Western Railroad Discussion > Appekunny Mountain Heritage?

The Appekunny Mountain, the California Northern business car, is now at Exeter. Who is the previous/original owner of this car?

Don Bowen
Exeter, CA

This car gets around. It finished the train on a number of #4449 runs in Daylight paint and did some time on the Verde Canyon in Arizona- but I'm sure there is a lot more to its history than that.

Appekunny Mountain was built for Great Northern,
one of a series of "Mountain" observations.
It subsequently became a PV with the Daylight
paint Dan mentioned.

Thanks for the information.

Don

The Appekunny Mountain was built for the 'Mid-Century' Empire Builder that was inaugurated on 6-3-51, replacing the 1947 'River' (later Coulee) series cars which were then transferred to the new Western Star. In 1955 when the Builder got the full length dome lounges, the 'Mountain' series cars were transferred to the Western Star, and the River series cars were rebuilt and renamed Coulee series cars, and re-assigned to the Empire Builder. Got that?

They were: 1290-Appekunny Mountain, 1291-St.Nicholas Mountain, 1292-Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, 1293-Catherdral Mountain, 1294-Trempaleau Mountain, and 1295-Little Chief Mountain. The St. Nicholas Mountain was a regular fixture on the CB&Q fantrips in the early 1960s. While some of the Mountain series cars survived, all of the GN 'Coulee' series cars were rebuilt into coaches in 1968.

One was not rebuilt into a coach. Trail Coulee was donated to a museum (CRRM at Golden?) but met it's end in a freight derailment while enroute to the museum. What an unfortunate incident!
Silver Sky

This car also spent some time on the Wyoming-Colorado tourist operation out of Laramie, WY in the late 80's. At that time it was in full SP Daylight paint.

Rest of the story to the donation. Some BN traffic man who had been in the passenger department arranged the donation to to Colorado Railroad Museum! Without ever asking the museum first! The car was enroute on a Beer Run to Golden when it was wrecked.

A subsequent call to Bob Richardson apologizing for the car beiing wrecked was greeted with some amusement at the museum when it was learned for the first tiem the car was even coming.