Well, Alexander may be onto something. While I have yet to partake in an mainline excursion (at the moment only limited by my meager finances and the need to replace my current vehicle with something that won't suffer another catastrophic failure), the perfect example here in Massachusetts would be the excursion set that the P&W runs. Just your basic seven car set of streamlined equipment that includes a mix of "cattle cars" and first-class accomidations. While they don't have a dome, they do have a ex-Northern Pacific round-end observation car (Now the New Englander, formerly Montana Club), a lounge car, a snack coach (equipped with a full service snack bar), three ex-Amtrak coaches (I've heard they're former UP sleepers that were rebuilt) and an E9B. The coaches, one could argue, serve as the "cattle cars", the other three providing such upper class accomidation. Seems to me that the format Alexander described is very common...

Well, aesthetics aside, those high-density coaches do serve a purpose, especially on short-turn trips. It's called REVENUE.

ELDCPS has former NJTransit, nee-EL Comet passenger cars, that seat 132 passengers. Do we sell all the seats? Generally, no - we avoid the dreaded "middle seat". But when it comes to running an excursion, having 95 fares in a car versus 48 in a long-distance coach makes it lots easier on the finance side (and that vacant middle seat comes in handy with families with small children, or as space to spread out for us larger types). And it's easier on the maintenance end -- one car instead of two to do the same job!

Would we like to have some of the long-distance coaches (think Lackawanna "Phoebe Snow" lightweights, or an Erie "Ten Hundred")? Sure. But for the short-turn Santa trains, or school group outings, the high density cars earn their keep and facilitate the other stuff we want to do.

A "short-turn Santa train" or "school group outing" is an entirely different animal from a mainline outing halfway across the state, as I'm sure you well know. Start a bus tour with school buses taking people to Atlantic City, Vegas, Bramson, etc. and let us know how much REPEAT business you get.

Again, with these trains we are supposedly attempting, in part, to win non-rail folks over to the potential pleasures of rail travel and the good aspects of railroading, not evacuate a city before a hurricane sweeps in or get 10,000 people back to that satellite parking location.

Yes, even the lowly commuter cars have their place in railroad history and deserve preservation and even occasional use. But put me in it for a once-in-a-lifetime train tour? I expect to see a cheap "hard class" fare for riding it.......

And even the supposedly converted UP sleepers described on the P&W above are a step up from a commuter car set with no rest rooms (or one per 200 riders!), hard plastic seats, and airliner-style claustrophobia.... MARC had a series of rebuilt Budd PRR "Congressional" sleepers, scavenged from NJ Transit, that were opulent luxury compared to the 3-and-2-seating Sharyo cars also in service; all have been retired and have been sold off to other (mostly excursion) operators....

Ahhh being jammed into those commuter cars. How about an all day diesel trip with commuter cars and every seat sold so everyone was jammed in 3-2 seating for asked the organization "hey I was sitting backwards, jammed 3 into a seat, without a window, can I get a refund or credit towards another trip the organization responded with "sorry about your luck".

Oh lordy I know the feeling Sandy, I rode behind NKP 765 in one of those stinkers. A sad comparison to the Bluewater and NS trips of the 80s.

It's not like operators roll out of bed and go "Mwahahaha, I think I'll rent the crappiest possible second-class coaches to try to upsell people into first class."

Operators face a harsh reality: Everyone preserved steam engines and nobody preserved the coaches that would run behind that steamer. So when an excursion operator needs coaches, he goes on the rental market and finds an awful lot of PVs, a ton of METRA bilevels, and no inter-city day coaches whatsoever. There are plenty around, but they're out of date, their A/C is borked (which makes them useless because a sealed window car without A/C is 120 degrees inside), they're not HEP wired, or they're outright gutted. It's one thing or another.

In the old days, the 80s and 90s, there were several substantial coach fleets that could be depended on. The Bluewater Michigan Chapter had 20-odd coaches and ran a dozen excursions a year, plus rented their fleet to other operators all over the midwest. But between the excursion shocks of the last 15 years, and not having their own site proper (or being under the wing of a railroad museum with land), their last eviction was the last straw, and they quit the trade.

So no... the operators have no choice. They are stuck with what they can get real world. If you don't like that, organize Bluewater 2.0. But somehow I have a feeling that ain't your thing. That's the point, it's nobody's thing, everyone would rather play with engines than cars. Hence: no coaches.

