lack of photos was one of the motivations for this open house. At first we were going to switch it outsde to take a few photos for the file. But then the thought was that if we are going to the effort to switch the car out, why not invite everyone who is interested to come and see the car outside in the light of day.

I believe that Robert is planning on posting a photo of the finished car sometime after the Saturday event.

I attended the event today... the car is beautiful. It is a unlikely survival... a wooden car built late, wrecked and converted to work service early on. It survived late enough to be donated to a museum, but then fell apart.

It was restored as a demonstration for a major event. The demonstration was the goal, not the finished car, so it was a loose end...

That museum then donated to another museum, who had a clear vision of what the car represented in their collection... And repainted and reworked details on the car for that vision...

The Key System "Carter Bros." line car switching OA&E 2002 outside



And the line car moving a boxcar inside... The boxcar is expected to move to the Western Pacific Museum at Portola...



And a final view of 2002 and SN 654 siting outside the carhouse...



Note; the car house is insulated, with some climate control, and fire sprinklers... the cars that are in this building are preserved, even if not restored or being worked on... we can expect 2002 to look pretty good in 50 years...

Thanks for posting these photos Randy. Good to finally see the "This Old Flatcar" car project reach a conclusion. Congratulations to all who had a hand in it's resurrection.

FYI- We are indeed going to move the D&RGW boxcar pictured hopefully early next year, I have more info on that car in my blog:

http://wprrsteam.blogspot.com/2009/02/boxcar-for-steam-department.html

The WPRM at Portola, California is also a recipeint of an ex-SN flatcar that was deaccessioned from the CSRM collection. A former Northern Electric car built by Fitzhugh-Luther, the SN 1449 is in considerably rougher shape:



A full restoration is planned pending a fundraising effort.

We considered 1449 for a second project at Railfair 1999... we were optimistic and believed that we would complete both cars over the 11 days of railfair (we didn't quite finish car 2002)

Photos suggest that 1449 was partially scrapped by SN before coming to CSRM... We were concerned that the significant amount of steel would slow the public restoration.

These cars are evidence of a new era in rail preservation.... projects are given to other groups who have the resources to restore them, cars move to better homes, Cars are now housed in car barns (before and after restoration).

We are now restoring freight cars... freight cars which will not carry passengers, not pay their own way... Yet are railroad history.

Randy

Hmm, part of it is that freight cars are easier to get done, and something that's a bit safer to entrust to newbies. :) The work is also, mostly on the outside.

As for revenue, you never know. I could see taking money to run photo freights, or running mixed freights. And the overhead lines department uses flatcars and isn't particularly hard on them if I recall.

What kind of cargo would that flatcar have handled?

We too are trying to restore the freight cars at our museum. I agree that they are also a part of railroad history. An important part.

Les Beckman (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum/North Judson, Indiana)

The Northwest Railway Museum has been busy restoring two Northern Pacific boxcars this year. NP 14794, a 1932 NP built single sheathed car is done except for the running boards which are seasoning and will be installed next year, and 1944 single sheathed Northern Pacific NP 28417 that is painted and partially lettered. We also hope to get our 1929 Shell tankcar SCCX 1246 painted this year and new wood running boards installed.

Richard Wilkens

I would submit another entry for the "This Old Flatcar" series:
Ex-West Side Lumber "coffin" tank car being restored at Sumpter Valley.

I think the work of folks doing wood car restoration, especially those requiring major reconstruction, amounts to nothing less than the revival of the "Master Car Builders."
O. Anderson


http://www.svry.com/tank5.html

Well said, Mr. Anderson. The flats are beautiful, and encouraging. Freight car restoration often gets little attention, but is a key part of our presentations.