Passenger Trains > Iowa Pacific vs Butterworth Tours

I was doing some T-O research and realized that Iowa Pacific and their Hoosier State operation 
have some precedent. How soon we forget !
The struggling Rock Island, which didn't "join" Amtrak, was oblgated to keep running their daily 
trains to Peoria and the Quad Cities almost until the end of the Mighty Rock.  For a period, during
their final years, Butterworth Tours provided some extra cars from Butterworth's fleet that included
observation and dome cars, such as the " Big Ben," and the "Reveler." Dining cars were provided by the Rock, I think.
Perhaps some T-O members can fill in the details.   I could have ridden  those trains but chose not to.

don't know if they just leased the cars to the rock, what i imagined, but as you know John,  Ben Butterworth is the son of an older Butterworth, I think, he administered Gateway for awhile, after les left, still probably a large partner in mid america car leasing, not sure how he is doing these days, but it seems mid america is quite busy with more operational cars.

love to have been in Ben's shoes



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/15 13:46 by dan.

Bill Butterworth is the name of the older Butterworth and Ben's father. He , no doubt was involved in this 
40 years ago, as was Bonnie, Ben's mother.

Bill and Bonnie Butterworth (Butterworth Tours) were BIG supporters of passenger rail. Their arrangement with the Rock Island was, shall we say, unique.

A ticket on the Butterworth cars included a complimentary newspaper and either breakfast or dinner in the Rock Island dining car. Butterworth paid the Rock Island to haul the cars, sell tickets and reimbursed the railroad for the meals served their customers in the diner. This was a bit of a sweetheart deal for the RI, as it allowed them to replace the money-losing railroad-operated parlor-lounge car wirth a car that (theoretically) paid its own way AND helped offset the costs of operating the dining car. I'm not sure about this, but Butterworth MAY have used RI employees to staff the car (whom otherwise the railroad would have had to pay to sit home under labor protection agreements). At least on the surface, there was no downside for the Rock Island.

Besides operating the premium service with the BIG BEN (named for Bill's father and "Little Ben's" grandfather), the REVELER and occasionally the BONNIE B (named for Bill's wife), Butterworth also leased the RI ex-DL&W diner 469 whenever one of the Rock Island's cars needed to be shopped. This car is now, I believe, property of the Erie-Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society.

Butterworth Tours marketed their premium service (and the Rock Island's passenger service in general) rather heavily, taking out ads in online newspapers and radio stations. They also partnered with groups in online cities like Ottawa and LaSalle to promote the RI's passenger service, stressing the "use it or lose it" nature of passenger rail. Somewhere in my piles of *stuff* I have a couple of buttons that Butterworth produced proclaiming "I'm a Rocket Rider".

Putting their money where their mouth was, Butterworth Tours organized regular group moves on the Rockets to Chicago for baseball games, Christmas shopping, handling school groups to what is now referred to as the "Museum Campus" along the lakefront and pretty much any other excuse Bill could come up with for people to go to Chicago for the day. In the summers and over the holidays in the early 70s it was not uncommon to see Nos. 5-6 (the Quad City Rocket) with three Es and well over a dozen cars when Butterworth had a tour going. There were also pure charter moves every fall from Rock Island to Iowa City for Iowa Hawkeye football games.

Not surprisingly, as timekeeping and ride quality declined, the premium parlor-lounge service starting losing money as fast as the rest of the train did. Payments to the RI were seriously in arrears when the railroad declared bankruptcy in March 1975 and a bankrupt railroad could ill afford to extend credit to a faltering operation, no matter how well-intentioned it may have been. I don't have the exact date the Butterworth service ended but I've seen photos of the cars still operating on Nos. 5-6 after the bankruptcy date. They were, however, gone by the summer of 1975.

There is a nice thread over on RYPN discussing Butterworth's operation on the Rock Island and plenty of info on the disposition of their fleet of cars: http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30161

Hope this info was helpful,

NZ
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/15 07:54 by NebraskaZephyr.

Thanks NZ for the history lesson.

Marty Bernard

how neat, thanks too NZ

BIG thanks to NZ for the info.

Here in the west we had Findlay Fun Time Tours, operated by Tad Findlay.  I seem to recall they owned about six or seven passenger cars, with some ex-CRIP sleepers and a dove tail observation car.  They were kept mostly at ATSF's 8th Street Yard.  

While not exactly operated with the regularity of the Butterworth Tours or Iowa Pacific's CofNO and Hoosier State projects, they were used several times a year on extensive tours to Mexico and other locations, coupled to the rear of regularly-scheduled trains.

I remember seeing small ads for their trips in SUNSET magazine.  

Anyone here on TO have the particulars of the Findlay car fleet or any other information they'd like to share?   

I belive at least one of Findlay`s cars rests at the Arizona Railway Museum in Chandler Arizona. I recall it was an ex NYC 4-4-2 -whose name was Imperial Manor. It was donated sort of to the Museum by Peter Robbin`s  no longer extant Rail Passenger Services company. He obtained it from Findlay`s in some sort of business dealing sometime in the 80s.

Regarding Findlay's cars, two Rock Island sleepers and the Frisco observation car are on display at Sylvester Winery in Paso Robles, CA.

I've only met two individuals in this life who shared a similar love and enthusiasm for passenger trains - Bill Butterworth and Ed Ellis. Their respective paths crossed back in the Golden Arrow days, and I was privy to see them meet up again 3 years ago in Chicago. Bill was in town on the Silver Quail, Ed's first Pullman departure was ready to launch with Amtrak 59, and the Nebraska Zephyr was out running to West Quincy that same weekend - a great passenger train weekend for sure. Bill was thrilled to see the Pullman train pull out and the Nebraska Zephyr pull in all from his room on the Silver Quail. He had not been in the best of health prior to and after that trip, but it was always a pleasure to have him aboard - with his stories of a career in the passenger business flowing freely.

Bill passed last December, and the Silver Quail now soldiers on, leased to Pullman Rail Journeys as their "Belleville" - a rolling reminder, testament and memorial to Bill and his love of passenger trains.

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