The Minnesota Transportation Museum​ needs your help with supporting our fundraiser to bring this original Great Northern ranch car back to Minnesota! The well cared for and restored car has been offered as a donation to MTM if the organization pays to move it here. The owners want to see it added to our great collection of Great Northern stock!

Please help us make this a reality by visiting the link below to the fundraising page.

Please consider helping today by spreading the word along with any financial donation you can make. Help us add this GORGEOUS car to our collection for eventual future excursions in Osceola!

Information can be read at:
Www.facebook.com/gn1244
http://www.gofundme.com/GN1244

Just out of curiosity:

1) What is a "ranch car"? This certainly isn't what I expected from the topic title!

2) It looks from the diagram provided that the car is darned close to original configuration. If so, promote that as a selling point--I figured at first it had been gutted and rebuilt as a typical "greasy spoon" diner. I'd LOVE to see that car, or sa similar lunch-counter car, on any mainline excursion!

This group of lunch-counter - diner - lounge cars were named "ranch cars" by the Great Northern to reflect the western decorating style.

It is reported that the Great Northern registered the "G-N" cattle brand with the Montana cattlemen's association.

Well, it's not a "mainline excursion", but you can ride one in passenger service on the Albany & Eastern Railroad in Lebanon, Oregon. Two hour excursions on 17 miles of track. (Not sure of the exact run length though). Lots of trips running in the next 3 months.

https://santiamexcursiontrains.com/

Photos of the car.
https://santiamexcursiontrains.com/about/

I recall riding in this car on a day long excursion on the Port of Tillamook Bay line when it was still intact. I think it may also have been included on some of the 4449/700 trips, though I'm not positive of that.

Anyone know if that "cowhide" looking upholstery is original or if it was added later?

Edit - Google does. Looks like it's original, or at least they had something like that.

http://www.gngoat.org/ranch13.jpg from http://www.gngoat.org/ranch_car.htm

Trains magazine posted an article about this on the 29th..

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/20 ... -ranch-car

Thanks to the support of online and museum member donors, there has been over $10,500 raised to move this piece of Great Northern history to Minnesota.

Donations are being accepted online in the GoFundMe page as well as directly at the Minnesota Transportation Museum.

Where exactly in Columbus is this car located?

The Depot Events Center
921 Old Henderson Rd, Columbus, OH
40.051390, -83.044940
http://the-depot.org/wordpress/

The Porter saddle tank has been moved back to the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington, which begs the question what is the 2nd car, the one under cover and since it sounds like the owner is closing up, what is to become of it?

Bob

At last count, MTM has raised over $12,000 to get the ranch car moved to Minnesota. We have a soft deadline of April 30th to get the funding raised with a hard deadline of June 1 to either have the funding in place and formally accept ownership of the car, or risk it being lost to another party.

Please help us add this original Empire Builder car to our collection!

I just discovered that the owner, Barry Fromm, died in November, 2018.
https://www.schoedinger.com/obituaries/ ... !/Obituary

The car under cover (#100) was originally lettered for the Georgia and Florida, was supposedly built in 1886, and for a time part of the Ringling Brothers Circus Train.

Do not forget there is also CV caboose #4007 on the property as well (which came from Michigan). It is listed on Ozark Mountain Railcar for $47,500.00.
https://ozarkmountainrailcar.com/railEq ... temId=1597


The news video and the following PDF from their site is very helpful.
http://the-depot.org/wordpress/

http://the-depot.org/wordpress/wp-conte ... -being.pdf