The story:

http://urhs.org/blog/2014/02/dlw-3453/



More at the link.

So, this is the replacement for the Erie Rail Coach 350?

ETA in Walkersville is set for 10 a.m. on Tuesday, February 11.

The article at the URHS website errs in stating the WS is a non-profit excursion railroad. It was actually formed as a for-profit company and remains as one to this day. The original founder, now deceased, had hopes for freight traffic that has never materialized.

Also, the WS is indeed connected via the Maryland Midland Railway to the national rail network, and in the past cars have arrived by rail. Most have not, however, because they are simply too old for interchange and have friction bearings.

If its the car I think it is I rode it many times between Bernardsville and Hoboken when it served as our subscription members club car. I joined immediately upon moving to Bernardsville in 1968 as it was the only car on the train with a/c ( ice activated) and the $ 50/year fee was worth it for August alone. The trains sat in the yard all day in the blazing sun and came into the shed to load us happy commuters for the evening run home hot as an oven.

I wish the folks at WS the best of good luck with her.

Ross Rowland

This is a good time to point out that $50.00 was real money in 1968, though still worth it.

$334.71 in 2014, according to the CPI inflation calculator.......

The idea that this unique car has survived this long makes me quite happy... hopefully once its restoration is done it will become a piece of beauty worth riding!!!

Of the three DL&W MU parlor cars that survived to the end and into preservation, two have left New Jersey (the Walkersville car and the "trout car" in the Catskills). The third seems to still be in the URHS collection.

They were neat cars. NJ had quite a few extra fare commuter clubs with assigned cars. Only one made it into this decade in service, but at least 9 former NJ commuter club cars survive albeit some barely.

Pretty neat slice of history.

Rob

PS: Full disclosure, I'm the former VP of the now defunct Jersey Shore Commuters Club

[quote="jmlaboda"]The idea that this unique car has survived this long makes me quite happy... hopefully once its restoration is done it will become a piece of beauty worth riding[b][i]!!![/i][/b][/quote]

Not quite unique. Didn't URHS have three of these cars, and wasn't one given away a few years ago to become a fake "fish car" at a local museum in upstate New York?

Moreover, I'm not sure of the accuracy of the URHS press release stating that these cars were built as club cars, and later converted to electric MU operation as such. To the best of my knowledge, these DL&W electric subscription cars were built by Barney & Smith as open-platform coaches. A fair number were sold to the B&M in the 1940s and went into Boston-area commuter service, with a fair percentage being converted to combines. One coach and one combine later went to Edaville for display with B&M 2-6-0 1455, and then moved on elsewhere during the sell-off of historical equipment by George Bartholomew. The combine became an ice cream shop on Martha's Vineyard, of all places, and the coach now sits in a New Hampshire junkyard: http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?20030 ... 918172.jpg

Comparison with an in-service view of the club car that is the subject of this thread shows the common ancestry: http://rr-fallenflags.org/el/mu/dlw-mu2453agd.jpg

Given the fact that these cars represent, collectively, some of the very first steel passenger cars and certainly the oldest DL&W ones, I've always thought it to be something of a missed preservation opportunity that one of the URHS cars could not have gone to Steamtown and been restored to as-built condition using coach seats, end platform hardware, etc. from the junkyard car.

Why not restore the car in the junk yard first and have both cars represent different parts of the story?

[quote="derail"] Why not restore the car in the junk yard first and have both cars represent different parts of the story?[/quote]

Same reason not even one of the five extant survivors has been restored; nobody in a position to direct money and other resources to make it happen has done so. Certainly, the intended use in dinner train service by the Walkersville Southern - however commendable - cannot be considered a restoration, in that it would represent neither part of "the story" - either as a coach with walkover seating, or as a club car in its configuration as such.

Given scarcity of resources in any event, restoration of multiple examples of a given item to represent "different parts of the story" may not be an available option. Besides, "the story" of these cars also includes the ownership by the B&M in two different configurations, so now we're up to four different versions. That being the case, sometimes "the story" has to be told with photographs and/or models, even if the restoration of a single actual artifact to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars can be achieved.

There just aren't very many extremely early steel passenger cars around, let alone restored to a condition representative of the time of their construction. URHS had multiple examples of the electric club car reconfiguration of the subject ones; moreover, several examples of northeastern railroad subscription club cars exist in other museum collections. The fanciful idea of an as-built example of these ancient DL&W cars in the museum at Steamtown therefore always seemed appropriate to me. That's all.

Might actually be more than 9 survivors of the Jersey commuter club car fleet...


DL&W #3453 Walkersville Southern, ex URHS
DL&W #3454 URHS
DL&W #3451 Roscoe, NY "trout car" ex URHS
FEC Port St Lucie Sound
PRR #1734 URHS
CNJ "Jersey Coast" Whippany, NJ turned into an observation car in preservation era
CNJ Monmouth II URHS
CNJ Tamaqua URHS
CNJ Beachcomber URHS
CNJ #1169 Privately owned, South Jersey
CNJ Monmouth, Clinton, NJ roadside diner
NJDOT Jersey Coast Club, ex FEC St. Lucie Siund now in Ohio on CVRR
NJT #5459, destroyed in the great Hurricane Sandy blunder

Any of the other CNJ heavyweights club cars out there?

Rob

I have a lot of very pleasant memories from my 16 years of riding this car as a member of the subscription car club which leased it from the DL&W.

One end was equipped with raton seats facing the center and was reserved for the occasional lady guest ( all members were male, and the rules allowed a member to bring a lady guest aboard not more than twice in any one calendar year) and for non-smokers.

The west end was also equipped with raton chairs and 2 card tables. In the mornings there were 2 serious poker games and in the evening two serious bridge games with the same players each day. Scores were kept on each game and settlement was made on the homebound trip Friday evenings. I always found it most interesting to observe some of Wall Streets senior most players ( i.e. Percy Chubb,CEO of Chubb Insurance, Webster Todd, Sr. Partner-JP Morgan, Cyrus Vance, Sr. Partner Chase Manhattan, etc.) haggling over pennies from the card games.

The car was equipped with a butlers pantry and was served by a wonderful attendant who worked the car for decades and moon lighted weekends for some of the members. Coffee/tea served on the morning run, and cocktails, soft drinks on the evening run. Members kept their personal favorite liquor in a bottle with their name on it.

Each day in Hoboken the car would receive large blocks of ice in the ice belly lockers to keep the a/c working well. The railroad would stuff the ice locker on Fridays to be sure it would last through the weekend while the car sat in Gladstone.

What a civilized way to commute!!

Ross Rowland

Only as long as you were a male smoker with a passion for booze/caffeine.

Some aspects of those "good ol' days" deserve to be left in the dustbins of history.

Mr. Rowland, were you the youngest member of the club at that time?
Thanks for the memories.