There were numerous calls over the decades for just such a fleet of coaches to be preserved and kept operable and accessible for groups such as the NRHS, etc. Railroad Passenger Cars, Inc. put in a valiant effort in the 1970s and 1980s in the Baltimore area before finally withering away in the early 1990s. In 1985 we thought we finally had the problem licked with the Blue Mountain & Reading's acquisition of 20 Lackawanna MUs that actually saw several notable mainline trips in the 1980s before being sidelined for lack of tightlocks. The dissolution of NS's steam program in 1994 put their handsome ex-SR coaches out of work, and many got scattered to the WMSR and other places.

We who have been around long enough have known about this problem for ages. The few places that were a terrific, proactive solution for years--Roanoke and Bluewater Michigan Chapters NRHS, among others--are pretty much out of it, for a combination of economics and logistics.

There ARE a couple sets of coaches currently stashed--the Grand Canyon RR has/had both a set of SP Harrimans and a collection of Budd cars from the Arcadian and other "land-cruise" fleets. The Rio Grande Ski Train fleet is sitting somewhere......

So, are we REALLY at this stage in the game where we, as an avocation, have nothing to offer the "daisy pickers" except "hard class" commuter cars or costs-an-arm-and-a-leg opulence? Frankly, this really, REALLY doesn't make us look good if that's the case. It's as if the only food available were either cheap cafeteria food or high-priced opulent wine-and-dine feasts, with not even a good diner, BBQ joint, or sit-down restaurant in between.

The ex Rio Grande Ski Train fleet and locomotives were sold to the Algoma Central where, I believe, they currently operate.

Out of curiosity, if you had 20 Lackawanna coaches, what would it take to make them certified for mainline excursions? Let's assume you've already put rotating end cap roller bearings on them, and tightlocks, and HEP and 27-pin passthru. What else? The reason I ask is they're fairly plentiful, but also quite lightweight, which I'm wondering if that means too light.


Given your expertise, it sounds like you think this is the case as well.

Great place for a nonprofit entity to get in there and change that. The way I would approach that, from a nonprofit angle, is claim your primary mission is a "ready reserve" fleet for disaster relief, overflow coaches for commuter agencies, loaner coaches for market test etc. Since this assists government in its duty, that would help justify being tax-exempt despite having 99% of your business come from excursion operators. You would disprove that you are competing with private excursion fleets by the very issue we here discuss: the lack of such coaches in those fleets.

Someone else will chime in with specifics, but as I recall the Lackawanna MUs are not that "lightweight," coming from the "old school" of car construction. My impression is that they are in between your typical "lightweight" car construction of the Budd era and the "heavyweights" of Pullman.

As for the cost, I seem to recall that what killed the mainline excursions off the Blue Mountain & Reading was a mandate to re-equip the cars with tightlocks. The cars had already been (to my memory) re-equipped with HEP for light and heat, but probably not 27-pin pass-through. I remember a Conrail shop guy who was a card-carrying railfan telling me in 1989-90 that the cost per car for converting the cars would have been $20,000 per car--in quantity purchase, and I'm not sure if that included installation. So, $400K just for the draft gear in 1990 dollars, about $700K in 2012 dollars...... never mind the windows, bearings, 2102, two E8's, or whatever.

I can say, from accounts from Railroad Passenger Cars officials and others, that it's this exact kind of cubic dollars that killed RRP and a couple other such attempts. And, in a sense, the entire rail excursion industry, by extension.



My expertise diminishes by the year around here, because NOBODY is running mainline trips to speak of, save for a few "turnkey" Amtrak-equipment trips.



I was involved for a while with someone that tried such angles with a fleet of surplus coaches a partnership acquired. All three of those rationales were tried, and then some. Based on what I heard and learned from him (including an ill-fated attempt to get cars to New Orleans for Katrina), I would strongly dissuade anyone from that approach. Having said that, Lord knows we've seen every imaginable cockamamie rationale given for various projects under ISTEA, TEA-21, TIGER, etc., to the extent that "pork barrel" is not unjustified as a descriptor, so far be it from me to dissuade some highly imaginative, creative, and/or semi-delusional lobbyist from the approach if it works. Just don't get the railroad museums focused upon as the subject of the next "Fleecing of America" or "Taxpayers' Money Waste" segment of the TV newscast......

