Reports on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AOTTORC ... 483495538/

Ex-Florida Central/B&O/NYC pre-war round-end observation Sam Pinsly (opriginally Maumee River) is sitting on the siding outside a scrapyard in Apopka, Florida.

History sourced elsewhere:

Ex-B&O 7511 MAUMEE RIVER, nee-NYC #10651 Maumee River .This is a Pullman-Standard sleeper-lounge observation car (2 bedroom, 1 compartment, 1 drawing room, buffet, 27-seat lounge, round end observation car, floor plan 4082. Pullman built a total of seven of these cars. Lot 6567 was ordered by NYC on 10/1938 and delivered 7/1939 - NYC Genessee River, NYC Maumee River, NYC Wabash River. These were assigned to the Southwestern Limited (New York - St. Louis). Eventually sold to the B&O in 1956. withheld from Pullman operating lease in August 1967, subsequently sold to a Reverend Harrison (first name unknown), RanierRails stated "I recall that during Rv. Harrison's ownership the car was kept/stored somewhere in Massachusetts, but I may be wrong, later resold to a unknown or private owner and moved to Lamoille, VT, later acquired by the Florida Central Railroad (FCEN) as #1899 and renamed Sam Pinsly (Plymouth, FL).



Car has been in use as a PV for decades by the old Pinsly roads.

UPDATE: Condition report from Christopher Edwards:

A commenter on the thread linked said of the scrapper where it is at:



Here's your chance to prove him wrong, maybe???

These cars actually graced the 20th Century Limited during WWII. The Island cars with two rooms, built in 1938 for the Century, were stored for the duration and the River cars, with four rooms, built in 1939 for NY GCT-St Louis on the Southwestern Limited substituted.

B&O bought the trio in 1956 and assigned them to WAS-StL on the National Limited.

Three different top-link services on three different routes. Not bad, eh?

BTW B&O Museum has a B&O boat-tail obs: Washington from the all-coach WAS-CHI Columbian.

Phil Mulligan

I would love nothing more than for someone to prove me wrong on this.

Anyone that wants to save this car should be looking to get the story out in the media....
You'll need to be loud and talk about how "History hating railroad and Scrapper are intentionally destroying historic artifacts, even though people are offering more than scrap to save it", etc....
These guys hate bad press....if you don't get loud, etc they will ignore you....

Agreed. And the media love to write stories in which they can use the word "chugging".

Anyone who wants to save this car....and those who have dealt with FCEN should understand.....they want the car scrapped. If you succeed in getting it from Landers the scrapper, FCEN will not want to ship it...it will probably have to leave by truck....
If you're not understanding this, just look at the facts....they didn't offer it to anyone for sale or try to part it....and there hasn't been a lack of interest in it, they did this very quietly....
The last time they scrapped equipment was exactly the same...but no one saw it in time or was interested enough....they literally scrapped everything from the #303....and it had brand new wheels under it.... They don't care about making money, they made maybe $5k on the sale of that car, when the trucks were worth at least twice that alone....

Maybe, but could they make that money right away?
I'd bet not. If they'd had, it would have been a case of, "But I don't have the money right now or the trucks and cranes to move it..."
Companies often will go with the 'a bird in the hand' mindset. It's better to score $5K now in scrap than $20 in maybe a year or two while people desperately look for the money to pay that much.
The business world, something is only worth what someone is willing to spend at the time you look to sell it.
I'd bet that case applied to those wheels and trucks.

I will recycle my experience with this car from AOTT on FB.

Back in 2013 my family business was asked by FCEN to inspect the car to possibly upgrade & modernize for local use as a biz car. FCEN had a budget of around $200 to $300K at the most for the car. Upon inspection of the car it quickly became obvious that this car had severe structural issues. Essentially the car has rotted extensively from the window band down to side sills, because of it holding water. There were spaces in the bedrooms where you could see out the bottom of the car under the heater covers. The end sills on the B-End had extensive corrosion as well the collision posts. We were looking at easily $450k to $500k for the car. And this was not even bringing into Amtrak Compliance.

From what I have been told by FCEN management, the car was not included in the sale of the Pinsly Florida properties to Regional Rail. The car remained in the ownership of Pinsly, until Pinsly supposedly gifted/donated it a tourist rail operator in the North East. The tourist rail operator never did anything with the car to try to claim ownership or move it off the property. Which moving it goes into all the issues this car has structurally. So before everyone goes off the deep end attacking FCEN over scrapping the car, get your stories straight. FCEN has not owned this car since the company was sold to Regional Rail If you want answers, why don't you inquire with Pinsly and or find out who the tourist rail operator that never proceeded with removing this car.

Who delivered the car to the scrapper? I'll bet it was FCEN.

My, my, where to begin...

I don't share the gloom and doom regarding the car. We were asked to provide a quote for prepping the car to ship North prior to the sale of FCEN and looked it over fairly carefully on several occasions. While not in pristine condition, there was nothing structural that would have prohibited that car from moving safely in freight service. Like most pre-war Pullman lightweights it needed the side sills done, but I've seen much worse and in some instances people were running much worse. The idea that it was beyond saving is simply wrong but is likely a moot point now.

The problem at FCEN, both then and now, is really just one individual but he's the one that's in the position to do the most harm. By far, most of the folks down there are pleasant and supportive to work with based on my experiences.

Car 303 was mentioned a few posts up. I purchased the trucks and whatever else I wanted from the car as part of the purchase of a second car that was with it. I get a call one day from my FCEN contact to tell me that "while I was on vacation last week the boss had it scrapped". I still had the other car I had purchased and several other pieces of equipment leased to an excursion operator on the line so my hands were tied to do anything about it. But it's a strange world and I've made it right elsewhere...