Ock! Please help! Private Rail Cars.

[stephendare]

Ock, I know that you will know more about this than anybody.  You are such a valuable resource, I cannot tell you how lucky we are to even have access to your knowledge and encyclopedic comprehension of transportation.

Im stymied, and I have a feeling its because I don't know how to look.

Let me ask an expert.

Im looking for any information (especially colorful) and photos, paintings, depictions of the whole private rail car subculture.

Apparently while it was at one point massive and quite a fashionable lifestyle, it is still a real subculture in the industrialized countries.

Many people live on the rails allegedly.

Please share what you know.

Stephen.

[BridgeTroll]

Along with his sidekick... the man of many faces... Artemus Gordon...

[Lunican]

http://www.aaprco.com/

[JeffreyS]

http://www.aaprco.com/

Wow that looks like a blast.

[Ocklawaha]

Alaska Railroad PV #2


A rather odd interior layout with berths, British Columbia Railway (wonder if it had staterooms?)


The Hallway as seen from the parlor in the rear looking forward.


Typical floorplan, though no two are just alike, and all were custom built. For example this car of the Nevada Northern shared the same basic Pullman Plan as the Atlantic Coast Line (Jacksonville) Number 300. Yet every detail in the car was unique to the owner.

http://www.aaprco.com/


aaprco's magazine "PV" is available to all for a small subscription price. BTW, "PV" stands for PRIVATE VARNISH, this was the nickname early railroaders gave the old wooden PV's of the Wild-Wild-West type era. The railroads ordered them with MIRROR VARNISH FINISHES and insisted they stay that way, thus the eternal name "PV"


Sorry to be a tad tardy, still hanging photos and such at the new flat. I once owned the former FEC PV "Mountain Queen", so I do know something of the culture.

The Textbook of the industry is Bebees "Mansions on Rails". A classic early 1959 book of the builders, nabobs and cars themselves. Including Bebees own "PV Virginia City". This can be found at:


A typical "PRIVATE TRAIN" chartered with Amtrak. Many shortlines will do this and a few other carriers too.


Eating on the rails has always been far removed from the Air or Bus industry, having more in common with the cruise ships of the Titanic era. Here dinner is served aboard the PV Henry Hudson.

Business Car "Suitsme"   
Imagine yourself riding the open vestibule on your private Pullman railroad car--gazing at fields, rivers, and streams with the passing of every mile


Imagine riding in opulence, dining on expertly prepared entrees and sipping champagne, as your courteous staff attends to your every whim.

You don't need to be a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller to enjoy this "Golden Age of Railroading" experience, as luxury train service is only a phone call away...

Pullman Rail Tours, LLC, is pleased to announce a unique opportunity to relive history aboard magnificently appointed rail cars.

The stately 1928 Pullman Palace Car, "Suitsme", features an open observation platform with brass handrails, lush interior appointements and handcrafted mahogany woodwork.

Entering the PV tracks in Sacramento

QUESTION... "Do we want the creme de creme of American Industry to visit downtown Jacksonville? I hope City Hall and JTA kick FDOTS butt into rebuilding the old Private Car track next to the "Transportation Center".
A PV track or two, fully landscaped, usually dead end tracks, complete RV type hookups, lighting, platforms, and some sort of security fencing and entry card or officer at the gate.


The "ROYAL STREET" runs through Branson Missouri through some of the most scenic mountain gorges in the nation. This PV is of the last cut in PV fabrication.

LEYSHONSBOOKSETC@WORLDNET.ATT.NET

1959- MANSIONS ON RAILS- 'THE FOLKLORE OF THE PRIVATE RAILROAD CAR" 1959, NEVER REPRINTED, MANY FANTASTIC PHOTOS OF INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS OF PRIVATE RR CARS OF THE 19TH CENTURY. 382 PGS, 350 RARE PHOTOS, 6 COLOR PAINTINGS REPRINTED. WE KNOW OF NO OTHER RAILROAD BOOK THAT COVERS THIS SUBJECT AREA. THE PRIVATE RAILCAR. IF YOU ARE A PASSENGER TRAIN BUFF THIS BOOK IS A MUST FOR YOUR COLLECTION!  GOOD COND W/DJ $50

Does this help? Just let me know...[/color][/b]

OCKLAWAHA

[gatorback]

God I want one of those...suppose I owned land next to a track (with two rails Lol), how much would it cost me to have a push out to my property so I could have one of those puppies.  Would it cost less to find some old building with a push out already...if that's what you call the side tracks...

