E-L Diner 741 Donated To Erie Business Car Society

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Fri Mar 15, 2024 10:17 am

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=78 ... 7197806062

Quote:

The Dining Car Society is pleased to announce that it has donated its former Erie Lackawanna diner No. 741 to the Erie Business Car Society. This 99-year-old Pullman car has been a long-term project for DCS for the past 23 years, and EBCS – which specializes in the extreme niche of restoring former Erie Railroad Pullman cars - is better positioned to prioritize the project and see it through to completion. This donation also frees up DCS’s volunteers and resources to focus on completing our operable Lackawanna diner No. 469, which will receive some extensive work in 2024.

Over the next few months, EBCS will be working on the No. 741 at its present location in Port Jervis, NY and getting it ready to move to Jefferson, OH. There, it will join the organization’s Erie business car No. 1 on the Ashtabula, Carson & Jefferson Railroad, where restoration work will be completed and both cars will be operated together. We’re looking forward to watching EBCS continue our work on this historic car, and we’ll be first in line to enjoy a meal in the dining room when it’s ready to roll.

Check out the Erie Business Car Society’s page as they share their plans for the No. 741.... and stay tuned for some more big DCS news tomorrow!

Photo at the FB link.

PMC · **Joined:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:55 pm **Posts:** 2610

https://www.erieturntable.org/741

The location of the Erie Business Car Society looks like a vandalism magnet to me, I hope they have some way to close it in with fences: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=47489

EJ Berry · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2024 10:17 pm

The rebuilt Erie HW's were the cars used on the EL Through Line Chicago trains because there were only two DL&W Budd LW diners built for the Phoebe Snow. You needed at least three cars to protect the service. The DL cars are also straight diners while the Erie cars can meet both diner and lounge functions.

The DL&W Phoebe Snow had a lounge-obs Hoboken-Buffalo. On the EL Phoebe Snow the Chicago train had the lounge-obs dropped at Meadville WB and added there EB. At least after William White came back.

Phil Mulligan

diningcartim · **Joined:** Fri Sep 20, 2013 2:34 pm **Posts:** 192

EJ Berry wrote:

The rebuilt Erie HW's were the cars used on the EL Through Line Chicago trains because there were only two DL&W Budd LW diners built for the Phoebe Snow. You needed at least three cars to protect the service. The DL cars are also straight diners while the Erie cars can meet both diner and lounge functions.

Phil Mulligan

There were 4 other DL&W diners at the time of the EL merger. However those cars still had coal-fired stoves. The Erie's dining car union already had in their contract that they would only work in a kitchen equipped with gas. The Erie brought 9 of the modernized diners to the merger, all of them rehabbed in the late 40's/early 50's. They also had 3 oddball parlor buffet cars (each of them a one-of). Thus there were more than enough diners and the older DL&W diners were quickly retired. One of them still survives at a museum in Mexico.

In later years the EL removed 4 tables from the Budd diners and replaced them with lounge seats. You are correct that in the final years the EL preferred the Erie diner/lounges which sat 32 for meals and 10 in the lounge section - more than enough seating in those final years.

E-L Diner 741 Donated To Erie Business Car Society

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