Hi there
Does anyone have details of the earliest known sleeping cars to survive in the USA. It woyld be interesting to know just how rare our 1866 discovery is ??

Mike
Cheyenne

Mike,

if you have a railroad car from the 1860s of any kind it is a rare bird indeed.

don't do anything to it except whatever it need to stabilize it. Artifacts like that age need to be sutdied in detail before you do much of anything to it!

You need to have a well detailed Historic Structure Report that incoudes all facits of it history and the physical changes made to the car from day one until you came on the scene.

You say a sleeping car; if it was built by Pullman you should be in touch with Ted Anderson at the Pullmam library of the Illinois Railway Museum. They have thousands of drawing of the company cars and that is the kind of documentation that you need to have in order to proceed.

The Mid Continent Railway museum has done a couple of excellent wooden car restoration projects. Don Meyer there would be a good person to talk to about woodnen cars.

The Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook, BC has a large collection of passenger cars. Some are wood and many are steel.

Do talk to us here as your project moves along.

Ted Miles

We know from extensive research (already mentioned on here) that she was built FOR Wagner Palace car company, by whom we dont know, floor plan 3003 (under the Pullman records) she was named OMAHA which is documented clearly inside, and was a 10 section drawing room/sleeping car. We believe from records that she had a sister car called San Francisco, although this has yet to be substantiated. We do know that she was sold to Hicks as a gutted shell in 1901 and resold as a passenger car with new bullnose roof ends to C&S in 1902, however she retained all of her canvas painted ceilings! she ended her days next to our 1887 car as a grounded body in Cheyenne, then as a house until 1982 then a workshop from then until now.
We absolutely will NOT let anything happen to it, and the owners are happy for us to add it to our restoration projects in due course

Will keep you updated

Mike Pannell

Cheyenne

Thanks for the additional information!

Ted Miles