[Ocklawaha]

"Friend Flagler, where is this place they call Palm Beach..."
"Why friend Plant, just follow the crowds..."
Meeting of the two nabobs of Florida railroading in New York circa 1900. Flagler-Rockerfeller built the Florida East Coast and traveled aboard the "PV Rambler" and Plant-Chase and friends built the "Plant System" which became the Atlantic Coast Line, parent road of todays CSX.

For certain you want it on "LIVE RAIL" or a track that is still connected to a network. One little known secret is that many industrial sites will trade track space and services for the "LIVE IN TENNANT". Why does Ocklawaha love the old navy base at LEE FIELD? Why would I love to see it active again? It was the last home of my beloved but completely trashed "PV MOUNTAIN QUEEN". Cost about $500-1,000 to get the car moved from an active Amtrak Station. The other requirement for use on Amtrak trains, the car MUST have all current brake and safety appliances and carry a current safety inspection...An item that can get costly very fast, so buyer beware. There is also no cheap way to inspect though the association can help. You can find basket case cars or cars that are not so up to date online through google or yahoo's "RAILROAD PASSENGER CARS FOR SALE" check out Ozark, and Barnhardt. Other economy measures if you find one that CAN'T be brought up to standards then you call a truck and rigging company and have it moved to a farm. If it can move but not up to Amtrak standards, then you can move it around "DEAD" in freight service, nobody aboard, but set it up at each destination.

"Friend Ocklawaha, where do I find these private cars?"
"Friend Gatorback, just follow the money..."

OCKLAWAHA

[Ocklawaha]

Similar to the Vanderbilt's PV Wayfarer

Subculture? Hardly in the PV trade... More like "THE CULTURE" of the entire industrial world. Name a name, any real NAME, and I'd bet I could find a PV somewhere tied to it. Rockefeller, check; Flagler, check; Vanderbilt, check; Harriman, check; Hill, check; Huntington, check; Speckles, check; Crocker, check; Chase, check... the list is endless, and goes into the upper floors of every railroad in the land. Many of these are still in the business, many others are trading in the DC-9 of the "Playboy era" for a PV. In fact at least two companies have started as rebuilders and are now venturing into building new PV's. It's truly one of those if you've got the dollars, we've got the cars, sort of deal.

These old cars are of the great cruise ship era, and no expense was spared in furnishings, from the polished trim to inlaid exotic wood work. Tiffany and Company was standard fare in the silver service, the Persian carpets were from... yeah, Persia (Iran). Italian crystal from ITALY, etc... Some of these things are extremely heavy by passenger car standards and in fact are in a group of cars known as "heavyweights" which rode on the top notch 6 wheeled trucks. Having had the fortune of riding modern Amtrak cars with 4 wheel trucks and the old heavy weights, my opinion of the ride is old heavies were far superior.

The culture that whirled around these cars included tales that would make for a James Bond novel or cause James West to blush. There was a scandalous affair between one of the Vanderbilt's, builders and owners of the New York Central Railroad System, and the wife of the Cuban ambassador, aboard the PV Wayfarer. Peace treaty's were signed aboard such cars at the end of WWI and the start of WWII (in fact the same car in France!)


When your a lowly worker, seeing this is a real "Oh Shit Moment!"

