Re: Doe River Gorge New Cars

James, the older cars referred to by the Johnson City paper article were our open "passenger cars". To the best of our knowledge, their lineage is as follows: we got them from 6-Flags of Atlanta in poor shape with cross benches for seating and clerestory roofs & open sides. The supports of the roofs were old & weak, & had to be removed or replaced - in fact one collapsed as we started to remove it. I am not sure where they got them from, but the cars are (from what we can see) ex-D&RG cut-down boxcars. Many of the castings under the cars have D&RG cast into them, so they must come from before the D&RGW merger (ie, they are at least 100 years old). We have replaced several side & end sills, and had new coupler pocket parts cast for them in the 18 years we have had them. One now needs a new side sill again, and the other has some rotting brake beams to deal with. Three of the four trucks have been dismantled, sand-blasted, painted, & reassembled, and a couple have had replacement "newer" less worn wheels/axles added.

The new cars have all steel frames, nice profiles on the wheels, and seem to have been (as I said above) home-built following the general design of the Crown passenger cars that Dry Gulch already had. We do not know exactly when they were built, or even who built them (we think Dry Gulch may have done so, or had someone do it for them) but I am pretty sure they were built in the last 20 years.