Passenger Trains > 1938 Daylight coffee shop 10401

This is probably the only surviving ex Daylight car with corrugated sides. SP 10401 went from Carlin Nevada wreck train MW service to Antelope scrap yard , then bought by the farmer outside of Maxwell CA until he died. He also had a ATSF extended vision caboose a few freight cars some track and a industrial style locomotive. Model railroading 1-1 scale. About 5 years ago it was moved to present location next to the Esparto CA Depot.

A historic car indeed with original trucks and siding to my knowledge. Any more info, photos of this car or corrections are welcome.

Dave

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Three more...

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Last one of the car end. Thought the passenger car fans would enjoy these photos 
also see this thread for the sister car https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2434931,5205557#msg-5205557



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/24 21:36 by dmaffei.

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Looks like the car originally had full width diaphragms, cut back around 1960 to what we see here. This wonderful scene just needs a young railfan filled with energy and around 35 gallons of paint to use on the car and on the depot...

I see they removed the steam heat pipe. 

Needs to be saved.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

Drknow Wrote:
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> Needs to be saved.
>
> Regards
>
> Posted from iPhone

Agreed! 
SR2

It has been saved and moved to its current location.

It's one of only two -- SP 2439 also wears its original fluted siding. It's a 1939-built Chair Car, is at the Kern County Museum. There, it's probably referred to as "Our Amtrak Train Car." Here, I suspect "Our Train Car" is also the shorthand, not "Our Daylight Coffee Shop." Nevertheless...

The car, by the way, was ordered quickly by SP, and is the solution to the bottleneck that the Horseshoe Lunch Counter-Tavern caused in the 1937 SF-LA streamliner. There was a full Diner, the Lunch Counter-Tavern, and not enough room nor seats to accommodate all the hungry travelers. So this car helped on that score. The sister car is also preserved outside of California (see the link above), but was smooth(ish)-sided in the 1960s. Rare to have all examples of the class in preservation, but there were only two, and we can thank SP Maintenance of Way for the preservation of this one. It was assigned to Ogden for years, wearing Light Smoke Gray paint where you see blue now.

The plan for the depot, when I last spoke to someone involved, is to create a local food coop and community center. The coordinators have been duly informed that they have the most original "Daylight" car on the planet, and that none have been 100% restored to 1930s appearance -- thus, they have an opportunity. I've also been told by people who've inspected the car that the non-original exterior window sashes were installed without disturbing the original thermopane cutouts in the pier panel siding. (That's a sandwich of steel outer skin, plywood core, and aluminum inner skin. It might be salvageable if it's not water-saturated. Likewise the Cor-Ten steel truss framing may be salvageable to stabilize, since it must have been in halfway decent shape or SP would have re-skinned it too -- unless the reason it wasn't re-skinned in the early 1960s is because it was already too far gone for a revenue car in passenger service. Time may tell.)

The siding, if being 100% faithful, is called 'fluted' -- the outer skin is made of separately-pressed strips, not a single sheet that's bent into corrugations. Pullman-Standard attached the stainless steel fluting strips directly to the Cor-Ten truss, which contributed to the corrosive electrolysis that attacked all the frames of the prewar Daylight cars, and prompted the fleetwide stainless steel re-skinning of 1960-64. Most of the cars re-skinned were 1941-built, so a preserved 1938 fluted car is that much more rare and valuable to history.

It sounds very premature for funding and plans for Esparto, but they at least have chosen to preserve this car and locate it near a depot they also intend to preserve. Whether we'll see both returned to original colors and configuration is left to community planning groups and consensus.

Which is another way of saying "Thanks for taking these pics for the record, Dave." :-)

~ BZ



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/24 08:44 by Notch16.

ExStarlightHog Wrote:
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> I see they removed the steam heat pipe. 

Looks like only the flexible connectors have been removed, which was typical of cars being readied for SPMW service. Based on the view of the underbody from a few of the shots, it looks like the steam piping may still be there.

The windows look like they came from Home Depot. Probably another SPMW modification.

PHall Wrote:
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> The windows look like they came from Home Depot.
> Probably another SPMW modification.

Dunno. I saw the car very early in its SPMW days. Carlin was the assignment, reports Dave, but I saw the car sitting near the turntable in Ogden. It was already painted with Light Smoke Gray and looked used, but the windows were intact and original, as far as I could tell. Sure could have been a latter-day addition.

the 1994 picture shows all the windows rocked, suprised it was still hanging around that late,  SP was done with it by then you figure

A few more photos. The opposite side of the car and the depot. It would be a great model railroad club and museum for the Esparto branch.

 

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I toured the car when it was still at Carlin.

It had a significant issue with rust as water had penentrated the car body, especially along the hallway outside the kitchen. Tap onn the fluting and flakes fell out.

The original stove was still in the car as well as the coffee urns and the overhead lighting valance in the dining room. The pamtry had been modified to allow direct accessnto the kitchen.

I believe the sister car 10400 survives as well, without the fluting.

Isn't it in Pueblo, CO

your thinking of the one in colo springs at the pikes peak trolley museum