Does anyone know the whereabouts of the ex-Delaware & Hudson dining car that was used on some of the "High Iron" main line trips from the late 60's? I read that it was owned by Empire State RR Museum at the time and leased to HICO. Just curious!

K.R. Bell
RR Museum of PA

c-kbell@state.pa.us

> Does anyone know the whereabouts of the
> ex-Delaware & Hudson dining car that was
> used on some of the "High Iron"
> main line trips from the late 60's? I read
> that it was owned by Empire State RR Museum
> at the time and leased to HICO. Just
> curious!

> K.R. Bell
> RR Museum of PA

Kurt:

That car was D&H 154, originally built for NYC as number 519 by Pullman in 1914. It was air-conditioned in the late 1930s. D&H bought at least two NYC steel diners in the mid-50s, to replace composite (wood-steel) D&H cars. 154 was sold to Empire State Railway Museum, and operated on the 1966-67 HICO trips over the CNJ (powered by CPR G-5s 1278, 1286 and 1238). As I recall, William Whitehead and his family ran the diner and actually served "real" railroad diner meals to the passengers! Imagine THAT today! Bill Whitehead was one of the founders of the Black River & Western, and was instrumental in the acquisition of Dansvile & Mt. Morris 565 (AKA D&LW 565, 2-6-0).

Anyway, after the HICO use of the car, ESRM sent it to Essex, CT in 1969, where it joined other ESRM equipment as part of the newly-founded Valley Railroad Company. In 1971, the car was painted dark green and lettered "Connecticut Valley", numbered 154, and named "Lion Gardiner", after the early settler of Gardiner's Island (in Long Island Sound). An early use in that set-up was for a publishing party for Michael Koch's "The Shay Locomotive" book in 1972. I remember loading (by hand and ladder) block ice into the roof hatches over the kitchen ice bunker, before a charter trip!

The car was getting quite "crusty" around the edges, as early steel cars that had been air-conditioned tend to get. Also, it suffered from the usual "kitchen floor rot syndrome". While everything was there and intact, it was going to be a hell of a costly project to fix the old girl up, and she was shoved into the "woods" at Essex about 1976 or so. A frozen water pipe that had burst and wet down the interior didn't help matters.

The car was ultimately sent to the current ESRM at Kingston, NY, about 1986, as part of a negotiated (between ESRM, VRR and CVRM [RMNE]) "deal" for ESRM's various assets (not all of which were rolling stock).

Sorry for the lengthy post, but it had a lot of history. It was neat car, and it was sad to see it deteriorate and be cast aside.


hpincus@mindspring.com

> The car was ultimately sent to the current
> ESRM at Kingston, NY, about 1986, as part of
> a negotiated (between ESRM, VRR and CVRM
> [RMNE]) "deal" for ESRM's various
> assets (not all of which were rolling
> stock).

Wow. I didn't know that the diner was of D&H heritage. It was sitting on the tracks under the New York Thruway for at least 10 years, although it was moved further out of town a couple of years ago. It had significant body rot when I last saw it. Nothing is impossible if you have money and interest, but short of that I would say this car is beyond the point of no return.

Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society
tstuy@eldcps.org

Many thanks, Howard!

Kurt Bell
RR Museum of PA

> Kurt:

> That car was D&H 154, originally built
> for NYC as number 519 by Pullman in 1914. It
> was air-conditioned in the late 1930s.
> D&H bought at least two NYC steel diners
> in the mid-50s, to replace composite
> (wood-steel) D&H cars. 154 was sold to
> Empire State Railway Museum, and operated on
> the 1966-67 HICO trips over the CNJ (powered
> by CPR G-5s 1278, 1286 and 1238). As I
> recall, William Whitehead and his family ran
> the diner and actually served
> "real" railroad diner meals to the
> passengers! Imagine THAT today! Bill
> Whitehead was one of the founders of the
> Black River & Western, and was
> instrumental in the acquisition of Dansvile
> & Mt. Morris 565 (AKA D&LW 565,
> 2-6-0).

> Anyway, after the HICO use of the car, ESRM
> sent it to Essex, CT in 1969, where it
> joined other ESRM equipment as part of the
> newly-founded Valley Railroad Company. In
> 1971, the car was painted dark green and
> lettered "Connecticut Valley",
> numbered 154, and named "Lion
> Gardiner", after the early settler of
> Gardiner's Island (in Long Island Sound). An
> early use in that set-up was for a
> publishing party for Michael Koch's
> "The Shay Locomotive" book in
> 1972. I remember loading (by hand and
> ladder) block ice into the roof hatches over
> the kitchen ice bunker, before a charter
> trip!

> The car was getting quite "crusty"
> around the edges, as early steel cars that
> had been air-conditioned tend to get. Also,
> it suffered from the usual "kitchen
> floor rot syndrome". While everything
> was there and intact, it was going to be a
> hell of a costly project to fix the old girl
> up, and she was shoved into the
> "woods" at Essex about 1976 or so.
> A frozen water pipe that had burst and wet
> down the interior didn't help matters.

