From SF to LA in an obs car

Frank writes...

The third part of my company trip to California, and the most exceptional part, was a trip in the private car Montana. The Montana was built not long after the war in the Milwaukee Road's shops for use as tap lounge car 162 and assigned to the Olympian Hiawatha. In 1955, with the arrival of the Skytop Lounges, the car was rebuilt by the railroad with an open platform and assigned to the sales department as a business car. It was sold into private ownership in 1978 and has gone through several owners (and names). Its current owner, Sean, purchased the car from the Milwaukee Road 261 group about ten years ago and has rebuilt much of the car since then. Sean is a member of the Milwaukee Road Historical Association and the son of a longtime Milwaukee Road employee so the rebuilding has been done sympathetically and the car has been painted in the classic orange and maroon colors. Sean is also a big fan of Nystrom trucks and was quite intrigued when I mentioned to him that we had found the trucks under our newly-acquired Milwaukee Road coaches needed some adjustment.

A small group including my coworkers, our main investor, a few guests, and David Wilkins waited for the arrival of the Amtrak Coast Starlight at Jack London Square in Oakland. When the train pulled in the Montana wasn't there... but it soon showed up. Above, a nattily attired David awaits the arrival of our car.

The car's interior is beautiful. As shown above, at the rear of the car is the observation compartment. There are four rotating armchairs (supposedly from a Union Pacific parlor car) and six General Fireproofing chairs, all of which have a wonderful view out the large windows. On the wall are gauges noting the speed, brake pipe pressure, and brake cylinder pressure.

Looking forward in the observation compartment, next to the six chairs are two four-seat tables where some very nice meals were served. And there's the bar, which generally was manned by William, our steward for the trip.

Forward of the observation compartment there is a main room and three double bedrooms, as shown above and below. This entire section of the car was "tunneled" and rebuilt within the last decade.

There are also bunks that fold down in these rooms so that the car can be used for long-distance trips but since this was a single-day trip they weren't needed.

The highlight was definitely the back platform, though. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever be riding an open-platform obs at 79mph!

Here we are at speed leaving Oakland. Most of the route was single-tracked.

South of Paso Robles we were in the mountains, which was beautiful.

The route winds through the mountains and we got some pretty good views of the front end of the train.

There was a particularly tight curve, descending a marked grade, south of Santa Margarita and north of San Luis Obispo.

The train had a longer stop at San Luis Obispo, shown above, so we got off and took a few photos. There was another long stop at Santa Barbara and leaving the station the train went into emergency. We thought that we might have had a grade crossing incident but nothing seemed to have happened. We weren't sure exactly what the cause was but after the train crew checked the train we were back on our way.

South of San Luis Obispo we traveled along the Pacific coast. The route of the Coast Starlight is truly beautiful. It's no wonder that this train was the pride of the Southern Pacific.

We were stopped by bridge construction at a spot called Mussel Shoals, right along the Pacific.

We ended up stopped for about two hours but we were able to watch the sun set over the ocean. The above photo was taken after dark with the right-of-way lit up by the Montana's red Mars light.

And we ended up at Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal about an hour late but very happy.

LAUPT, which I'd never been to, was something to see in itself.

In conclusion, all I can say is that if your boss or investors are thinking of a corporate outing of some sort, I'd highly recommend suggesting that they look into private car travel!