That's a common feature on cars of that period. It's called a "box smoker", generally for men only, as I understand.

Did someone connect the dots between Campos and Shadow Transit and I missed it? That's not the name I normally associate with Shadow Transit.

Fair enough. I looked at all 3 of these cars when they were for sale 15 to 20 years ago. The owner was, well, different. At that time all 3 were probably salvageable, and as you point out may still be with enough time and money. I questioned at the time if the trucks under the CofG car were really that car's trucks. I wondered if that wasn't another Southern car, but all that has been a while. Besides I thought someone in Savannah had been given a pretty nice combine we know was CofG???

Now where did that guy go with the $2 or $3 million to spend restoring a heavyweight obs for mainline use?

ETA

Substitute "Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum", "K-4s #1361 (now and forever in a million pieces) restoration funds", "Loewy designed PRR tavern lounge cars 'Harbor Springs' and 'Jack's Narrows' allowed to be turned into derelicts after paying some $150,000.00 for them", and you have an almost exact parallel situation. State and federal funds granted, then somehow disappeared into oblivion! Sadly, no one seems to care, especially the local news people.
And the "board" goes merrily on its way, led further into oblivion by a pied piper using the museum's political connections to promote his personal pet projects.

ETA.... regarding your comments about connecting dots.... you can make your own decision.... ( addiitonal current photographs of each car interior is provided ..first image Southern RPO 4072, second image Seneca Valley, third image possible CG combine .. ) Now imagine over $600,000.00 spent by the State of Florida ( per the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ) since you saw the cars....

Per author Sam Eifling of the Broward / Palm Beach New Times April 27,2006... quoted in his article ...

"A safe assumption. But Campos offers assurances that progress has and will be made. He says Pembroke Pines-based Shadow Transit Service Inc. is progressing nicely on refabricating the wood window and door frames in its Fort Lauderdale shop. When reached by phone, though, Shadow manager ( removed ) declines to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement he signed with the museum. "I'm not allowed to divulge any specifics about that project," he says.

A degree of discretion is necessary because, hey, this is the Bush family name we're tossing around here, Campos says, when presented with ( removed ) close-mouthed response.

Whether there has been documentable progress or not, Shadow has received $43,500 in state money every six months since the grants were allocated in the summer of 2004 for the three cars. The progress reports to the state list several accomplishments: rebuilding door frames, making welding repairs, ordering new air conditioning equipment, ripping out old wiring. In these improvements, ( removed )....35 years' experience in railroads doesn't come cheap. Documents state that Shadow Transit has been responsible for more than a quarter-million dollars' worth of work on the cars from July of 2004 through this past January, the date of the most recent progress report.

The Bureau of Historic Preservation's Dave Ferro suggests in an e-mail that the state is getting a little antsy about all of this."

Whatever the "chip on your shoulder" about Altoona (and I'm hardly declaring them competent or wise), they DO have a rather nice Railroaders Memorial Museum complex to show for the money, and 1361 did indeed get to operate, albeit briefly. Whatever negatives might be espoused about the various Altoona scenarios, it still does not rise to the level of criminal negligence/misappropriations, unlike the main subject of this thread, where Brother D. Levin has dredged up reports that indicate the principal has been criminally charged.

This thread, however, does merit preservation as Exhibit G (or whatever) for "why you should seriously reconsider getting political money for your restoration project" or "why politicians shouldn't spend money on restoration projects". (And, of course, yet another piece of evidence for the "Tea Party"-type activists and libertarians as to why politicians shouldn't even be entrusted with your monies in the first place.)

"ETA.... regarding your comments about connecting dots.... you can make your own decision.... ( addiitonal current photographs of each car interior is provided ..first image Southern RPO 4072, second image Seneca Valley, third image possible CG combine .. ) Now imagine over $600,000.00 spent by the State of Florida ( per the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ) since you saw the cars...."

OK I went back and read again (what I should have done in the first place) and I think I see it now. For a moment, what I thought I'd seen was that Campos was Shadow Transit, and I had never heard his name associated with them in the past. Campos was also not the name of the one-time (and maybe current?) car owner. We've done limited business with Shadow in the past and had good results.

I guess I'd be curious to know more about Campos relationship with Shadow. If Campos is just pissing the $$$ away and Shadow is merely doing things Campos asks them too (we want a complete engineering study and design work for solid gold window frames and you fly the world to do the research -- no we don't like the first design, too plain for the president's grandmother, start over -- no don't like that either what can we get in a nice platinum -- can we see a sample so we can properly visualize it -- no may be we should do wood, how about pine...) then maybe Shadow deserves a pass. On the other hand if this is a help me skim $600K from these nasty Republican Granny lovers and we'll split it with you, then they all need strung up. Then again, free money is seldom free, perhaps a box of screws was all they could afford after meeting the state and federal requirements to accept the grant. Is Shadow Transit a DBE? The tenor of things seems to be the state hunting Campos for the $$$, not so much hunting Shadow...

...and yes to look at the pictures there is no way they reflect $600K in work.

ETA

I would assume that Shadow Transit would have some receipts that they could share with us? Typical business practice is to save all your receipts on a job...for at least 7 years and longer if somebody involved went to jail.

Maybe they have a receipt for the light bulb shown in photo number SV21?

T7

Greetings:
FYI, former NYC "Tonawanda Valley", privately owned, is displayed at the Danbury Railroad Museum, Danbury, CT.
This car was stored for many years at Essex, CT on the Valley Railroad.
J.David

As J. David kindly pointed out, Tonnawanda Valley is currently undergoing a restoration at The Danbury Railway Museum. this car did run on the 20thy Century Limited, I believe the Seneca Valley did not. Some current photos can be seen in the Museum newsletter.
http://www.danbury.org/drm/Newsletter/DRMnslAugust-September2013.pdf

While the CG didn't have a car numbered 362 (looking at the 1954 car diagrams) the overall appearance does match a CG car.

Compare these two images to one of the CG baggage - coach cars that ended up in MofW service and you will see what I am talking about...





Here is SOU 960000, ex-CG... (SR had no paired window steel baggage - coaches)



The presumption of the car having a smoking area seems to be good as CG 378 and 380 both had this along with having the clerestory roof that the museum car has and six-wheel trucks. I am attaching the diagram for 378 from the 1954 diagrams...

A recent post on the Abandoned Florida page on Facebook indicates that these cars were recently scrapped. Does anyone know if these cars were really scrapped or maybe just moved?

https://www.facebook.com/abandonedfl/?fref=ts

I do not think that the location shown as being "vacated" was where all of those old cars was stored. The side of that warehouse shows up in pictures of the Army command cars that were sitting up on flat cars...there were stored in an area apart from the older heavyweights.

The area where the 4 or so heavyweights was sitting looks different in the photos...overgrown and not next to the warehouse. Also the heavyweights were kind of far out near the airport...by themselves...no fence.

Also I remember PlatformCar telling me they were not stored in the same place.

Did Shadow Transit ever find those receipts?

T7

Satellite photos as recent as January 2016 show all 5 cars sitting together in that location. In fact, you can go back all the way to 2010 and they are all still together in that same spot. They are sitting behind the warehouses near the intersection of 22nd St NW and 70th Ave NW.

So the question is, were all of these cars scrapped including the AGS RPO 4072, NYC Pullman sleeper/lounge "Seneca Valley," and the Central of Georgia combine? Or maybe just the two POTUS cars were scrapped and the three heavyweights were moved elsewhere?