I would like to solicit with opinions of those of you that have been involved in car restoration. Here's the scenario:

You have an antique car circa 1920s-1930s, such as a cafe, club, etc., not a plain passenger coach. You have a limited amount of money available, say $50K. There won't be additional funds available in the immediate future. The car has a good body and almost complete interior, but needs restoration. It hasn't run in 40+ years, but you want to eventually place it in service on the excursion train. Which do you do first? (1) Rebuild the trucks and mechanical things, which would take all the money at hand. The car would be road worthy, but not usable due the the interior still needing restoration, or (2) restore the interior and cosmetically restore the exterior which would take all the money, but at least you would have a static display. Then later when additional money is available do the trucks and mechanical restoration to make it road worthy.

I would like to know why you feel your choice would be the best. Thanks for the input.

Bill Houston
HODRRM
Calera, AL

Jeff,
Good point....Forgot to note that car is currently inside car shop.
Bill

From someone who has had 15+ cars over the year might I suggest the following
1- Get the roof and car body water tight
2- Purchase a tarp and plenty of rope to ensure the roof and carbody stays water tight.
3- If the car has wood sash windows then start the process of rebuilding the windows w/ new glazing to make sure the car stays watertight. If the car has sealed windows rebuild the frames with new glazing, car body gaskets and window gaskets. If you use lexan for your glazing do not reinstall the breather. Just drill a small hole on the inside paine near the top. This will act as the breather, the old style breathers are hard to keep working then your window will fog up. By drilling a small hole you will never have a fogged window. When reinstalling the sealed windows make sure you run a good bead of high end chalking between the aluminum window frame and where the car body gasket makes contact with the frame.
If you spend your money on these 3 steps it will go a long way in making sure the car is water tight and will stop further rot, thus making the future restoration a lot easier!

As long as the car is inside and protected from the weather, I would go with the inside and outside body and furnishing restoration. That will 'show' the car potential to best effect, perhaps attracting additional funding.

Doing the mechanical and air system restoration now, might be funds well spent, except that some of that work has the clock ticking once you do it, and may 'expire' before the car is ever run. Then do some of it again. The exception might be any plumbing or electrical work that would be prudent if the interior walls are apart and open.

Bob Kutella

Hi Bill - if the car is safe inside the car shop and can stay there, there's no real urgency to do anything about its physical condition. I'd put the funds in a CD or some other safe place while I do more planning so that I wouldn't spend the first penny until I had a clear set of priorities based on the business for the cars use was documented and understood. It may be that there is no benefit to be derived from having this car roadworthy if it won't fulfill any additional income generating or operating interpretive function, in which case the interior cosmetic restoration and provision of utilities for display comfort and conservation might be all that is required to get all the use you need to get out of the car. You didn't say anything about its projected use or why the need for that use is evident, so just being my usual conservative analytical consultant self here. If you want to share this information it might help the rest of us to give you better information.

dave

Thanks for the input, guys. Some aditional info....

The money is currently invested waiting for a plan. That's why I was looking for opinions and info to help develop the plan.

Being a club car historic to Alabama the projected use would be not only be interpretation and display, but also it could be a premium fare car on trains. I'm thinking use like the parlor cars on the Durango Silverton and such. Adults only, car attendent service, etc. I think people would pay extra fare for the experience.

Bill

The premium fare idea certainly does work. At WRM, we just finished our April "Scenic Limited" trains. We use Salt Lake & Utah parlor observation car 751 as an extra-fare (only $5.00) premium service with attendants and light refreshments, and it is very successful. (only difference is that we do not restrict it to adults.)

It seems to me that getting a nice static display is a first step, then it should be fairly easy to do a campaign like "let's help get this beautiful historic car rolling again!"

However, a little analysis might be smart - are there any missing parts which must be replaced (draft gear, journal boxes, couplers, other big castings)? The time line for getting such might be long, so maybe start getting these so they will be on hand when the time comes.

At our Board meeting yesterday we received an initial survey of the Northern Electric (later Sacramento Northern) parlor/dining/observation car Bidwell. We are nowhere near doing this restoration, but we are cooperating with another Museum on getting some castings made for parts which both our projects will need.