To anyone's knowledge are there any surviving PRR P54 coaches? Not MP54's, but non-converted P54's.

There is a lone LIRR monitor roof version coach at the Oyster Bay Museum.

This may be a silly question, but since no operation that I'm aware of still uses the MP54 as an electric driven MU car anymore, has anyone tried backdating a MP54 into a P54?

At Wilmington and Western back in 1984-1985 I was in charge of "backdating" several MP-54s to P-54s. We removed the traction motors, pantographs, compressors, and all of the other electric choo choo stuff. We installed communicator lines and removed the headlights. I had never really checked out a true P54 coach but I'm guessing.

We gave that treatment to 3 cars #415, 442, and 450. Cars 442 and 450 were a married pair and we also removed the drawbar and installed couplers. The old MU cars were never a favorite of the crews and they were only used to supplement the W&W's 4 DLW Boonton cars which have been the backbone of the W&W since 1966. One of the MP-54s was converted to an open air car and is the only one still being used there. The #415 was cold to Queen Annes RR and eventually scrapped.

As coaches they had three strikes against them with the mechanical staff: constant contact side bearings, the air brake valves and the double jointed couplers. From the operations side the second three strikes were the DLW cars has superior seats as the "throwover" part was not so good due to decades of never being changed. The DLW cars have very nice rattan seats while the MP-54s had vinyl seats. And the windows did not operate as well either.

I'm going to guess that the W&W would be willing to sell or trade one of the remaining ones that are stored if anyone contacted them (not and official statement just my opinion).

MP-54sw came with different kinds of windows. In my experience as a rider, the older ones that rattled were easier to open, the newer metal ones were tight and almost like sealed windows.

Ifthat was a 2nd marriage for the 2. Married pairs (Bride and Groom) were motor and trailer, passenger trailers were single digits or low 900 series.

Considering they had 4 of them for sale for a very long while, which were later scrapped, I don't think there is much of a market for them.

The ones they sold to Walkersville Southern back in the late 90's never left, that I am aware of (the old Washington Terminal Coach and the never completed converted Open Air, that was still in Penn Central green as of the early 2000's).

I think the W&W had the largest single collection of them anywhere. Owning 9 of them over the years, having 8 on the property as late as 2010.

The only other railroad I know of that uses them regularly is the Delaware and Ulster in New York. They have 3 in service.

Their constant swaying to the point of sea sickness was my personal most "undesired aspect" of them. I was told that was due to the lack of the heavy equipment that you guys removed back in the 80's, but still possessing the spring rigging for it.

They did come in handy though when the W&W needed to have 400 seats available for each of the days scheduled trips.

Considering the use the 442 sees on most trips, they'd be wise to convert the 450 into an open car as well, but the lack of indoor available storage space I'd assume is the issue preventing that at the moment.

Delaware & Ulster Rail Ride thinks that their MP-54s are smooth riding because they are so heavy!

Wasn't there one at the RR Museum of PA in Strasburg at one time?

It's an unusual situation. The cars did pretty well in service. In the case of the LIRR car, they ran for 60 years and held up fairly well. Once retired, the old cars seemed to melt. Water got in around the window seals, the floor sills ate straight through will rust and the machinery underneath became loose and unreliable. The cars at Steamtown (Vt.) lasted for quite awhile in service, but even those preserved on Long Island, by the Long Island RR could not withstand static display. The P54 monitor roof at OBRM was left over from Knox and Kane, and how it survived is just luck. Today it gets some attention, but out of a fleet of thousands built for Long Island and Pennsy, there remain only two, perhaps three, worthy of preservation in 2013.

There are nearly an equal amount of arched roof Long Island cars of this class running today as there are PRR MP54s.

Walkersville Southern has 2 in service, with I believe a 3rd one coming on line soon.

Ashtabula, Carson & Jefferson has 2 in service

The recently closed Carthage, Knightstown & Shirley had one in service....

The Wiki article about MP54's refers to powered/unpowered married pairs as "civil unions." I've never heard that term and figure it's someone's political statement. Anyone ever heard that term used? Figured I should check before removing it. (It appears with the 5:23, 3 December 2011 revision).

It doesn't even make sense: It ought to be dissimilar (powered/unpowered) would be a married pair while alike (powered/powered) would be a civil union pair! Lame.

Steve

The Walkersville Southern actually has three in service now. Two (7045 and 7128) are configured as coaches while a third, named the Southampton, owned by WS president Ronnie Baird, was gutted and converted to a dining car for dinner trains. A fourth, privately owned by Paul Kovalcik, one of the volunteers, is under renovation but he states it is years from being finished. Paul is involved in rail operations (he was working as an engineer on Saturday the 19th) and numerous other projects and works on his car when time is available. He started with a car that was a rusty, gutted shell and has gotten a lot done on it, but there's much more yet to be done.

The RRMPA website lists a P53 and a P58; numerically these cars are right next to each other (P53 - 1650; P58 - 1651). My semi-educated guess is these cars are related to the P54 in some way; how I do not know. My knowledge of PRR passenger equipment is rudimentary at best.

As politics deals in realms that it has no business in we might as well have some fun with it. Now at the risk of moving this discussion in a truly off-topic direction - the paired single unit Jersey Arrows currently used between Princeton Junction and that atrocity of a temporary station which my alma mater has funded as they desecrate the Princeton Branch are referred to as a 'dating pair'.

GME

P.S. I never dreamt that I would ever see a modern facility which could be improved with an 'Amshack', think of Appalachia-on-Campus. Fortunately I still have the snapshot of an incredibly beautiful young woman disembarking from an MP54 where the station is supposed be.

#450 is in storage out of the public eye. It still wears W&W Phase 2 scheme (See SW1 #114). I can't speak for the mechanical department or head office but there has been a small rumor of restoring the coach as an extra (even though we use DLW 571 as an extra).