Passenger Trains > Last run of gallery cars on MARC Brunswick Line

Reported by a MARC commuter:

> This morning the four remaining operational MARC gallery cars (7911,
> 7902, 7906, 7907) operated on their normal assignment, 874 out of
> Martinsburg. I got on and sat up in the gallery and rode like I
> always do.
>
> Early this afternoon I got a heads-up from a friend at MARC, who told
> me: "If you want to ride them one last time, better do it today.
> They’re going out on 877 to Brunswick, where they will tie up
> awaiting their fate, and 875, your regular Martinsburg train, has the
> new Bombardier cars (twins of those operated by NJ Transit; MARC
> piggybacked on the order)."
>
> I went downstairs around 4:15 and found 875 on track 11, a high
> platform. Five brand-new cars and one Kawasaki ex-VRE (tight seating)
> cab car – the Bombardier cab cars aren’t here yet. In order, front
> to back: locomotive 31, new cars 8013, 8012, 8011, 8002, 8001, and
> cab car 7956. I walked through two of the cars. They had that nice
> new-car smell, but most of the commuters didn’t seem to be commenting
> on them – to them, a train is a train is a train. I took a few
> pictures.
>
> I then got off, watched it depart, and walked over to track 8,
> where the gallery car train was. Consist: locomotive (didn’t
> get the number, sorry nerds), Sumitomo coach (hate
> those, didn’t bother getting the number), 7907, 7906, 7902, 7911,
> Sumitomo cab car (didn’t bother to get that either). I took some more
> pictures of the gallery cars.
>
> I sat upstairs, in my accustomed forward-facing seat in the gallery,
> and enjoyed the final ride back to Gaithersburg, alternately looking
> at my iPad, reading the paper, and looking out the window. I’m not
> particularly social on trains so I’ve enjoyed, for the past nine
> and a half years, being able to sit upstairs with no one next to
> me, and putting my bookbag on the shelf and not having to
> carry it on my lap. But today was the last day.
>
> When we got to Gaithersburg I got off, gave the old car a pat and
> wished it well, took a few more pictures, then drove home. The cars
> had a long life in Chicago (thirty years or more) and almost another
> ten on MARC. They have served well, but parts are hard to get now,
> seeing as how Pullman-Standard has been out of business for a long
> time. I don’t know if they are going to be sold for scrap (or what’s
> happened to the other eight), or if they’ll see a third life
> somewhere.
>
> Beginning tomorrow the new Bombardier cars will operate regularly on
> 874 inbound and 875 outbound. 875 really needs the capacity and my
> fellow Gaithersburg commuters tomorrow morning are going to be
> surprised. It is nice to see the new stuff first on the Brunswick
> line; the Penn Line is usually the MARC Queen of the Realm and we
> usually get the leftovers. Not this time. But I was told that the
> first few cars to come would be used to retire the gallery cars.
>
> I’m assuming none of the new cars in service so far have restrooms,
> assuming MARC keeps to the numbering order it did for the 7700-series
> Sumitomo cars and the 7800-series Kawasaki cars:

> xx00-xx39 – coach, no restrooms
>
> xx40-xx69 – cab car, restroom
>
> xx90-xx99 – coach, restroom
>
>
> Each gallery car had a restroom but they were never used because the
> toilet system was incompatible with the rest of the fleet and the
> equipment used to service it.