Much of the interior of the Chapel Car at the Northwest Railway Museum is oak -- 115-year old oak.

The picture is of a portion of an interior door frame I was cleaning of its varnish with denatured alcohol and much elbow grease. Look at that grain compared to the junk we can buy today. Last year I was working with the 100-year old Honduran mahogany of the upper oval windows of the SP&P coach also undergoing renovation here.

Ok, I know, it's "church varnish" as opposed to "private varnish."

About a month ago I posted a picture of the gaping hole in the side of the car because of the door cut into it when it was a diner. The picture below shows it fixed. The door was to the far right.

The chapel car pages are here:
http://www.trainmuseum.org/MoP/A.asp

As far as your complain about wood quality, I can assure you that if you look hard enough (meaning NOT your Lowe's, Home Depot, or 84 Lumber, but specialty sources), you can find that quality of wood--and pay a premium for it.

I'm aware of one steam thresher show where part of their "income" is running their vintage sawmill not for random demonstration, but custom-cutting carefully-chosen logs for specialty projects--building restorations, furniture, etc. This requires the lost art of looking at the wood grain once you're "inside" and seeing if you can still make the cuts you want, and how and where. I'm told quite a few trees that were felled in the recent tropical storms were salvaged and are aging, awaiting a turn at the saw next year......

Actually, we are finding it increasingly difficult to find wood for our wooden car restorations... not cabinet wood for interiors, but instead the high grade redwood for car siding and roofing as used in California... to a lesser extent the larger beams, mostly douglas fir, but also white oak for draft timbers and such.

20 years ago we had a couple of mills cutting high quality redwood, able to mill siding to order of course for a price. Now it is not available.

Local lumber yards that used to have large douglas fir beams on hand, and could finish mill to order, now order lumber to mill. We have tried salvage wood, small mills, and "historic mills" eventually we find what we need, but we have seen 300%+ price increases over 20 years.

The same issues are hitting architectural projects... Most California Victorian houses (and pre-1910 SP railroad stations) use redwood rain gutters. 10 years ago we had to replace the rain gutter for a 12' diameter tower on a Victorian home... the raw lumber (old growth redwood) was $22,000... at least we could find it. Douglas fir floor boards for outside porches are now roughly 10 grains per inch (vs 20+ seen on old boards) and as a result are much more prone to rot...

New construction can adopt new materials like glue lams and plastic lumber... that doesn't work for preservation projects.

Getting quality wood is a major problem for WRM. Our biggest problem use to be replacing missing pressed glass, but proper quality and kind of wood is quickly over taking that problem.

Woods like southern yellow pine, old growth poplar, old growth redwood, some of the cedars, white oak, douglas fir timbers, hard maple, and American or Cuban mahogany are hard or impossible to find. When it can be found the cost is very high. With the new insect attack on ash, soon it will be hard to get.

The second growth wood, which grew quickly with plenty of sun light, just does not work. It is weak, rots quickly, and paints poorly. When having mill work done WRM drawings always specify old growth wood with at least 12 lines per inch, but some times it is not possible. For fir boxcar siding, 15 dollars per board is the norm now.

Recycled wood was thought to be the answer, but in the last few years with so little construction going on good used wood is hard to get. All the framing in Sacramento Northern 1005 was cut from recycled fir 12 X 12s purchased 12 years ago. The wood was clear, straight grained, dry, had tight rings, and was cut around the same time as the wood for the car was originally was cut. It was beautiful wood. But it is hard to find now. Much of the used wood in this area is now is coming from buildings built for the WW2 effort. It is the first major use of second growth wood I have seen. It was junk when it was milled in 1942 and it is still junk.

We buy what we can find when we can find it and store it until a project comes along. New wood is almost out of the question. One exception is fir from Canada, but you need to look at the wood before you purchase it to be sure you are getting what you think you are.

I was talking to a person working on a project in the Pacific Northwest and he told me he was using a timber broker with good results to buy his wood. I am thinking we made need to go this route.