Good morning. With the Southern Pacific San Francisco Suburban Commute Cars being quite ubiquitous in the Western museum sphere, I'm wondering if anyone might have any leads on the SP plans for these cars.

I originally reached out to the Pullman museum in Union, IL and was provided a drawing list. Many of the drawings are SP created and were not transferred to Pullman Archives. I reached out to CSRM archives, but they only had a few of the drawings listed.

Any help would be appreciated. Mostly looking for structural framing, side sheeting, end framing, flooring, and roof plans; the sort of plans to assist in a total overhaul of a car.

Car info:

Built 1923 Lot 4729 Plan 7018

Did you try the Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society?
https://sphts.org/

A lot of broken links there (does geocities still exist?).

The older single-level and not the bilevels?

If anyone has info, the Grand Canyon Railway would............. I have passed your query to an appropriate party there......

[quote="Alexander D. Mitchell IV"]The older single-level and not the bilevels?

The bilevels and their locomotives are going to Peru.

https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain- ... rvice-peru

These possibly?: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AOTTORC ... 0308759381

Same type of cars, but not those specifically.

No, not THOSE bilevels, the earlier SP gallery cars that were clones of the C&NW commuter and long-distance cars from P-S and ACF, built 1955-57:

https://www.wheelsotime.com/bilevel-commute-coach/

My understanding is that the Alaska RR got some and "the rest" went to Princess Tours for rebuilding to "Super Domes"; but who knew what this fella could be asking about.......

Most Southern Pacific passenger car drawings from that era are privately held by an
ex-employee that saved them and are not presently available. I have heard that they may someday go to public institution where they would be available.

See the only picture i have.
:-) Uwe

PS @Dennis
quote
"Most Southern Pacific passenger car drawings from that era are privately held by an
ex-employee that saved them and are not presently available."
Source?
"heard" "may" "someday" "would be"
sound very convincing

Do you remember the smell of these cars?

They had a distinctive stale, leather smell. Even in 1980, they felt old.

Ours smell musty. The shotgun blast pattern of rust pinholes in the roof doesn't help.

Reading online, and these things were falling apart even while in SP service; leaning up against the car side and punching through being a most notable example.

I guess we'll have to make do in the restoration of these cars without plans, or wait and see if the plans in the said private collection end up anywhere that can actually care for them and let the public access them, or end up in a dumpster heap when they pass.

OR, you could ask a professional, commercial railroad operation that rosters a dozen or so of these cars for their help and advice. For all we know, they have a set of plans, or have made them up by now as they've cycled all their cars through overhaul (save for a cadaver or two) over the decades.

And I've already told you which railroad that is............

The Stanford University library Special Collections has a collection of SP documents of various types that it was given by the Union Pacific after it acquired the SP.

Some years ago after Orange Empire (now Southern California) Railway Museum acquired one of the commute cars, I found that the Special Collections had folders with the specifications for these cars. I was going up to the library and the Special Collections for some other research and requested that folder. I had a copy made of the specs that I then passed on to OERM. There were no plans in the folder.

I looked at Stanford Library webpages; and access to its database seems hidden. https://library.stanford.edu/libraries/special-collections

But using Online Archive of California a state-wide joint data base, I found this information:



The 1920s cars are the 72-IC-2, -2 and -3 classes. 72 foot long, Interurban Coach, sub groups

He moved up to Oregon in retirement and I heard that he died up there a few years ago. I do hope that his collection is destined to go to an appropriate public institution.