Nostalgia & History > LIRR Parlor Car Service

About a year ago, I created a web site focused on the Long Island Rail Road\'s parlor car service from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century. It looks at three "eras" of parlor cars service:

-- The heavyweight parlor cars.

-- The "secondhand" lightweight cars, primarily KCS/NH/PRR sleepers, B&O/PRR bedroom lounges, and EL/FEC/UP lounges used in parlor car service.

-- The parlor cars rebuilt from LIRR\'s lightweight MU coaches.

You will find about 100 photos and rosters of the three groups of cars.

You could say nostalgia was a cause for the creation of this website, for I had fond memories of riding the LIRR from the late 1950s thru the early part of the 1970s. It has been about 30 years, but sometimes it seems like it was only a little while ago that I stood on the platform for track 8 at Jamaica on a summertime Friday afternoon, watching The Cannonball depart for Westhampton and Montauk, as I waited for the Shelter Island Express to Riverhead and Greenport.

http://www.mindspring.com/~jhdeasy/lirr

Nice cars, good site, makes me wish are railroad got some of those rebult light wieght parlor cars to put on are trains instead of having some rather crowed LI coachies (got them in 2000), which some Railroad historical societys have bought some, and regarded them when they sell tickets as 3rd class coach! Like some one said before,"It isn\'t how much you can pack into a car it\'s how many will have leg room in a car."
http://www.lakeshorerailway.org/

Jack, there is some neat stuff here. Never knew that the LIRR ran such a large premium service - thought that it was simply a parlor car hooked to the end of a Friday night train from NYC!

John Gezelus
Orange, CA

Formerly of
Alexandria, VA

I took my wife with me on vacation in Montauk back in \'97. We rode the Cannonball Express from Jamaica back to Montauk. The first stop for that train was all the way out in Westhampton. I totally enjoyed the trip. Alcoholic beverages were served with snacks, the seats were nice and the air conditioning worked well in the converted MU\'s. I was hoping for sandwiches, but it was still a very nice trip. I took a photo of the Alco cab car at Montauk with the Montauk Manor on the hill in the background and got the picture framed. To this day it still hangs in my basement.

Now that they have all new cars, what are they doing with the Parlor service now?

I think parlor car service ended in about 2000. It has been replaced with "Hamptons Reserve" service, which operates eastbound only on The Cannonball on Friday afternoon/evening:

http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/lirr/hamptonsreserve/ReserveService.htm