The address for Duke's Station Ltd Restaurant is listed as 5981 Baptist Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15236. This ad on Sterling Rail's website

http://www.sterlingrail.com/classifieds ... hp?id=9773

is apparently for the Pullman car and the caboose that were part of the restaurant, which recently closed. Note the ominous warning: "Must be moved before February." Has anyone dined there in the past and taken a look at the cars?

Looks like a Budd postwar coach. Santa Fe, maybe? Has anyone got a car number? Didn't see one in any of the usual places in the pictures on Sterling. Lettering must have been scraped off at some point.

Thanks in advance.

I live near Dukes and have eaten there several time, albeit not inside the railroad car. Ghosts on the letterboard indicate that the car is ex-RF&P. There’s a Wheeling & Lake Erie line behind the restaurant, but it would take a significant effort to get the car onto the rails.

/s/ Larry

More information:

The neighborhood goes by the name Bethel Park, if anyone's doing internet searches.

Found this article on the place in question:
http://pittsburgh.icito.com/dukes-stati ... -location/
Don't blame or look at me; I don't know what microbrewery plans to go in..... That's in Great Lakes Brewing News turf, not Mid-Atlantic Brewing News turf. (But I *am* curious.....)

The caboose appears in the "Captive Cabeese" lists as former Conrail 21164, EL C365.

Excerpt from the article: "Duke’s signature train cars won’t remain much longer. There are plans for a microbrewery to take over the location and tear them down, Sims says."

Bummer.

And this means that to this craft beer/microbrewery writer, it's like watching a horrible blight to mankind drive my new car off a cliff......

With the road next to it, would it be too hard to truck it?

Seems to me that every few months you hear of a restaurant like this going belly up and the mad scramble to get the coaches out (which usually ends with a backhoe going nuts on said equipment).
I assume that these operations all got started back when the cars were being sold off ffrom RRs or bargain prices? They're usually nowhere near active rail (or even where rails were at the time they opened), either. Did it used to be much cheaper to have stuff like that moved around than it is now?

Two things:

1) It could well have been cheaper to move rail cars by truck years ago.

2) Building codes were much more permissive years ago, making use of a passenger car more attractive than constructing a new building in some cases.

and 3) People knew what passenger trains were years ago, and if they couldn't/wouldn't actually ride the Broadway/Chief/Limited, this was at least a neat novelty alternative in the latter part of the 20th century. The nostalgia/novelty factor has diminished considerably in recent years--a problem all of rail preservation/excursions face.

So would it be fair to assume that many of these RR theme restaurants probably came to be in the 'dark age' for RRs when Amtrak was trying to get on it's feet (so to speak) and people thought railroads would all be pulled up in a generation or two?
I've never seen a place like this that didn't look like it was started up the early to mid 70s...

If that RF&P coach is in as good condition as it appears in the photos, it would be a shame to see it cut up. I may contact Sterling about the equipment as that EL caboose is of interest. There is an open area on the side of the property that would allow for loading the cars onto a truck. I assume the building is being torn down....

We already made Sterling a generous offer for the coach. All we've heard so far is crickets chirping. Evidently they need to get out of the brokerage business and stick to thumb screws. If the car ends up beer cans it wasn't for a lack of trying.

If Sterling's business model is payment by commission, they may tend to hope a better offer will come along. In the meantime, the equipment gets scrapped (the two cars in Illinois recently).

Might be simpler to find the actual owner and give them a number if Sterling can't connect you. Then it's up to Sterling to try to recover their brokerage fee from the seller. At least this way the car gets saved, even if it's not entirely fair to the broker.

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

Sometimes I wonder if Sterling Rail lists on speculation, solicits buyers 1st, and then tries to sell the information to the owner?