In railroad circles, these were - and still are - the top of the line for customers. Not for Joe's Lumber Yard mind you, rather for the owners of Rayonier, or the CEO or General Motors, Quaker Oats, or P&G. The PV might still be rolled out as Amtrak explores a new route, or Volkswagen seeks a prime site for a new factory. In the one case it's an Amtrak train, in the other, perhaps aboard CSX one day and NS the next, both railroads serving the "Queen Anne Soup" "Roast Leg of Lamb" and a finger bowl, in the traditional style fit for royalty.


Meanwhile over on the NS, "look mom, here comes the President..."

In the work horse circles, just below the PV train of CSX and NS are the individual PV cars that might at any time show up at the end of an Amtrak Train. Here are a couple of examples, Amtrak 92 has the DuPont's private car aboard and is running 2 hours late. 15 cars long and 90 mph, but late none the less, the family is secure, no one but the train crew can enter their car, and they don't have a care in the world on this trip.


Toto Too? Yes, darling, even AMTRAK.

In the second example, Amtrak is pissed off about 92 running late all the time on CSX and Division Superintendent and legal, wants to know first hand why, so CSX car 300 is on the end of Amtrak 92 and the word spreads at computer speed up and down the railroad. Fear grips every employee as 300 slides past everything on the property and rolls into Jacksonville on time... down to the second had sweep. (gee, how did THAT happen?) Such is the power of the PV.

But let's regress to another era, when steam was still king and 1 in 11 Americans worked for the industry... 1890-1950...

The subculture of railroading that you seek perhaps didn't ride the PV as much as the "Side door Pullman" Hobo for "box car". These were the "Boomers" who were fully qualified "licensed" railroad employees that followed the boom of Gold, Silver, Wheat, peaches, Cotton or Pine Logs. They often were homeless but well paid, and lived from hotel to hotel. Thus the birth of the YMCA, to take in and give some direction on these men. There is also a Christian Railroad Association and a magazine still in print called the "Railroad Evangelist", that dates to those halcyon days. As a boomer you might hear of a huge bumper harvest of winter wheat in Oklahoma. You get a pass or a ride, or ride the side door Pullman's to Oklahoma City. There you encounter a mob scene at each railroad office, with boomers from all over the country, "marking up" for work on the "Extra Boards" of the various railroads. You hear that the Eastern Oklahoma Railway (Santa Fe owned)  is doing some early work on Oil traffic out of Cushing, so you pull a pass from the super and head up the line.


Keeping the "Eastern Oklahoma Railway" polished at Cushing

Once in Cushing it's a simple task of marking up and checking into a room to await the call. You might have followed the mob west to the wheat, but too damn many snakes out that way. If your going to be walking ties while switching cars and making the same dime, why not do it your own way... (at least that was boomer logic). So your snug in your room the call boy knocks on your door for the 5 am the next morning, working a tank train to Sinclair, one of the Wheat boys went with you and is catching a grain train North on the Santa Fe Line for Fairfax. Say's he loves the smell of the wheat in the caboose after a rain, so he's off on a whim. You'll see him around town once in awhile.


Fairfax was a busy town of grain elevators and not much else, it still is, sans railroad.

You put in 12 or 16 hours of long, hot, dog hard work. Steam railroading was labor intensive, every track and tiny village guarded by tiny depots, and station agents. No train moves without his orders. Telegraphs sing, firemen shovel coal, and long time old engineers and conductors (the captains of their trains) curse the damn boomers for not knowing their territory and causing the switching to go slower then normal. Word comes down to the depot that your Santa Fe pal, couldn't hold the job to Fairfax, so he wandered over to the Osage Railroad and hired on as a fireman!


It was said that "in the summer the engineer sweats and in the winter the fireman burns."

