With all the discussion as to the oldest revenue car (see the discussion below) we have a box car in our collection, which was in service for 81 years, from 1880 to 1961. It was built by the Carter Brothers for the Origonian Railroad. They ended narrow gauge operations about 1893 and the car was apparently stored.

In 1899 it was transferred to the South Pacific Coast. They used it until it was leased to the Nevada & California (subsidiary of the SP) in 1904. The N&C purchased the car in 1907.

The car was rebuilt about 1920, and again just after WWII. It was taken out of service in 1961 when SP abandoned narrow gauge operations.

We believe this may be a record for length of service for a revenue railroad freight carÂ… Any challenges?

Additionally we have in our collection a 1874 (September) boxcar built for the Monterey and Salinas Valley Railroad. We believe this is the oldest preserved narrow gauge freight car in the US.


Carter Brothers Builders
hees@ix.netcom.com

Randy,

The only cars I can think of that could possibly have operated longer are some of the passenger cars on the Durango & Silverton. I believe at least one of the 1881 coaches has been in service since it was built. That's 123 years in sevice, or 100 years if you stop the clock when the Rio Grande sold the line.

Lets hear some more about the M&SV boxcar, is it the one the group acquired from Boulder?

Thanks, Taylor

Sumpter Valley Railway
thrush@smt-net.com

The White Pass & Yukon has several pre-1900 passenger cars with at least one dating to 1883.
And they are still in regular service.
mw

p_michael_warren@yahoo.com

If we are going that way......
The EBT's 4 coaches/combines are of ancient vintage (1882? and have only been out of service for 4 years (1956-1960).

mcc385@yahoo.com

> If we are going that way......
> The EBT's 4 coaches/combines are of ancient
> vintage (1882? and have only been out of
> service for 4 years (1956-1960).

There is a Port Huron & Northwestern Railway heritage (later F&PM/ PM) coach which is now at the logging museum at Rhinelander, Wisconsin which was built circa 1878.

There is also a Bellaire, Zanesville & Cinncinati/ Ohio River & Western Combine at the Monroe/ Noble County Border halfway between Caldwell and Woodsfield built circa 1880. no trucks, just the body. There is also two cabooses of this road which survive, one in Bellaire, Ohio and othe other in Caldwell, both of 1880's vintage.


Port Huron Museum

tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

> If we are going that way......
> The EBT's 4 coaches/combines are of ancient
> vintage (1882? and have only been out of
> service for 4 years (1956-1960).

Yes they are 1882. 122 years old this year.

As for freight cars, the EBT's oldest is a wooden bodied box car #170 built 1913 and still sees occasional charter service. That's 91 years; 87 if you subtract the 4 dormant years.


cr6358@hotmail.com

The Durango & Silverton has at least two cars dating from 1878. Business car B-3 "Nomad" was built in 1878 as a chair car and has been a business car since the early 1900's. However it was removed from service and removed from RR property for a time in the 1950's before returning to the rails.

I think the prize for the oldest in-service passenger car goes to concession car 212. Built at a coach in 1878, rebuilt into combine 215, later renumbered 212. For years it was THE ONLY passenger car on the Silverton Mixed. Alas the D&RGW rebuilt it in 1978 (a 100-year birthday present?) removing its baggage doors and seriously compromising the artifact. The only recognizable thing from 212's past is the roof with the clerestory windows blanked off where as 215 on the Pagosa Springs Branch, 215 sported a caboose cupola. But 126 years later, she's still out there at work.

Randy,

I don't doubt the age of your equipment and longivity of it. But since several people have identified equipment from the early 1880s I thought I should chime in.

At Orange Empire Railway Museum we have a complete 3-foot gauge coach built in Nov of 1881 by Barney & Smith for the Carson & Colorado. This car has always been a coach, never on the ground and never in MW service. Documentation indicates that the interior seating went through changes over the years. This car was sold to Ward Kimball in 1938 and had been under cover since the early 1940s.

The trucks are not original -- they say St. Charles Car Co. on them. Most likely they came from a car obtained with the N-C-O in the late 1920s. These may even be from a F&CC car.

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net