Hank asked "why not restore the car as Chair 24"... (good question)
Preservation at this level is somewhat technical, driven by Secretary of Interior "Standards for Historic Preservation" which must be followed if you want grant funding from History Colorado. History Colorado is also protecting the car's status on the National Register... If you make inappropriate changes you can loose your listing...
In the case of these cars, the are not being "restored" (a highly defined term meaning recreating lost elements) but instead "rehabilitated" meaning rebuilt in kind and repaired for use. In some cases you end up splitting hairs but the differences are important to granting agencies.
In this case the car was originally Chair Car 24, then official car F (used as a pay car) then work car 0468... As F it had a number of configurations. The key to choosing a rehabilitation plan (not a restoration target) is understanding the details of the car's history, what you have, what you know about it at different times and what features would be lost or have to be recreated (and do you have information to recreate them accurately).
There is a lot we don't know about chair car 24 including the roof line. It appears to have been built with hoods, maybe rebuilt to a duck bill but maybe went from hood to bull nose directly. There is some of the original roof framing at the parlor end. The limited paint evidence from its years as Chair car 24 raise interesting questions about how it was painted... It was Tuscan with black trim... at a minimum the quarter round around the end doors, likely also on the corner posts and maybe the belt rail. Of course at 24 it had Miller Hook couplers. It had an earlier truck.
We know a lot more about F... (and much of the last F interior is intact, enough to allow it to be accurately rebuilt, with missing details replicated) As F it generally carried the same mechanical systems, couplers, airbrakes, D&RG "Pullman style" trucks with one exception...
As a work car it was "lowered" including new iron body bolsters, with new truss rods, new truck bolsters with outside bearings and draft gear changes... Work which is effectively not reversible. That issue has been addressed in reports and has been acknowledged and accepted by History Colorado. (such is the ballet which is preformed when planning a historic preservation project)
In contrast, the two coaches are much simpler... they are being rebuilt "in kind" preserving much of the original fabric (again, a preservation term) . RPO 65 is being restored, but repurposed as a concession and ADA car under Secretary of Interior's standards for "adaptive reuse"
Randy Hees