> The car was ultimately sent to the current
> ESRM at Kingston, NY, about 1986, as part of
> a negotiated (between ESRM, VRR and CVRM
> [RMNE]) "deal" for ESRM's various
> assets (not all of which were rolling
> stock).

> Sorry for the lengthy post, but it had a lot
> of history. It was neat car, and it was sad
> to see it deteriorate and be cast aside.


http://phc.mpr.org/posthost/ptth_0104.htm
c-kbell@state.pa.us

Last Saturday, the Lion Gardiner was moved around a little, and I got a nice shot of the diner:

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?pho ... 617843.jpg

Here's one of the other side I took earlier this year:

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?200 ... 528629.jpg

and a photo from better days:

http://www.trainweb.org/dhvm/images/dhr ... 154-01.jpg

I went inside and got this photo of the stainless steel kitchen:

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?pho ... 718181.jpg

Some more interior shots from earlier in the year:

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?200 ... 209026.jpg

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?200 ... 514251.jpg


The car moved around with no trouble on Saturday.

Neither the Empire State Railway Museum, owner of the car, nor the Catskill Mountain RR, on whose tracks it is stored, have the resources or interest in restoring the diner. I believe the ESRM is nearing a decision to give away the car to anyone who will come pick it up. Once the decision is made to dispose of the car, I will post the appropriate contact info so that it is not scrapped before anyone interested in restoring it has a chance to come look at it.

Ernie Hunt

Member, Empire State Railway Museum
Volunteer Coordinator, Catskill Mountain RR

Ernie:

Still on friction bearings or converted to rollers? The trucks alone should be worth something.

Scott

Scott,

I'm pretty sure they are friction bearing. Last run on an outside line about 1987. As far as I know, there is nothing wrong with the trucks. The car moved quite nicely last Saturday even though in had been in the same spot for 7 years.

EH

I had to comment that I fondly remember Bill Whitehead and familys efforts during the 1967-68 HICO trips to give folks a chance to have a "real" diner meal (at reasonable prices) while riding behind steam.
The thing that killed the effort was the immense logistics involved in staffing and supplying the car when our operating territory was so far flung-not to mention that at "reasonable prices" there wasn't much left in the till at the end of a very hard days work.
From the photos posted maybe the best thing for this old gal is to salvage the running gear and whatever other pieces have a useful afterlife and send her to her well earned rest?
Then again with a few thousand volunteer hours,lots of paint, a new concrete floor, new hvac, new windows, new running gear etc.,etc. you'd have a beautiful heavyweight diner that you could work hard on seeing if you could break-even???
Ross Rowland

I am really surprised by now that we haven’t learned the bankruptcy of the false dichotomy created by the idea that either a given piece of equipment should be scrapped if it can not be operated. This creates a vicious cycle, where only equipment that can readily be used receives attention and those that cannot are shoved aside. This is not preservation; rather, it is just an extension of the use strategy practiced by railroads that created a need to preserve equipment in the first place.

There is a tremendous cost difference between renovating the car (making the car ready for regular service) and restoring the car (repairing the car’s structure, restoring the car’s interior with new paint, replacing missing fixtures and some dining room furniture). I sincerely doubt that the car’s condition is worst than that of N&W combination 1506, recently returned to service at the NC Transportation Museum.

The big question here is anybody willing to research this car’s long history of service in for both the NYC, D&H and the state of New York and prepare a statement of significance and an interpretive strategy to attract the grants necessary to restore this car. This car is both the last heavyweight, non-streamlined, dining car from the NYC and the D&H and one of a small handful of dining cars surviving from eastern railroads. It could make a great stand-alone exhibit or be the centerpiece of a recreated C. 1955 D&H passenger train (of which the other elements still exist).

Tom Cornillie

Tom,

Since the post above, the ESRM has formally decided to give away the diner. The ESRM would prefer to give it to a museum or railroad group that will restore it, or use it for some kind of railroad use. As part of this the ESRM is researching the history of the car, and preparing a detailed report on the car for prospective "buyers". Howard Pincus' report above has been an excellent start. I plan to help by taking some more photos as soon as I get to the car on a sunny day.

As mentioned above, the ESRM would prefer to have this car sent to a new home rather than scrap it, and though there is no hard deadline, there is a feeling that there needs to be some resolution soon. Though it is blocking the CMRR's main line, it can also be taken up the line to West Hurley when the other cars are moved and stored on the siding there to get it out of the way.

What is really needed is an independent assessment of the condition of the car, so prospective restorers could have some idea of what they would be getting into. Perhaps someone knowledgeable in this area could go to Kingston, see the car in person and make such an evaluation as part of the process of finding the car a new home.

Anyone who wishes to communicate directly to the ESRM should contact Dakin Morehouse who is in charge of resolving this issue. Dakin is the Station Master at Phoenicia and an ESRM board member. Please contact me privately for Dakin's email and phone number.

