<P>Hey everyone out there. It has been sometime since i wrote anything, so hello to all of you whom i talk with regularly. I have a question. When a passenger car is called a smoker, does that mean it was used for passengers who smoked? I never really knew the answer to this one. For example, EBT combine no 15 was originally a smoker on the Boston, Lynn, and Revere Beach and was given baggage doors and sectioned after a year on the EBT. <p>Thanks for the answer in advanced,<br>Jeff Slupski<br>




jeff@compucomis.net

<P>This may explain a little. One anaswer I got to this question a long time ago was that these cars were unoficially set aside for men alone, smokers they became known, due to the pipe smoking of men, predominent at the time. They were generally a place for male revelry apparently, keeping the ladies at a respectable distance from the raunchy behavior, whisky, and of course the smoke.<p>Hope this helps<p>Dave in Scranton<br>




bing@epix.net

<P>It was a Good Old Boys club on wheels - this was the era of the "drummer" who traveled by rail carrying a sample case of his merchandise and a huge quantity of the latest dirty jokes and other masculine entertainment. Hip flasks and tobacco spittoons were as prominent as pipes and cigars. <p>Sort of like the predecessor of this message board.........<p>Dave <br>




lathro19@idt.net

<P>On several series of Canadian National coaches, like those used by the Bluewater Michigan Chapter, N.R.H.S. and other excursion lines, one fourth of the seats in every car were set aside for smokers in a segregated compartment at the same end of the car as the men's rest room. On these 1930's to 1950's cars, the smoking compartment seats had the same upholstery as the rest of the coach, but with ashtrays and shorter seat pitch.<p>As built, this compartment was isolated from the rest of the coach by a swinging door in a wall with glass windows. The air flow through the car was arranged to enter through filters in the vestibule at the end with the women's rest room, flow toward the smoking compartment, and exhaust through the men's rest room, accumulating increasingly offensive smells as it went. Probably this arrangement was used by other roads as well.<p>Aarne Frobom<br>Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation, Inc.<br>




froboma@mdot.state.mi.us

<P>On Southern Railway's 3100 series dining cars, there was a glass divider similiar to those mentioned above. Curiously enough, the divider had no aisle door and was only about six and a half feet high. This divider might have had a door and upper section at one time. This divider separated the steward's station and one table from the rest of the dining room, both of which were at the kitchen end of the car. I'm not certain, but since this car was in service in the Deep South it is likely that the dividers were used just as much for segregation as they were for keeping smoke in the smoker's area.<br>




envlink@voyageronline.net

<P>The Chicago South Shore and South Bend had some interurban coaches built in 1929 that had a "box" smoker section. This was a compartment that sat 8 people on two facing leather bench seats, and was located on one side of the train. The aisle went down the other side, so passengers walking through the car didn't have to walk through the smoking area. Nice idea, but confining the smokers in an 8X10 box must have been uncomfortable for them.<br>




jftrolley@aol.com