Does anybody know about this car??

Clerk

Active Member
Went shopping with the wife yesterday and saw this car hooked up to some tour cars on the Yolo Shortline. There was one guy there and he said this carjust came in the day before and was trying to get the doors open. They operate on pressure and he had the compresser running but the doors just would not open

Does anybody know anything about this car??
 

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Clerk

Active Member
The guy I talked to yesterday said it looked like the top part had been added as there is a seam just below the windows and the top part was sort of crinkly and wavey.
 

MCL_RDG

Member
I think...

...that's the car where they load people at the terminal and when the passengers try to open and close the doors with pressure and it don't work- the people on the platform laff at the people in the car and the people in the car laff at the people on the platform. I believe they call it "the silly car" and it was engineered by one of the Monty Python support staffers. Rumor has it that John Cleese was stuck in an elevator once and he wrote a concept surrounding a train where you coudn't get on or off. Once he heard that it was a Twilight Zone episode he tossed the piece in the trash but was slavaged by a young intern. Now that we know what happens to interns, I think we can assume that the crinkley/wavey parts were written in as an afterthought.

I could be wrong. :D

Mark
P.S. Don't mind me, I was just having a typing frenzy.
 

Summit

New Member
Clerk-

Car is a former Southern Pacific commute car, built around 1955, and used on the SP's San Franscisco Penninsula commute service between San Jose and San Franscisco (now operated by Caltrain). I do not know how many of these are still in service over the line, if any.

An outfit known as Bob Steele & Associates (BSA) purchased a large number of these cars in the late 1980's for $11,000 apiece. BSA operated a railcar repair facility that specialized in the creation of high class cars for "cruise" type trains all over North America, in addition to doing other work (such as producing bunk cars for Loram, the rail grinding railroad contractor). BSA's facility was located in a former blimp hangar just south of Tillamook, OR.

Sidenote that may be of interest- the US Navy built the blimp hangar in the early days of World War Two, and blimps based out of the base were used in coastal patrol and defense, primarily in guarding against attacks by Japanese submarines. After the war the Port of Tillamook Bay (a port district) was created to purchase the base and turn it into an industrial park. The three mile long US Navy railroad that connected the base with the Southern Pacific in Tillamook came with the purchase, and the port set up the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad to operate the line. The POTB stayed a switching railroad until the late 1980's, when it gradually leased and then purchased the SP's Tillamook Branch from Tillamook to Banks, OR.

BSA re-built a number of these cars for various luxery tour operators, including Midnight Sun Tours (operating on the Alaska Railroad) and Transcisco Tours, which operated (for five months in late 1990/early 1991) an upscale cruise train between the Bay Area and Reno...the train was powered by a pair of FP45's and was painted a baudy red and blue. BSA also produced two of these cars for a sister company, Oregon Coastline Express, which operated (in 1989 and 1990) a tourist train service over the POTB between Tillamook and Wheeler, OR. The OCE used ex- Columbia & Cowlitz Alco C-415 switchers for power. (Another sidenote that may be of interest...the two C415's that OCE used were used again by Bob Steele & Associates on a second but equally unsuccessfull tourist train operation over the POTB, the Spirit of Oregon Dinner Train that used to operate over the eastern end of the line from Banks, OR. Following the demise of the Spirit of Oregon the two diesels and the train set were sold to the Mt. Hood Railroad of Hood River, OR, which continues to use the dinner train set today. However, the company had no use for the two C415's, and they were quickly re-sold to the Burlington Junction Railroad in Iowa).

This car appears to be one of the ex-Transcisco Tours cars...the ones that the OCE used had two more windows down the side of the car, and I don't see any evidence that they were plated over in your picture.

As for the Golden Sunset, it refers to the Golden Sunset Dinner Train, which is affiliated with the Sierra Railroad (which operates from Oakdale through Jamestown and Sonora to Ralph). The Golden Sunset and Sierra are affiliated companies, and the Yolo Shortline was very recently merged into the Sierra. I would suspect that car swaps like this may become common, especially if the Sierra is successfull in purchasing the California Western Railroad (operator of the famous Skunk trains between Fort Bragg and Willits, CA) out of bankruptcy. The judge will pick from amongst the four bidders in six days (the other three bidders are the Napa Valley Wine Train, another group of local investors out of Fort Bragg, and a group of investors out of southern Oregon).

Hope this helps and that I didn't bore you too much.

-JD Moore
Elko, NV
 

Clerk

Active Member
WOW! Thanks JD. You also comfirned what somebody else on here said about the Yolo Shortling merging with Sierra
 

CN1

Active Member
Holly! that's an ugly contraception thingy:eek:

Thanks for the pictures Clerk, nicely done:thumb: . Would that be the same spot were you took the pictures of the "streamliner"?:confused:


Thanks Summit for such a detail history.:thumb:

Very interesting indeed...
 
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