"IDIOT!" you think, it's 105 in the shade and he's pushing a shovel! When the pipeline opens next month, the traffic drys to a trickle. The call boy no longer knocks on your door after 8 hours of sleep. Good thing too, because so far from Florida, this evening, you've taken up the the camp followers... The Call Girls! After a couple of days of no jobs, you pay you bill and follow a story you get about oranges somewhere in a little grove outside of Los Angeles. It's called Fullerton, and the Santa Fe is said to be begging for crews... Continued.... some for a lifetime, others until they liked a place, settled and took their hits, paid the dues of being passed over for good work, and earned their seniority so they could buy a home and bid on a REAL JOB on a regular scheduled run. Boomer blood ran thick from the late 1800's until about 1955 and the end of steam. The mass abandonment of branchline's during the Nixon years or late 60's through today, has written the last sentence of their story. Coupled with benefits, union dues, job security and regulation out the wazoo, railroads lost a colorful era, when a caboose, a box car, YMCA or whore house was home. After all, ever wonder why the light on the front porch was red? RAILROAD LANTERNS!


By 1966, the Eastern Oklahoma was counting it's last days.


Santa Fe depot and yard, Cushing, OK.

This was the subculture on the roads during the "Grapes of Wrath" era. The towns and places in my examples are REAL, so are the companies mentioned. At it's peak Cushing, Oklahoma, "Pipeline Capital of the World", had perhaps 20,000 residents. Oil tank farms stretched for 30 miles east and north of town. Two depots and 9 railroads came to call. Today, Cushing is typical American farm belt prairie, home to maybe 8,000 people. One depot still stands in front of the last railroad line, which was abandoned in the 1980's. The old Coal tower still stands over the tracks where once a massive Santa Fe yard buzzed with activity. Ralston, Sinclair and others are all but memories.


Gandy Dancers, railroads are in the modern era, but sometimes it just takes a human touch with the help of a lazer beam to get it perfect. Another subculture within a subculture.

By Lead Belly, the original smithsonian collection, track workers chant-song, has everything but the muscle strain in it.

http://www.folkways.si.edu/listen2.aspx?type=preview&trackid=34583

LININ' TRACK
(Traditional)
Ho, boys, is you right?
I done got right
All I hate about linin' track
These ol' bars 'bout to bust my back

Chorus:
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em track

Let's see Eloise go linin' track
Down in the holler below the field
Angels are workin' on my chariot wheel
Chorus

Mary and the baby were settin' in the shade
Thinkin' of the money that I ain't made
Chorus

Well, I bin on the river, nineteen and ten
But I didn't have no women like the drivin' men
Chorus

Moses stood on the Red Sea shore
He was battin' at the waves with a two-by-four
Chorus

Well if I could I surely would
Stand on the rock where Moses stood
Chorus

Mary, Marthy, Luke and John
Well all them 'ciples now they're dead and gone
Chorus

Well you keep talkin' 'bout the break ahead
Ain't said nothin' 'bout my hog an' bread
Chorus

Ho, boys, is you right?
I done got right
All I hate about linin' track
These ol' bars 'bout to bust my back
Chorus

Now that you've seen both sides of the subculture's perhaps you better understand the fear that a PV threw into people. It still has an effect today, and if it's in company colors, it might as well be carrying the Holy Trinity. To anyone else, it's just another train car. Those old cars sitting off Kingsley at Orange Park Station. Oh they look like old railroad cars to most, The Southern "PV Intrepid" and the Georgia "PV 300", rest in the shade and go out on charter occasions. Just another train car until one steps up on the back platform and enters the door... shock and awe!

OCKLAWAHA

[Ocklawaha]

Just an added note. Certainly many did and still do live on the rails, but it has always been a choice. Those with that sort of lifestyle could well afford it. Today there are collectors of railroad cast off's and old junk. Some restore them as a labor of love, and it will usually cost them as much as one of the larger new homes in Nocatee. Others will go with a cheaper version and set the old car out in a pasture just to enjoy a weekend of play. For the real users of the cars in their heyday, it should be noted this was like showing up at Jacksonville International with your own Lear Jet, the next guy came in a 737, and yet another in a 767. None wanted to be beat out, after all darling we are having the Vanderbilts and Brocks over for supper tonight.

