In another thread we got discussing Orange Empire's former Soo Line business car #54.

This last Saturday -- and the day of our first rain in awhile -- I took some photos of the interior of the car. The car is deep within one of our storage buildings and the only illumination was the flash of my point-and-shot digital camera.

First the shower installation.If I recall correctly the door beyond goes to the baker heater the car is equipped with. The diaphragm and end door is to the right of the photo.

The controls. Just out of view below the valves is a connection for a hand-held shower head. The two outside pipes are the supply of hot and cold water; the center valve is the one going to the shower head.

Another view of the controls and the hose attachment.I'm going to post some more interior views.

Here are some other interior views of the car.

Then turning around the other way, here are the two sections.There is a mirror on the wall beyond the swinging door. Turn left for the corridor around the bedrooms and to the right is the door to a toilet.

More interior views of Soo Line car #54.The bed is out of view to the right. Just visible on the left is the frame of the door to a toilet shared with the other bedroom. The is no tub within the car; where one might be located is used for storage or closet space.

This is the cabinet located on the forward wall of the dining room. Behind it is the secretary's room, complete with a fold-away typewriter desk. Then beyond that is another swinging door and the pantry/crew berth space and then the kitchen.

Brian,

Nice photos. For a bit more background, The SOO, the magazine of the Soo Line Historical & Technical Society, had an article about the Business car MINNEAPOLIS in the Fall 2004 issue, and also a companion article by Wallace Abbey about an incident on the cars during a stay in New Town, ND to dedicate the Soo steamer that was to be stuffed and mounted in the park. In one of the articles Abbey makes the statement that before the MINNEAPOLIS was finished in 1958 (I was incorrect when I said 1956 in a previous post on the subject) Soo 54 was assigned to "Mr. Mac", Soo president G. Allen MacNamara.

Abbey also goes on to say that the business cars weren't out much, and when Leonard Murray became president in 1961, he felt that a road in the Soo's financial condition should not have a business car, much less five, and was responsible for disposing of all of them.

The almost new MINNEAPOLIS went to the Great Northern, where it became the A-2, and is still in service on the BNSF, IIRC. The other cars were either donated or sold.

WOW...those are great pictures and I want to thank you so much for posting them. They will be helpful for this discussion a pleasure to study.

That is a neat shower installation: It certainly looks more useful then the one in the IC cars...what with the hand-held attachment. That would allow the user (poor guy) to adjust the water temp before taking the plunge. Very interesting indeed.

That wood is lovely too but I am not thinking that it is Rosewood. It is a Mahogany that is named for it's grain...pommello or Pommeled? It means pillow or pillowed. Instead of the long quarter grain typical of most Mahogany you see these "clumps" or puffs in the grain...I think they look like clouds. Some of these IC cars had a similar grain in them...I will see if I can find a picture to share. The color of Mahogany depends on how it was treated...most Mahogany from the Americas was reddish...most from Africa is brownish. They say it depends on the mineral content of the soil. If not treated before finishing Mahogany will be orangeish rather the dark red that we treasure so much.

Great pictures...seriously. That car is a real treasure and OERM is doing a great job caring for it. I think they deserve the T7 Choo-Choo preservation award of the month.

T7 (Stag for all my friends!)

Soo Line #54 was obtained by the California Southern Railroad Museum (formerly the Mount Rubidoux chapter of the Pacific Railroad Society) in 1962. In 1975 the California Southern Railroad Museum was merged into Orange Empire Trolley Museum and OETM was renamed Orange Empire Railway Museum.

Cal-Southern had the car painted the blue color at the Santa Fe shops in San Bernardino. Since then it has had no name on the center of the letterboard -- but "California Southern Railroad Museum" was applied in small letters on each end of the letterboard. The story is that the car was named "MT. ROBIDOUX" instead of "MOUNT ROUIDOUX" to save on the cost per letter. The Cal-Southern paint and lettering has been preserved (except for the small lettering on the letterboard being blocked out) as the car has not needed painting and is now stored undercover when not in service. Until moved to Perris about the time of the merger the usually sat on the private car track on the west side of the Santa Fe depot/division office in San Bernardino and was used for the Cal-Southern board meetings.

Another story about the car is that the car had been bought "complete" from the Soo Line, but arrived missing items [some may have been removed by the company and some by employees]. Cal-Southern complained about this and the Soo Line did come up with replacements for the missing items.


Car #54 at San Bernardino depot in October, 2007, for use during filming of the movie "The Changling." This shows the blue color of the car and its lettering; the dark strip at the end of the letterboard is where the "California Southern Railroad Museum" was painted out.
John Smatlak photo linked from the OERM website

It's good to hear the car lives inside. Should OERM ever decide it's time to repaint the car, or possibly sooner so the information is on file, please contact either me, or the Soo Line Historical & Technical Society through its web site at http://sooline.org/home.html We have a long time member, Ken Soroos, who has spent the last thirty years collecting Soo Line lettering from diagrams, photos, actual stencils, and tracings off of equipment for use primarily as decal and model decorating art, but he has the capability to produce full size PDF files that can go directly to a vinyl cutter to make either lettering appliques or stencils (which would be my recommendation). Ken is well aware of the modifications he has had to make to get reduced size lettering to print well on models, and will reverse those modifications so the full size lettering is accurate for restoration work. Ken has just recently supplied art to the Mid-Continent museum for their use in lettering the freshly painted Soo cafe-parlor car 2017.



Ken can also supply the M.St.P.& S.Ste.M lettering that belongs at the end of the letterboard on cars painted before the 1961 merger; in the case of the 2017 the car was repainted later and arrived at Mid-Continent without the initials.

