Nostalgia & History > AMTK #5, Floridian, 1st section w/private car

Amtrak #5 Floridian at Tampa Union Station on 09/06/1973 with the ex L&N Florida Surf private car on the rear. In the vestibule is Chester Holley, the taller person, of Chester Holley Trains of Tampa, FL.
Stan

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Nice photo, Stan. Chester Holley... now there's a name from the past. When I lived and worked in Tampa during the late 80's, there was an ongoing advertising war between Holley and the upstart "Happy Hobo" hobby shop, that could be observed in their respective ads in the "Model Railroader" or "Railroad Model Craftsman" magazines each month. Chester Holley's ad promoting his shop always simply said "The Most." Right below it, was the Happy Hobo ad, which proclaimed: "More than Most." Cracked me up.

Chester Holley and I bought the Florida Surf from L&N on Aug 2, 1972 at Louisville. We ran several Saturday -Sunday trips from St. Pete to Jacksonville on Amtrak's Champion where passengers spent the night in the car for a round trip fare of $ 39.95. We also ran trips to Savannah but since this is on the Southbound Floridian, it is probably on our return from the NRHS convention at New Orleans. We ran to and from Birmingham via the Floridian but from Birmingham to New Orleans, the car was in the convention special and pulled by Southern steam locos 722 and 4501. I later bought out Holley's interest in the car and continued to run it on various trips to Washington, Philadelphia, New York and other NRHS conventions. I sold it in 1980 to SCD in Mexico where it was re-named "Zafiro" (Saffire).

It was a great car and had all of it's original Pullman furnishings. It had 4 roomettes, 5 double bedrooms, 1 compartment and 4 open sections. It was built in December, 1954 for the New Dixieland along with eight sister cars.

Here's a photo of it at Washington with our retired Pullman porter Herbert Charles and diagram I did of the car.

JH



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/12 15:17 by Panamerican99.

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Sister car Florida Sunrise is for sale.

http://www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com/detail.asp?id=511&n=Florida-Sunrise

Neat! What happened to your car in Mexico? Torched? I wonder if there is still any former American RR equipment sitting down there after they shut down most of their passenger trains?

Jim,
How about a drawing of the mods you did to the car.
Didn't you put in a shower or galley?

Uncle Joe

Joe-

No modifications other than replacing the men's toilet at the A end of the car with a shower. I didn't do a drawing of that.

-JH