Western Railroad Discussion > For The Circus Train Foamers - Red Unit

For the circus train foamers among us, one thing I've wanted to do for a long while is to photograph all the cars of the train and today I finally got around to doing so. I photographed all the cars of the Red Unit train which is spotted in San Francisco, at the site of the former Bayshore Yard along the Caltrain ROW, the show closes tommorrow night. I talked to a few folks from the circus, very nice folks and even shared a bit of history with one gentleman about the former yard site. Also made my intentions known so they didn't call the police on me thinking I was a terrorist or something like that, I was out riding my motorcycle so it made a good excuse to stop by and finally photograph the train.

Here's a link to a folder I uploaded on Railimages.com a pretty good site that I recommend, eventually these will make their way on to my permanent site which I won't even mention since I haven't updated it in some time.

http://www.railimages.com/gallery/album296

Any information about the cars history would be appreciated, perhaps when I update my web site then I can include the history of each car with the photos. I didn't include car numbers in the file names, since it's the entire Red Unit, I figure anyone that knows the consist will know the car numbers. They are easily identifiable in the photos anyways, that was alot of typing if the truth be known ;-)

Enjoy,

Frank

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You have to be tired after a walk and shoot of 56 cars.....;)

Nah, I rode my motorcycle along the train and stopped each time to shoot the cars, wheels are round and feet are flat ;-0

GNR1938 Wrote:
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> You have to be tired after a walk and shoot of 56
> cars.....;)

The web site that I got most of this information from is down (http://lrs.railspot.com/amtrak/). It variously appears on MSN as a www site and sometimes not. There are 1971 based rosters on there with dispositions. I believe TO contributor Gene Poon has something to do with this site.

The documents are MS Excel from 50KB to 125KB each.

I can vouch for the three cars listed below.

RBBX 40010 - Red Unit
Built by ACF in 1954 as 14-section sleeper for UP named Alpine Camp (1st of 14)
Rebuilt by P-S in 1965 as 44-seat coach 5543
Leased in 1971 then sold in 1973 to AMTK as 4583
Sold in 1982 to PWRR as 4583
Sold to RBBX in 1987

RBBX 40011 - Blue Unit
Built by ACF in 1954 as 14-section sleeper for UP named Alpine Pass (8th of 14)
Rebuilt by P-S in 1965 as 44-seat coach 5550
Leased in 1971 then sold in 1973 to AMTK as 4590
Sold to RBBX in 1984

RBBX 40012 - Red Unit
Built by ACF in 1954 as 14-section sleeper for UP named Alpine Scene (12th of 14)
Rebuilt by P-S in 1965 as 44-seat coach 5554
Leased in 1971 then sold in 1973 to AMTK as 4594
Sold in 1982 to PWRR as 4594
Sold to RBBX in 1987

I know the UP Alpine cars fairly well as six of the 14 built are or were owned by the Providence & Worcester Railroad. I work occasionally as an excursion volunteer. Of the six the PWRR had; two went to RBBX, one is still in use on the PWRR (Coach 4587 - Massachusetts), one is an activity room for a senior center in Milbury, RI (Coach 4592 - Rhode Island) and two I have yet to catch up with (Amtrak/PWRR 4584 and 4586). They may well be with RBBX.

-PRR 5711

Everyone had *better* get 100% on the "what is it" question so therefore **Where is it?** Was this the most famous or significant RBBX car?

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former new york central observation car somewhere in mexico