Alan;

I'm sure you are right about the crew car being ex-army hospital, I was on that car in both '77 and '78 when the train was in Cleveland. I'm thinking that it either became Chessie business car West Virginia, or the safety classroom car (makes sense, since Mr. Howes was VP of Casualty Prevention - or similar title), both of which I think were ex-hospital cars.

Any of the cars that the Monon acquired and rebuilt still around?

Here's one of the east coast ACF cars, at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Florida:

http://gcrm.org/hospital.aspx#pagetop

Friends of the 261 have three former Amtrak hospital cars that operate in excursion service. 1615 is a baggage-dorm used for crew space and a tool car. 3101 and 3103 are lounge cars. They were built into these configurations by Amtrak and have been upgraded over the years by the Friends to better suit their needs.

Don C.

There are also two of the Kitchen cars from hospital service in New Hampshire. One of them is in service with the Cafe Lafayette Dinner Train, the other is stored in the yard at Lincoln, NH. If I remember right, both are owned by the state of New Hampshire....

PSRM, Campo, CA, has two of the hospital cars and one of the hospital kitchen cars. See the last three cars listed in our roster at http://www.sdrm.org/roster/passenger/index.html.

The kitchen car is being used this Saturday as a kitchen for our "Chefs Fire UP the Iron Horse" event. The hospital car we have numbered as #350 is used essentially every day we run as part of our regular consist.

The North Alabama Railroad Museum has one 1943 ACF hospital car, employed on their excursion train.

Alan Maples

Well, A little late posting my contribution on this topic but Norfolk Southern's Research & Test Department based out of Roanoke VA has the NS-37, which to the best of my knowledge was Conrail CR-24 and before that was what it was built for a Army Hospital Car. Please see image of car as it is today (Mar 2012) stored out of service in the Roanoke Coach Yard where the research equipment is based.



Note the car has changed over the years, it now sports two axle trucks rather than the triple axle trucks it was built with, Conrail performed the conversion. Also inside behind the "Baggage Door" is a large Gen-set that used to power one of the research trains but that configuration is no longer used. Inside the car it hasn't been changed all that much, though after a rough life on Conrail and being out of service for some years now on NS she is in need of attention.

NS-37 is most likely a 1953 St Louis Car hospital car, many of which were stored immediatly after construction. Quite a few of these went to then-new Amtrak about 1973 ("Hey, the Army has a whole buncha new cars stored away....maybe those Amtrak guys could use 'em?"). This series of hospital car was built with four-wheel trucks.

EZ-ID: riveted side, six-wheel trucks--- 1945 cars (WW2). Smooth side, four-wheel trucks--- 1953 cars (Korean War).

Howard P.

Thanks Howard,

I was unawair of any true "Lightweight" hospital cars the only ones I've had expirance with have been the rivited sided cars with the Triple axle trucks. I know a friend and I bought one of Jack Showalters hospital cars years ago for it's triple axle trucks on other parts like tightlocks and what not and then we helped Jack part out another two of his cars before they were cut up for scrap in Stanton VA. With the modernization of most of the office cars I figured the car had been smooth sided like many of the others, again had no idea some of the later hopsital cars had smooth sides and two axle trucks, and now I know.

Probably for a buck apiece or less! There was one at the Adams MofW Base that was towed out towards the mainline to be scrapped along with a former ATSF and NYC baggage cars, not sure if it happened yet.