No mandate from Conrail was ever given to the Blue Mountain and Reading, we were permitted to operate our fleet over Conrail with both steam and diesel, the only restriction was not exceeding 40 MPH.
Mike Tillger

And if you tried it today on CSX or NS????

Just out of curiosity, what couplers did the DL&W motor cars have? I know they weren't tightlocks, but I imagine they would be something heavier than the old Sharon 5 by 5 coulpers that the CNJs had. Seems to me that the motors, with rollers and perhaps newer couplers, they should be suitable for 'meduim' speed excursion service. Being built in 1929 and 1930, shouldn't that make them among some of the newest open window coaches left in any quantity? (I know the RDG had some MUs bult in the late '40s.)

Times change and regulations grower ever more restrictive. I imagine it is very hard to turn a profit or break even on excursion runs. Yet, sometimes there is something new and exciting that comes to light. What about this year's Illinois Railway Museum Nebraska Zephyr trips? A purpose built unmodified locomotive and car trainset running at 79 mph for 500 mile round trips!!!

Bob Kutella

Older lightweight equipment like the Nebraska Zephyr set shouldn't really have problems in the current environment, as long as wheels, trucks and so on are current. Most if not all of those cars were built with roller bearings and tightlocks, or else got them while in regular service. (The Nebraska Zephyr set even gets around a lot of coupler problems by being an articulated set.) The real problems come with 1920s vintage heavyweights, which have lightweight Sharons or standard type E couplers, plain bearings, and no provision for head-end power. The coupler and head-end conversions, along with truck overhaul and frame inspections are the usual killers.

This reinforces an opinion I've had in the past, and that is that the traditional excursion operation of the past is really dead. If we want to run something like these excursions of the past, complete with big steam and heavyweight cars in Pullman green or Tuscan red running at track speed, then it has to be a regularly scheduled operation, a Class I variation of the Strasburg or Cumbres & Toltec. That sort of thing would justify the expense of the whole works by spreading out the cost of the trips over a larger number of runs, and would have the advantage of having the equipment and crews "home" on a regular basis for really proper care and feeding of men and machines.

Location, of course, is the key. . .with other destinations and attractions to complement the rail operation. . .along with a railroad friendly enough to allow this, or better still, to be your own railroad, complete with track ownership.

It has been over twenty years ago, but I have converted as many Lackawanna M.U.'s as anyone except for Mike Tillger. The trailers have a long shank Gould coupler similar in size and strength as a standard Type E. The motors use a shorter shank coupler, but it is still similar in strength to a Type E. None of these cars has a bathroom suitable enough to call a bathroom, and for a large scale excursion train, perhaps a few of the cars would have to have a purpose built handicapped accessible toilet room.

Even the late model Reading cars have Sharon couplers, a non-starter for maintenance and mainline strength. Remember the break-in-two of CNJ cars on one of the Chessie trips?

I recall that the weight of these cars is somewhere in the 65 ton range. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find repair parts for the motor car wheels (which are 38 inch, only available if you want to buy a mill lot of 40+ and wait over a year in line) and the short shanked couplers. While at Steamtown we did light truck tuneups to all of the cars we converted; and I would say to make a mainline fleet of these cars, with a truck tuneup, new journal boxes, B36 roller bearing wheelsets, derusting the vestibules and adding diaphragms; it would not take long to get to $100,000 a car. (We have not even discussed upholstery, window glass and sash overhaul, and heat of some source) That is the financial reality of trying to build a mainline "legal" passenger trainset. As opposed to METRA bilevels and Comet cars that are given away for a token $1.00.

I recently had a conversation with a director of an organization about the costs to create a mainline and Amtrak legal trainset of ex Canadian coaches (names not given to protect the innocent) We discussed the possibility of merging two of the known fleets, and perhaps using grant funds as described above. If the train was restored with the proper fire safety documentation, glazing, and emergency signage; such a train could be utilized for FEMA (see NJ Transit--lost 200 pieces to floods) and other similar national defense purposes. But it was also brought up that if two groups combined their resources to build a twenty coach fleet, who would get first dibs for the most lucrative two or three weeks of the fall color tour season; or the Polar Express© trips? And of course, if government funds were used to build the trainsets, they would have ultimate "dibs."

Steve