Wantagh, NY/LIRR station & parlor car preserved

Sloan · **Posted:** Tue Aug 09, 2011 12:58 pm

http://wantagh.patch.com/articles/the-w ... ys-history

Richard Glueck · **Posted:** Tue Aug 09, 2011 3:27 pm

This museum has been in operation for at least 35 years that I know of. The parlor car is the old LIRR observation "Jamaica". That car was a P-70 at one time and was refitted with the observation deck of another long scrapped ob. I don't know the heritage of that deck beyond what's posted. The "Jamaica" regularly followed the all heavyweight parlor express, the "Cannonball" on Friday evenings, to Montauk. When "Jamaica" was retired, it sat in the yard behind the Morris Park shops for years, in bad shape. It was donated to the museum and the Sunrise Trail NRHS had a big hand in rebuilding it, repairing rust, repairing weather damage, etc.
LIRR replaced the "Jamaica" with a really beautiful observation, named "Setauket", ex-Lehigh Valley, I believe. After the MTA took over, "Setauket" was renamed "Jamaica", painted in platinum and blue, and used as an inspection car. It was eventually sold to a collector and is preserved today in upstate New York.
The little museum in the article has accumulated a number of irreplaceable LIRR artifacts.

rock island lines · **Joined:** Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:20 pm **Posts:** 487

The Jamaica in the news...

May 1, 2015

LI Herald article: "Old train car to get some TLC"

Quote:

With exterior done, Preservation Society to spruce up inside

By Andrew Hackmack
...
The train car had been open to the public in the past, but was closed about a decade
ago because the interior was falling into disrepair and the floor was rotting away.
Meagher plans to spend the coming months getting it back in shape.
...

(Sorry, this photo is huge.)

philip.marshall · **Posted:** Fri May 22, 2015 11:58 pm

This is good news -- it's nice to see the Jamaica getting some much-needed attention! It would be better if they could get it under cover somehow, though.

The car spent its entire career on the LIRR: built by AC&F in 1912 as a chair (parlor) car, then converted to a regular heavyweight coach, then to an open platform business car (I guess using the platform from another car that was being scrapped, as Richard says above), and then lastly in 1957 to a parlor observation, until finally withdrawn from service in 1968 and donated to the Wantagh Museum in 1972.

-Philip Marshall

P.S. Are those roller bearings???