Almost any "TRANSPORTATION CENTER" (*see note) worth it's salt, in any real CITY had and should still have a PV facility. Special attention to towns where their are railroad HQ's, and fortune 500 firms. At it's peak, perhaps 1920's-50's, even most famous resorts had their own spur. The Breakers at Palm Beach, The Hotel Ormond at Ormond Beach or even the Hotel Continental at Atlantic Beach, had PV tracks. In the case of the former 2, they had railroad branchlines, that included mile+ bridges to reach the gardens where the cars were spotted. CLASS ACT.

(*NOTE: Time to start pushing JTA and FDOT to do the RIGHT THING in Jacksonville Terminal.)

OCKLAWAHA

[gatorback]

"Name a name, any name.."  I've got one.  Bouvier of Southampton, N.Y.  What can you find on them?
Or,
how about Watkins of Louisville KY.
Or...
either one of these two guys:  Philip E. Thomas and George Brown.  What did they sport around in? 

[gatorback]

"Name a name, any name.."  I've got one.  Bouvier of Southampton, N.Y.  What can you find on them?
Or,
how about Watkins of Louisville KY.
Or...
either one of these two guys:  Philip E. Thomas and George Brown.  What did they sport around in? 

whats this in reference to?

Ocklawaha said above "name 1...they all had them [private rail cars]." What I was looking for was the private rail car of the Kennedy's.  In particular, the Bouvier side [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Bouvier_Beale ].  I found RFK's last ride was this:



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/magazine/01RFKtext-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Then I was wondering what the Chairman of the Board of CSX road around in, but I guess he just used jets.

Philip E. Thomas and George Brown founded the B&O so did private railcars come into fashion after them?

[Ocklawaha]

John F. Kennedy had spent time campaigning on NYC 3. ...

Kennedy funeral train included several PV's the body was aboard PRR car 120 "Pennsylvania"...

Truman-Kennedy - to date (by request):

The PV Ferdinand Magellan was built in 1922 by the Pullman Company as a private car. It was one of six similar cars named after famous explorers, it is still the armor plated car used by the President of the USA. It resides in the care of the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in South Florida, and you MAY tour it on occasion.

Bouvier, several references to using various PV's in travel, including those of the Santa Fe, and New York Central.

I have to tell you this was fun, I uncovered another PV scandal, even better then the first... Bill Clinton and Kennedy RELATED? Check this out:

Sources familiar with a genetic analysis of this type placed the likelihood of a match by pure coincidence at about 26 million to 1.

While the details of the events that led to their kinship were a topic of speculation, both men had no comment and both refused to acknowledge the possibility of even an accidental link.

It remains unknown at this time why it took so long for the genetic link to be discovered. However, the same "confidential source" supplied the following scenario.

"It was just after World War II. The country is finally getting back to normal. "Old Joe" Kennedy (ed. note: former ambassador Joseph Kennedy, the "patriarch" of the Kennedy family) is in his private railroad car and on his way to Hollywood where he has a few hot dates waiting for him. The train makes a stop in Nowhere, Arkansas and Old Joe takes a walk around town, checking out the female population.

"He meets a woman, they have a one nighter, and both go their separate ways. A few months later, the woman realizes she is pregnant with Old Joe's child. She keeps it quiet and convinces Bill Senior that he's the father.

"To show his gratitude, Old Joe arranges for her kid to get every possible lucky break. Invited to the White House for some Young Democrats thing? No problem when you biological father is pulling the strings and your half-brother is President! Rhodes Scholar? Same thing when Kennedy money is available for "donations." Harvard Law School? Kennedy money practically built the place!

"You think a kid from Dogpatch USA is going to get all the right breaks at exactly the right time?" he noted.

As I said, if they lived in the first half of the 1900's and were "made of money" then it's a no brainer, they had or had access to PV's.

Hope this helps Gatorback!

OCKLAWAHA

[Ocklawaha]

The great railroad executive melt down massacre of 1976, in Newell, PA.


Scene of the crime doesn't look a thing like it did, but for the mountains and river. Looks like our local CSX has really fixed the place up.


The hunt was for a full scale version of these... oh boy did we find them!

