Greetings! I'm trying to help out a friend not familiar with RYPN, much less railways or railway preservation, and my first thought was this board. Thanks in advance for any help!

I'm looking for any information and photos of this car, built by Wagner Place Car Co. in 1891. The car burned in 1904. The Illinois Railway Museum, The Newberry Library, and the Smithsonian have been contacted but not much information was found.

All the best,

Joshua

No exactly to answer your question, but at the Nevada State Railroad Museum, Boulder City we have Ellsmere, a 1888 Wagner Palace Car Co private car built for the Vanderbilt family, most associated with Dr Webb, a Vanderbilt son-in-law who ran Wagner after Wagner's death. The car was sold about 1914 to unknown parties, but reappears in 1920 as a business car on the Texas & Pacific.

The car is complete, and in respectable condition, but highly evolved, having received a steel underframe, and late 1920's trucks, had upper window sash removed, the clerestory repurposed as air-conditioning ducts, and a "betterment" faux roof. We are trying to commission a preservation study, to guide any rehabilitation efforts.

A second Wagner Palace car owned by Dr Webb, Grand Isle, is preserved in Shelburn Falls VT.

Randy

In addition to running the Wagner Palace Car Co., Dr William Seward Webb was the builder of the Mohawk & Malone Ry. (later the Adirondack Division of the NYC and now the Adirondack Scenic RR) and also president of the Rutland RR.

George Washington Vanderbilt III would have been a first cousin of William Seward Webb's wife, Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt, since they were both grandchildren of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Shelburne Museum in Vermont, where the Grande Isle is preserved, was founded by William Seward Webb's daughter in law, Electra Havemeyer Webb, whose father Henry O. Havemeyer owned the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal.

(It's always amusing to see how the great railroad magnates of the Gilded Age were all related to each other, like European royalty.)

-Philip Marshall

They had a copy of the blueprint of this car at the Family Life Center at Biltmore House...they may have the only info about this car.

T7