What are the specs for the car? Friction bearing? Any rust? And so on...

Judging from the pictures, I'd say plenty of rust, and very nice cast one piece trucks with Timken oil(?) roller bearings. Timken for sure, but I can't tell for sure on lube type. The car at a glance looks solid, but she sure seems to be rotting along the side sill...

A quick update. The state is not involved and there is no immediate plan that would have the car scrapped. We have identified the property owner and someone who posts here is following up to see what the status is.

Necro-bumping an old thread.

Here is a very recent photo of GM&O #2008, "Azalea" (October, 2013). It looks unchanged since this thread began in 2006.

I guess the rail preservation community has worked its will; there is simply no interest in preserving this one.

https://flic.kr/p/hak3qz

Thanks, Rock Island, for posting the linked photo of the Azalea!

This car would fit within the criteria of the "Surviving Pullman Heavyweight" thread, I'll be posting more over there (included as line item #305):

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30187&start=225

The person who bought the restaurant at auction 7 years ago lost interest and has put the site up for sale. There is a for sale by owner sign on the property.

I talked to the zoning officer in the town and they told me the issue is the fact the building sits on the edge of the Pequest River that the State environmental people have put a lot of new requirements on anyone looking to reopen the place.

As the photo indicates no one is doing maintenance on the place. There are at least two significant holes in the roof of the building that have already loose blue tarps over them.

The car looks mostly ok. As I recall I don't think they ever hacked into the car. You would actually enter it through the end of the car that is inside the building.

Please do not confuse "lack of expendable resources to rescue and preserve this car" with "lack of interest."

And sometimes the fact is that those with the resources and will simply don't hear about this stuff. RyPN remains the best North American resource for the transmission and referral of potential rail preservation opportunities by far, but even this is a quite limited and self-selected audience.

Who would want this car? A potential Pullman operator (of which there is but one or three continent-wide), a GM&O loyalist, a private car opportunist/wannabe, another restaurant owner, or some person with a lot of money who finds the idea of a Pullman better than a yacht or vacation home on the beach. Of those, only the first MIGHT have representatives monitoring this forum. We don't all read Sterling Rail or Ozark Mountain's listings, either.

I spoke to the owner maybe two years ago and the issue was his expectation that the car was worth a significant amount of money. And there in lies the real problem. There is no sense of reality as to how expensive it is to move it and to make it usable in some fashion, what ever that may be.

If any one is interested, I should still have the contact information (name and phone number) here someplace. Feel free to send me a PM for it.

J.R. May

Was this car a parlor car before being turned into restaurant or was it some kind of dinner lounge car? What was it originally and what was changed when it came to new jersey?

I called the number on the For Sale sign on the property back in April. The owner is willing to sell the car for $10,000. He admonished me that when you move the car you are responsible for any damage you do to the building!

Wouldn't want to disturb the blue tarps covering the holes in the roof.

On a similar topic, the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton, NJ on I-78 has a CNJ observation car from the Blue Comet. Their website said: How long has it been there? I for one will be chomping at the bits for the day they go out of business.

Not likely. The original restaurant was put there in the mid to late 1970's. That place went out of business in the 1990's and the car/restaurant were vacant for 10-15 years. The current place opened about 10 years ago after doing a lot of renovations on both the building and the car. They now offer typical Jersey diner food - not my favorite diner but not bad. It is quite busy and very unlikely to go out of business.

The "Biela" was pretty much tubed out. The interior has typical Jersey diner seating inside - the view on I-78 is not exactly memorable.

Of more interest is the fate of the other cars that made up The Blue Comet:

Observation car "Tempel" is parked somehwere along the Cape May Seashore Lines after a disastrous time on display in South Plainfield, NJ.

The "De Vico" observation car was in use by New Jersey Transit as an inspection car from 1982 until 1993. The car, renumbered NJT-1, was donated in 2003 to the United Railroad Historical Society (URHS) of New Jersey. It currently is located in Boonton, NJ and has been recently painted in Blue Comet livery. The interior was redone in "80's catering hall bar" style while in use by NJT

The URHS also owns two coaches "Westphal" and "D'Arrest". Last place I saw them was at Winslow Junction, NJ.

The combine "Halley" was reconfigured, repainted and used in service on the Santa Fe Southern Railway. "Halley", a smoker/combine, has been modified with the removal of the vestibules, and the baggage area window has been blanked out. I don't know if it is still in use in the latest attempt to run excursions on the SFS.

The dining car "Giaccobini" was seriously damaged in a 1939 wreck. It was never returned to service and spent the rest of its days as a freight office until being scrapped. Maybe substitute the Lion Gardner and you could have a recreated Blue Comet - Pacific optional.

STILL rusting away:

Photo from Facebook user John Pearson on "Abandoned Rails" FB group:

As per posts on the GM&O HS facebook page the GM&O heavyweight diner Azalea (and the GM&O heavyweight coach Orange State as well) is now owned by John Matthews and is being prepared to move it out of there. He says that he intends to rehab it: "im making it into a personal private car" in its GM&O appearance but that is all I know about it, in other places he says he wants to make it into a private apartment of sorts whatever that means. https://www.facebook.com/groups/GMO880B ... 378170630/

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