Fritz Klinke Wrote:
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> Aside from my favorite, the B-3, I rank the B-7
> highly as well, but before its current makeover.
> It was the last narrow gauge car to retain the
> Pullman green color well into the 50s after the
> rest of the fleet turned Grande Gold. It finally
> entered Silverton service sometime in the early
> 60s but the interior was intact from its working
> days as a purely company car, and for that reason
> gave an authentic feeling prior to its renovation
> as few years ago. Here it is back in 1966:
> [
www.flickr.com]
> 2834/in/dateposted/
The B7 was THE car to charter for your railfan group back in the 60's and 70's. B7 was the 4th/Alamosa Division Superintendent's car. It remained as such when it went into charter service in Durango. I think the bed got removed from the stateroom, but the rest was still intact as it was when it was a business car. You could ride the back platform and pretend you were Beebe and Clegg riding with Perlman on their famous "junket" in 1947.... Another neat thing about the B7 is there was no caretaker along. Amos gave you the keys and said "have a good time, turn them in when you get back" You were on your own.
Some time in the 1970's some sort of incident happened to the B7's front platform. It got repaired with a bunch of steel and the ice box disappeared off the platform. The last few years the D&RGW had it, B7 wasn't in service and I recall it living in the round house, while the B2 and B3 got all the charter work.