Ernie Hunt

When a car gets to the point that the floor is gone and there is major rot along the side sills, I think the cost to restore the car as a museum piece is still going to be tremendous. On our ex-Erie heavyweight diner we had to remove all of the applicances and lower cabinets to get at the rotted floor. This wasn't an issue for us since we need commercial equipment that meets the current health codes, but if it were a pure museum piece then you would still have to rebuild the kitchen after repairing the floor.

What are the additional costs to make the car moveable? And then operable? In the end it all comes down to if there is an organized group of people who want to specifically save this car - and then have a vision as to what they want to do with it. In the case of the ELDCPS, it started on the internet, then four guys meeting at a deli and making it happen.

I stood today in the diner and while I'm anything but an expert the condition of it really stretches the imagination. The floors, sills and end
posts are SEVERLY rotted away. The car is mostly gutted and is beond a
reasonable restoration in my opinion. A replica project would make more
sense if the need to have one of these cars exsist. Since one mans junk
is anothers treasure someone out there could prove me/us wrong. The
ESRM should be applauded for making that effort.

I don’t want to attack anyone (specifically), but… As railroad preservationists (as a group), this car may be the poster child for our failures.

Here we have a car, owned by a railroad preservation organization since the 1960’s, used in excursions, moved to a tourist railroad, which has now deteriorated to the point that any restoration is questionable, and the owners are no longer willing to store it. As a community, we are beginning a process of picking the bones of the corpse and discussing the value of the friction bearing trucks….

Yes, the car is a victim of its age and benign neglect (as opposed to active neglect), in this case the car probably needed lots of work while still in operation, it was probably rusting from within long before it left the railroad.

As a group, we collect, use, then throw away (well, we try to salvage the wheels, brakes and whatever, and sell off anything collectable) when the object is too far gone to preserve, blaming the air conditioning, or bad steel, or whatever. In effect, this car has just faded away.

When operated by the railroad they would have had deprecation accounts, planning for significant work as the car wore out… How many operating museums have an impound account for significant but predicable work needed to keep these objects alive? How may groups have a fund set aside for ties, wheels, re-roofing the car house or other major expenses?

We have a long standing culture of restoration, based on cheap wheels and such, from scrap yards, but the cars currently being scrapped are far removed from the cars we are now saving. Junk yard parts are no longer found.

How many locomotives are now stored dead, which once ran on various museum and tourist operations? We used up the firebox side sheets, or burned an axle bearing, or what ever, and after a half hearted or at best under-funded restoration attempt fizzles, we push them out back, with pallets of parts set nearby in the weeds or in a deteriorating boxcar, which will at some point be moved elsewhere, separated from the dead project, and eventually lost to a future restoration attempt.

Instead of repairing/rebuilding/restoring what we have we get a new dinner/locomotive/coach/boxcar which doesn’t need as much work. We plan on getting back to the original project when we can, but never seem to.

We blame lack of money, lack of volunteers, but are poor at getting donors, or recruiting volunteers. We probably never get around to building a roof over our stuff… We can’t afford the resources to build a building when there are so many other things to save.

There are lots of signs of maturity, some groups are including the cost of covered storage when acquiring new cars. We are seeing efforts to reproduce needed parts. The ARM recommended practices are slowly gaining traction…

Thoughts???

Lots of them Randy, a couple even fit to print.

Anybody out there calling themselves a museum, and hasn't written a reasonable and practical mission statement, collections policy, business plan, all based in reality and real economics, is just playing at being a museum. Shame providing this documentation isn't necessary to get a 501C3.

Do all the above, and immediately go triage your dead line, junk storage, etc. Offer anything that doesn't fit to anybody responsible who will take it off your hands. Do this loudly and vocally until either it goes away, or it becomes obvious that it isn't going to help anybody else either.

At this point scrapping for salvage value is probably the practical option. It costs money to keep dead cars in storage. I'd rather lose a lot of useless stuff that is nibbling away at resources that could be better used to do better with useful stuff that isn't getting the attention it deserves.

A couple points: I don't care what you have invested in the useless junk, it isn't worth any more than any potential user will pay for it. Consider it a loss and don't worry about compensation. Dollars that are gone are gone, and all you can control are those dollars that have yet to be spent.

I am astounded at the number of museums (and faux museums) that seem to be designed to survive at the edge of marginality, rather than to grow beyond that into some degree of security and prosperity. Act like a business, even if you are nonprofit. If your planning doesn't show the likelihood of moving beyond marginality, do something else.

Make no overely large plans, for they wear out your potential supporters through constant failure to be achieved - remember Stalin and his 5 year plans? Match mission and goals to realistic evaluations of available resources.

We have met the enemy, and they is us.

dave

I understand that the Lion Gardiner is a type D-74 diner. Two models have been made from this type:

HO Scale Walthers New York Central (NYC) Diner Class D-74 for Walthers Kit No. FP-3H.

and

O Scale Precsion Scale Co. PSC-16441.1 NYC D-74 Diner, 1925 Pullman built, no AC, FP Pullman Green, LTD NYC.

I understand the other class D-74s were NYC #380-384, MC #146-149, D&H #154.

Does anyone know if this is the last type D-74 diner left?


EH