Re: Purpose of Business Cars?

All the comments above are good ones, but to expand a little here are a few of my thoughts.

--The NG system was vast in the beginning and you had a huge amount of towns and mileage to cover. The officers or special trains would need to run fairly often

--They could also be used as extra cars on the San Juan, or the other trains like the Shavano should non of the parlor cars be available

--The need for the cars to be self sufficient was great due to the remoteness of the regions, and the distances between them....read food, sleep, etc

--Office car specials are something you see on all the major railroads. Around here we have the Norfolk Southern and CSX. NS runs an office car special, sometimes with executive F-units. These cars are old passenger car stock from pre Amtrak days that are kept in good shape. For example each year they run a special to the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. CSX does one as does CN. These coaches and business cars serve a useful purpose.

--The recent Big Boy tours use Union Pacific cars from their executive fleet. Without them there would be no special trips. Recently they were used in some fund-raising excursion service. Its an impressive fleet of dome cars, obs cars, diners, and coaches.

--As far as D&RGW narrow gauge is concerned these unique special cars are just a handful of the unique relics left over from this unique railroad that we can still enjoy today!

Greg



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2019 08:22AM by Greg Scholl.