I remember being utterly floored, flabbergasted, at the job done on Rutland coach 551 and combine 260 back in 1985 when they first entered service on the "replacement" Green Mountain tourist operation out of Bellows Falls. How much of that was a spectacular job and how much of that was it being original equipment fresh out of the shop on the original route behind an actual Rutland RS1, I'll leave to others, but I think I remember they even reapplied the brass match-striker plaques on the window posts......

From what I've seen in person, I would have to say the title of best steel coach restoration would have to go to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania's Reading Company MU 800.

Barney and Smith produced this wooden beauty in 1912 at the very end of the wood era. It operated as a first class coach on the Spokane, Portland and Seattle between Vancouver and Spokane, but also on the Daddy Trains to Seaside and Astoria.

The Northwest Railway Museum completed a major rehabilitation following the Secretary of Interior Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. Significant and noteworthy aspects of the effort include replacement of the zinc came in the colored glass windows, hardwood maple floor, operable clerestory windows, rehab and restoration as required of interior Honduras mahogany panels, and extensive work on the end platforms complete with new diaphragm plates. Total investment is staggering, and over 16,000 hours have been worked by a team of volunteers and full time ship wrights/cabinet makers. The coach will operate regularly on the Museum's interpretive railway.

That (SP&S 218) is one nice looking car. Note that, because it's on a steel underframe, it's straight as a die. I'm sure the underframe is original; at the very end of wood car production Barney & Smith built a reasonable number of full wood bodied cars on massive fishbelly underframes.

In my book, one of the best has to be the B&M Coach which was restored in the backyard of David Woodbury, and extremely well documented in the early years of RYPN articles. I found it sad that after all that work, it went into static storage/display rather than at an operating New England railroad museum... but it's home at White River Junction is appropriate nonetheless.

I noticed that steel underframe too. Here's SP&S 202. It appears to have truss rods.

Sacramento Northern 1005 (Holman, 1912) at WRM is also a steel underframe car with a wooden body. It also has truss rods.

That's not unusual for Barney & Smith, who were easing into steel car production very slowly. The Soo Line had two groups of mail & express cars with identical wood bodies; the cars built in 1909 had wood underframes with truss rods, while those built in 1910 had massive steel fishbelly centersills.The first "all steel" coaches that came in 1911 had the same fishbelly centersills, while the diners and official car built that same year were wood bodies on steel underframes. That was the last wood bodied cars built for the Soo, but the SP&S car dates to a year later; I wonder when B&S actually built their last wood bodied car?