Hi,

I need some help identifying this heavyweight coach at the Warner Vineyards in Paw Paw, MI. There is no ACI tag or any reporting marks. The only stamp I could find was on the truck. It read, "AAR 1947." Vintage aerial photographs suggest that the car was moved there sometime in the 1990's.

The interior has been completely gutted besides the original walls. I talked to a few employees and they knew nothing about its history. Perhaps this car was from the dinner train that operated out of Paw Paw?

Thomas

I believe it is an old GTW coach, if I remember correctly.

No. The car was not a part of that operation.

Les

Here are some photos of the car from 2003 by Eddie Gross.
With the new paint the car blends into its surroundings.

This is one of a series of heavyweight Pullmans converted to coaches by the GTW in the 1940s or 1950s. Some may have been commuter cars, but I think most were long-distance coaches with Adlake wide sash and ice AC. The winery car looks like a commuter car.

Quite a few GTW modernized heavyweights were placed in stationary uses around Michigan in the 1970s, but are steadily being scrapped. Cars at Saranac, Jackson (scrapyard), Rochester, and Bellaire are gone. One of the Rochester carbodies is at a restaurant in Lansing. I lost track of the diner at Walled Lake in the 1970s and the solarium at Grand Rapids. The Duluth museum had one with wide windows. Two exist at Oden, one of them a commuter car with roller-bearing wood trucks. It is fun to imagine a modern car inspector confronting a car in 70-mph passenger service with wood trucks, but GTW did it all the time before 1971.

Aarne Frobom
Half a mile from the GTW main line

My ex and I rode in one of those coaches from Chicago to Toronto on the Maple Leaf in the summer of 1967. Smooth and fast ride across southern Michigan, passing through Schoolcraft, where I had spent many vacations at my Great Gram's house watching the GTW steamers blast across Hwy 131. At the station stop in Sarnia ON, it was fascinating to see men toss up blocks of ice to other men on the coach roofs to be placed into hatches for the AC. Definitely old-school but fun to watch.

Thanks for confirming that the passenger cars in Jackson have been scrapped.
Can you provide further information about the other cars?
I am very interested in GTW equipment and was unaware of multiple stationary uses of these cars.