Passenger Trains > Does anyone know....?

My wife and I were recently on vacation in Georgia and Tennessee, and bless her heart, she agreed to a trip on the Tennessee Valley Railroad. We rode in the Algonquin Park (I love Dome cars!!) up to Copperhill, TN. While we were there another excursion train was in town. The other train was from the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway. Im trying to find out about Blue Ridge Scenic Railway coach #549. From what I have been able to find out so far, it was originally an ATSF round end observation (sleeper?) car that was converted so it could run midtrain. And again later converted to a chair car. Finally it ended up on Penn Central as a commuter car and later on NJT. And ultimately to BRSR. So my question is, does anyone know its original ATSF car name or number?

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I think that all the Santa Fe round-end obs. that were converted with a square end were 4-1 sleeper-lounges. Some ran on the SF Chief in that configuration behind the diner.
I believe these were cars from the Vista series built by ACF in 1947. They were squared-off in 1956. Two were built by Pullman in 1938. Coconino was converted to a coach in 1962.
All above from Fred Frailey's "A Quarter Century of Santa Fe Consists" and my own observations...(Sorry!)

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

I own the ex Santa Fe 3245, built in 1941 as a Coach-Observation
and ran on the San Diegans between San Diego and Los Angeles.

It was squared ended in 1962 as a straight coach and ended service
on Amtrak as the 4462. A friend bought it in the 90s and I purchased it earlier
this year to keep it from possibly being scrapped!

It looks similar to the car in this photo, where you can see on the
roof and car side where the solid strips of stainless steel cover the
joints where the corrugated roof and side panels were added to replace
the roof cap and curved side panels on the right side of the photo!

Mike



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/18 13:48 by 2720.

MojaveBill Wrote:

> I think that all the Santa Fe round-end obs. that
> were converted with a square end were 4-1
> sleeper-lounges.

Not all of the round-ends Santa Fe converted to square-ends were sleepers. Some parlor-observations and chair-observations became straight-sided coaches, including the car pictured above. See this duplicate thread over on Nostalgia & History:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,4576324

Note in particular that with the exception of Navajo, which never lost its round end, all of Santa Fe's sleeper-obs cars had Pullman-style fluting (including ACF-built Vista Club). The car in the photo doesn't have Pullman fluting, so it's a Budd-built former parlor/chair-obs.

> All above from Fred Frailey's "A Quarter Century
> of Santa Fe Consists" and my own
> observations...(Sorry!)

Though he doesn't come right out and say the round ends were eliminated on some coach-observations, Frailey does note that many were "converted-to-coach" on page 207 of his book. Even that note is missing for parlor-obs cars 3241-3242, but they too were square-ended in 1960. BLRX 549 is likely one of the former 3240-series cars.

Any photos of Algonquin Park? Rode it several times on the Canadian. Is the interior the same, complete with bedrooms or has it been gutted?

Thanks everyone for the great responses!! And yes I have several pics of the interior of the Algonquin Park.
I will post them tomorrow. Cant right now - I am at work. The car was not gutted - it still has the bedrooms!