That Soo Line 54 looks great.... so if I understand the past history correct, the only shower that exists on this car is on the vestibule ?.... In doing some quick comparisons ( as I think the Soo Line 49 at MOT was a Barney and Smith car also ) , it looks like the 54, received some modernized light fixtures, and the sofa and the booth set up were on opposite sides... Interesting that some upholstery in 49 matches that in 54.... and the dining room glass cabinets have a different design..... I am sure there are more variations.... However in some ways the cars look very similar ( I attach some recent photographs taken of Soo Line 49 at MOT..... Interesting to look at the condition of both cars.... Were they sold off / donated at approximately the same time ??... Did the Soo donate 49 to MOT ?....

Anyway.... thanks for posting those great pictures of car 54 Brian..... truly enjoyed them.....


Dean Levin

a few more interior views of Soo Line 49


Dean

From the pictures it looks like the platform railing is different on the 49 and 54.... The 49's railing in a recent photograph...


Dean

Thank you for the information. We'll keep that in mind.

Thank you for your comments. I've been in the car a number of times. The most recent one was this last weekend -- but I did not have a flashlight to help me really look around again. It's inside the building and with the curtains drawn there just ain't much light inside.

The way the car is arranged there is no tub or shower within the body of the car. As someone else wrote -- sponge bath. Dennis Storzek wrote in the other thread that he has a diagram of the car. He should be able to confirm or object.

I've been shown that the car has little storage places tucked away in various places -- someone speculated that it was to hide the liquor coming south after a trip into Canada.

Liquor in a business car? Surely you jest...;)

The lack of showers is indeed interesting. I speculate that the water pressure made showers a challenge to use. If you had ever been on a railroad car in the old days you would see that water trickles rather then pours.

People also just did not bathe like they do now. My mother-in-law told me she took a weekly bath until she went off to college (1958)...it was unheard of for country people to do otherwise.

Think about the guided tours and western excursions that tourists used to take. Imagine a warm summer week or two in an un-airconditioned tourist sleeper with 28 of your fellow travelers! There was a reason why Pullman supplied a gallon crock of disinfectant for each car!

T7

That is correct, only one shower shown on the diagram. The diagram sheet I have dates to the 1927 rebuilding of the car, but that doesn't necessarily mean the shower wasn't added later; the Soo was terrible at tracking revisions to their equipment diagrams.



It doesn't suprpise me that there are many differences between the cars. The 49 started life as the business car NINA. This was one of the last wood cars the Soo purchased, and it looked just like the classic "palace car": wood siding, arched art glass sash above the windows, but supported on a massive steel fishbelly center sill frame. Within fifteen years the Soo had plated over the upper sash to make the car look more modern. Here's the roster notes from a passenger car roster several of us in the society have been compiling over the years:

NINA, B&S 1911 Re-No. Office Car 53 (1st), 7/23; Re-No. Office Car 49 (1st), 7/28; Steel Sheathed 1926; Waukesha Air 1949; Sold 1962, To St. Louis Museum of Transport 1965.

Unfortunately it doesn't say to whom it was initially sold.

The 54 started life as baggage-buffet car 1704, a one-of-a-kind car on the roster. This car, built by B&S in 1914, was "all steel" in that it had a steel body on a steel underframe, but the interior finish was wood. It was rebuilt in 1927 to a business car, and the open observation platform must have been added at that time. Brian has postulated that the interior came from older cars, but I'm not so sure; any woodwork from a car old enough to be dismantled in 1927, I'd expect to see much more carving, inlay, and marquetry. From brian's photos of the 54's interior, it seems to be mostly flat panels of veneer over lumber cores; refined, but clean and rather modern. If the interior was salvaged from a car being decommissioned in 1927, I'd expect it to look like the paneled interior in the Soo Line business car OAK PARK, preserved at Mid-Continent:

http://www.midcontinent.org/collectn/woodpas/oakpark.html


This car dates to 1884.

Now that I've brought a third preserved Soo business car into the discussion, I might as well mention that Soo Line 52, the 1921 AC&F car, is also preserved, masquerading as the CYRUS K. HOLLIDAY, AMT 800039, based in San Diego.



I do have scans of diagrams of these cars, some with multiple iterations, but I've never organized them. Perhaps that would be a good project for this holiday weekend. If I can find a hosting service that will present a reasonable image size, I'll upload some and link here.

Everyone have a good Thanksgiving.

That is some very good information and great photos.
I would have to agree with you that it is unlikley that wood was reused in another car. In 1927 all of those materials and skill sets were so widely available that it would not make sense to reuse wood pieces. There are a few Pullman built cars that the owner specifically requested (for instance) "much fine old wood" and we have seen in the Wisconsin that request put into place. There are a number of panels which have a style that pre-dates the construction of the car.
Now...with out straying too far off course...wasn't the Soo line one of those railroads that did not lease Pullman sleeping cars? Was that behind the fact that they had non-Pullman built office cars?
Do we have a lot number for the AC&F car?
T7

The following information is taken from the ACF order list on a CD purchased from Westerfield (the HO model kit manufacturer):

Lot #..Qty......Road................................Date of Order...........Type.....................Const. at
8970...6.....Minneapolis, St.Paul & S.S. Marie.....[May?] 1920.....70 Ft St. Baggage Cars.....St. Charles
8971...6.....Minneapolis, St.Paul & S.S. Marie.....[May?] 1920..... Steel Sleeping Cars.........St. Charles
8972...1.....Minneapolis, St.Paul & S.S. Marie.....[May?] 1920.....73Ft. Steel Business C......St. Charles