SPEAKING OF ENDANGERED LANDMARKS….

Missouri Pacific coach #1141, photographed recently in Hearne, is the very first car ever owned by the Gulf Coast Chapter, having been donated by MoPac in 1968 when we were still at Union Station….the car was once painted in full Eagle paint scheme.

We donated it to the Galveston Museum in 1989 to fulfill their need of an air conditioned coach for their steam excursions. It has subsequently been in the possession of the Austin Steam Train Association, the Lower Colorado River Authority and now Hearne, which has a MoPac pedigree and a nicely restored depot.

The car was built in 1920 by Pullman as an 88-seat coach for the Texas & Pacific Railroad. In 1936, T&P's Marshall shop installed air conditioning and in 1939, the car was converted into a buffet coach. In 1952 the car was rebuilt again as a 56-seat divided coach. A semi-streamlined false "turtleback" roof was added, and the car was painted in Eagle colors.

In the early 1960s, the MoPac undertook a general equipment renumbering scheme, and the car was renumbered 1141. At some point around this same time it apparently was repainted in the MoPac solid blue scheme and the MoPac buzz-saw emblem was added.

We do not know whether there are plans to restore the car. Perhaps someone can tell us.

Just another old car for your consideration - located in Hearne, TX.


Out of Service.. by DieselDucy, on Flickr

I learned about the car from the Houston Railroad Museum's Facebook page, linked here.

The Facebook page provides the following:

I was wondering if that car was still there. I passed through the area in June and did not see it in its normal spot( the spot it had occupied for at least the past ten years).It is deserving of preservation due to its configuration as a "Jim Crow" coach and I believe the partitions are still in the car.

Does anyone know the former number(s) for this car? Also, any information on the Pullman lot/plan and the number of cars in the order?

If the car was 1141 (1963 number), it was previously numbered 1675 and
was rebuilt & modernized in 1954. It was originally one of 50 coaches
in series 1216-1265 built by Pullman in 1920 (lot no. 4569). This is
one of 41 cars from the series in which I have insufficient data to
track the 1675 number back to its original number. T&P renumbered these
cars multiple times with some of them assigned in the 1300-series and
others in the 1500-series with the first round of renumbering sometime
between July 1933 and March 1943.
Regards,
Ed H.

As far as I know, there are four or five cars from the TP's 1920 order in
existance

1. The car at the GATX tankcar facility in Hearne
2. A similar car at Age Of Steam in Dallas
3. An instuction car at MOT donated by Monsanto (former TP)
4. The tourist line car at Great Smokey Mountain RR in North Carolina
5. A car converted to a steam generator car somewhere in Missouri (looks like a
combination car on one side because of the door).

Jim O.

Very late in the passenger era, something prompted the MoPac to donate
three of these cars to museums. One went to Age of Steam, one to Houston
Gulf Coast Chapter NRHS, and one to another museum in Louisiana. They
were the biggest group of T&P heavyweight steel coaches, and during the
sixties they were one of the biggest groups of modernized heavyweights.

The Age of Steam car is obviously still there, and the other two have
wandered.

The '1141', whose number and paint scheme were mismatched, was in good
enough shape that in the mid-80s it ran on an excursion on the A&NR in
deepest east Texas. Of course, at that time, it was already not
passenger-legal. It and maybe other cars were moved by the Big Friendly
in freight trains to Beaumont and then north from the Gulf Coast railway
museum in east Houston.
...
Ron M.