South Shore Line Diner #303 "Duneland"

NS 3322 · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:13 pm

Does anyone know what happened to the diner the South Shore Line owned in the 80's and 90's named "Duneland"?
The most recent photo I could find was from 1998, but the trail goes cold after that. The car is of CN and VIA heritage.

Photo by Tomas E. Hoffman; J.M. LaBoda Scan Collection

lmckay175 · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:58 pm

I was never aware of this car. Was it used for MOW service?

NS 3322 · **Posted:** Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:39 pm

lmckay175 wrote:

I was never aware of this car. Was it used for MOW service?

Apparently the owners of the railroad at the time were interested in starting a dinner train.

The South Shore also had a business car, "Hiram," which is now at Gateway Rail Services in Madison, Illinois.

1987 (Photo by Tom Golden):

2014:

Robert J · **Joined:** Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:05 pm **Posts:** 92

NS 3322 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2019 9:48 am

Robert J wrote:

NS 3322 wrote:

The South Shore also had a business car, "Hiram," which is now at Gateway Rail Services in Madison, Illinois.

After Hiram was used on the South Shore it went to the Toledo, Peoria & Western where it acquired the two tone gray paint it now wears. I guess the TP&W sold it to Gateway Rail Services?

I found the information on the Hiram on another thread in this forum. The user (the late Dean Levin) who posted the information said it was being stored at Gateway.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30187&p=213012&hilit=Dean+Levin#p213012

ctjacks · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2019 7:02 pm

The porch car pictured above just popped up for sale on the Ozark web site.

NS 3322 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:29 pm

ctjacks wrote:

The porch car pictured above just popped up for sale on the Ozark web site.

Haha, how ironic.

eze240 · **Joined:** Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:29 am **Posts:** 319

If you're talking about the Hiram, it's been on Ozark for some time now....at least 3+ years... They recently lowered the asking price...

ctjacks · **Posted:** Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:41 pm

Back to the diner - isn't that the diner that has been on the Great Lakes Central RR in recent years? What may be confusing is this: some of the hardware - such as the end door with the number - in the GLC car was swapped with another car, as I recall. So the numbers may not match. I think the correct number of the GLC car is CN 1342.

The only others like this I can think of that are still out there are: Montana Rail Link has a car like this in camp/MoW service, and Iowa Pacific has at least one of these cars deteriorating somewhere. Long ago Algoma Central and Ontario Northland had cars from these series, but I think they have both since been cut up. These were nice cars, but had the same issue as all Canadian carbon steel cars - they rusted, especially below the windows, which was a bad combination with the Canadian environment.

If you see around Ray Kammer he would know - as far as I know he was involved with all this equipment over the years.

Chris.

NS 3322 · **Posted:** Fri Jan 25, 2019 12:20 am

ctjacks wrote:

Back to the diner - isn't that the diner that has been on the Great Lakes Central RR in recent years? What may be confusing is this: some of the hardware - such as the end door with the number - in the GLC car was swapped with another car, as I recall. So the numbers may not match. I think the correct number of the GLC car is CN 1342.

I was wondering if it was the GLC diner.
But I cannot find anything on this car between VIA and it being purchased by GLC.