Greetings:

This "car" does pose some interesting questions....

The illustration I am looking at for inspiration as I write these notes is Fig.154-158 in The Car Builder's Dictionary (1888). I have a reprint edition. The car shown on these pages is a passenger car from the Central Railroad of New Jersey, and appears to be about 45 feet long. This is not the same car as the "Lincoln" car, but it does have some of the same features, and does have the same number of windows (16).

The ends are "original." Some of the roof is "original," especially those fancy curved carlines and the basic clear-story parts, panels, etc., but the vents are missing. The truss-plank (the horizontal timber under the windows at the floor line) and the deck sill (bottom portion of the clear-story) appear to run the entire length of the car. They would have been spliced on a car this length, but since they appear to run the length of the car (for a piece in that place), someone would have had to go to a lot of trouble to make them look that long if this were just a "shed."

The car sills are interesting.... There are only four of them, and a car like this normally would have had six sills. There is at least one passenger car existing with four sills, but it is a narrrow gauge car: the Kimball car at Flint, MI, on the Huckleberry RR. The sills on the "Lincoln" car do seem to be large enough and long enough to be sills, but why are there only four? Could the original car have had eight sills, and four were left out when the car was worked on in later years? There is an illustration of an eight-sill passenger car in the Train Shed Cyclopedia version of Passenger cars, 1892, on page 89.

It has been observed that this "Lincoln" car does not appear to have bracing in the sides under the windows. Had such been present, it would easily have been left off if the side and window framing was replaced with modern wood. Early cars that were essentially flat cars with a structure build on them, did not have substantial diagonal bracing. (see the illustration of the car from the Car Builders Dictionary I cited above). The original end platforms appear to be entire missing, so it is hard to tell how the car was equipped with a coupler, etc.

Because of these and other observations based on the slight photographic evicence available, I believe the "car" in question is a major reconstruction job by a skillful carpenter who wanted to make somethig useful and interesting, without restoring the "donar car" to its real configuration. This car could even be the remnants of a car of about the same vintage as the real Lincoln car.

It would be interesting to get a report from someone who has examiined the car with the skilled eye of a wooden passenger car rebuilder.

Tom Armstrong

I remember that "Lincoln Train Ride" from a trip to Gettysburg when I was in grade school. I went as part of a school trip, and while the rest of the group went next door to a restaurant or such I snuck off to the Lincoln Train Museum. When the school principal could not find me during the head count he knew exactly where I would have gone! Even in those days I was nuts about trains.

How did those trucks work on the real car? Were they mounted like the turbines trucks on a longer steel sub frame that swivelled? Why the need for all the trucks? Lincoln wasnt overly large was he? After all we werent blessed with Mc Donalds then.

Mike Pannell

> $6 grand, Huh? I have a bridge I'll sell ya!

Actually that's exactly what they're selling!

> The car you may be looking at was used as
> a bridge for a youth camp as I remember in MO

I don't know about the youth camp bit, but if you
look at the first photo on the OMR site, the car
is being used as a rather unique bridge. It's on
a small trestle, with steps up into both ends...

I've never seen anything like that before, it's
actually an interesting and unique installation.

Bob -

Seeing your comments made me realize that it is really a COVERED bridge. It also got me thinking that there was some covered railroad bridge saved on some line (was it in Vermont?) quite a few years ago. Is this bridge still in existance? Does it still have a rail line running through it?

Les

Les,

There are three Vermont railroad covered bridges left. The Addison Railroad (Rutland) Shoreham Bridge, the Fisher Bridge on the Portland & Ogdensburg (St.J&LC) and the Barre Railroad bridge from East Montpelier.

Of these, only the Barre RR bridge has trains running through it. It was moved to North Woodstock, NH and is in service on the White Mountain Central steam operation.

There are at least three other covered railroad bridges in NH. The B&M Claremont Branch structures still stand. Two near Kelleyville and one at Contoocook.

Rob

Each pair of 4-wheel trucks was connected together on a swing arm to a single bolster. Neither the car nor Mr. Lincoln was of excessive weight, so I don't believe that was the reason. If it were to achieve a smoother ride, that did not work either. The car was equipped with "compromise" wheelsets to be able to travel on a variety of Civil War-era railroad gauges, which led to a notoriously rough ride. In later years after it was acquired by the Union Pacific these trucks were replaced with two standard 4-wheel sets. Interestingly, a series of 1870s era Pullman Palace Hotel cars also were fitted out with similar 16-wheel truck sets.

Our Museum's historian, Russ Olson (author of the definitive book The Electric Railways of Minnesota) did some research and came up with these contemporary newspaper accounts of the fire that consumed the Lincoln funeral train coach.

Bottom line, it appears that what wood was left after the fire was put out (note that the fire department people didn't attempt to save the car--they had other priorities at the time) was offered to the general public. Certainly the metal survived mostly intact but I doubt that anyone took home with them a 1200 pound wheel and axle set or a 200-pound drawbar assembly. I think its safe to assume that the metal parts ended up in a scrap pile somewhere.

My personal conclusion is that the car listed in the Ozark Railcar's listing has NO parts from the Lincoln funeral car. It just looks like the car.

Interestingly, the original fire was started by a bunch of boys (juvenile delinquents?). This area of Columbia Heights is where the Soo Line's Shoreham Shops complex was located and to the immediate west is the former Great Northern, now BNSF Northtown yard.

Thanks!

Not very good railroad preservation movement back then...

Lincolns son running the Pullman company prolly makes up plenty for the loss.