By request of Stephendare:

I was working for a company called Interail Systems. They owned and operated shortline railroads and the fed had just passed some VERY advantageous tax rules on owning rail box cars, in order to combat a national shortage.

Rail cars earn money for their owners and those owners are not always railroads themselves. In a simple form, Each day "foreign line" (anything but your own) car is on your tracks you pay a per deium charge. So an FEC train with XXX NS or CSX cars is both earning money AND paying rent! Likewise, a NS or CSX train with FEC cars is also earning money AND paying rent! The trick is to get those foreign cars over the road and off as fast as possible.


Part of the PENN CENTRAL "COLLECTION" from Newell with love, 1976

So in that time, every shortline suddenly became very popular fodder for every financial firm on Wall Street. Everyone wanted in the car business, shops went up and railroads that were only 3 miles long! Some railroads that were only 3-10 miles long ended up owning 30 miles of rail cars! The trick there is to keep them in top condition so shippers request them and keep them fat, full and OFF THE PROPERTY!

So Interail sent me off to Newell with all the required papers, passes etc... to inspect a string of just retired Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad box cars. These old P&LE cars "looked fine" but had served under the Penn Central Ownership. We were assured that the railroad knew we were on the way, checked in at the gate, parked and went to work crawling over a long, long, line of faded green giants.

After about an hour, we kept hearing sounds like a hobo or someone was sneaking around, but we couldn't see nor did we have time for such games. Every car was bad, suffering severe metal fatigue and cracked center plates (where the trucks mount). PENN CENTRAL STRIKES AGAIN! They had taken a line of cars probably good for another 20 years and ran them into scrap through neglect.

Suddenly this giant railroad detective jumps out and grabs me by the arm. A discourse not unlike the one recently encountered on the JTA bus flared almost to blows. "Bunch of F---K'in bums!" "Excuse me?" "You heard me, I ought cave your F--k'in heads in right here and now..."  So I handed over our papers, and we get a "Harrumph! we'll see about this, your going to the tower with me..." So off we marched with our greasy blue jeans, and well soiled shirts, and smudged faces.

"WHAT THE HELL?" Some brass hat screamed as we got pushed through the door. It took a few minutes to sort things out, seems this was an interchange yard with a steel company road, and somehow their guys hadn't got the word. Well, it damn near got us killed. Before we left the old BRASS HAT (railroadese for King... or top dog) Asked us, "you shortline guys must be pretty desperate to come all the way to PA to see this PENN CENTRAL SHIT! What-ca, going to do with those pieces of shit anyway, make a chain of rolling whore houses?"

The old cop gave us an evil "knowing" grin, and muttered something like, "well at least you'd be providing a service to the old Hoggers (long time engineers) out of here."

Just another day at the railroad...


railroad love is not USA exclusive!

Then there was the day the Doctor of Railway Engineering and I left the office of the "Inspector General" of the railroads, to walk down to check out the old Mikado steam locomotive that the Colombian railroaders have so lovingly restored. The IG had left for lunch, so we figured we had the run of the place. EVERYONE knew who we were, and not many would argue with guys in suits, let alone a 6' tall 276 pound Gringo... WRONG!
Round the Mike we go and right into the face of this short little guard with his sawed off shotgun. QUE PASA?
Did you know, it is possible to translate "OH SHIT!"

OCKLAWAHA

[Timkin]

Ock these collections are awesome.

[Ocklawaha]

Ock these collections are awesome.

There are only about 10,000 more story's I could tell, never a dull moment around a bunch of bad ordered, cinder sniffing, whistle pigs, ash cats and drawbar flaggers, all of whom are trying to impress the big boys, back in the drone cage. The drawbar flagger gets the brownies and back on the tin lizard I was probably hoping for high greens and a highball. Find an alley and whistle off spilling the diamonds but holding em in the frogs. Oh yeah, I've pulled rocker duty and can't be all that far from the Big Rock Candy Mountain!

I'll have to add another tale or two soon. Thanks Tim.

OCKLAWAHA