Uh... what happened to the flat-sided coaches?

Tadman wrote:Byte, I understand your disbelief at bilevels still in their 1960's or 1970s CNW green/yellow. I saw a pic somewhere, and I'm still in disbelief. In the pic the bilevels are lurking behind the main train in the pic, and looking very faded. But I have seen the pic, and I can't find it after ten minutes of poking around in the usual places.

I just found some pictures! Look here and scroll down to the bottom: http://www.jguyphoto.com/ShortlineMuseu ... ville/MCS/. Looks like the history of those cars isn't as mysterious as it would seem. Metra must have sold them off some time ago (I'm guessing late 80s/early 90s) to the Great Lakes Western, who the cars are still lettered for. They repainted them back to C&NW colors (though not exactly - look at the cab car ends and compare to the 151 at IRM). According to that website they're being used for parts, but the one on the left looks like it's had some bodywork done around the windows and the body looks pretty clean altogether, so maybe that one is/will be restored to operation.

Those bilevels in badly worn C&NW colors were not actually RTA cars. Those are the ex-Amtrak, nee C&NW bilevel 400 intercity cars, that were never actually used in suburban service. After Amtrak retired them, they got picked up by an outfit called Great Lakes Western that attempted to use them for excursion service, which apparently never worked out.

The cars were built mostly as coaches with four bathrooms each and only 96 seats total. Vestibules had luggage racks on both sides and passengers could only enter and exit through the center third vs. the standard suburban pool configuration. Several unique variations were built, including lounge, parlor and coach-parlor.

In 1971, all of the intercity bilevels were leased by Amtrak, and later purchased and repainted. None of the cars were delivered as cab-control cars, so the cabs seen in the photos are--as far as I know--homebuilt concoctions that Amtrak carved out of straight coaches. None of these cars ever saw RTA suburban service, except for 903, IIRC, which was rebuilt into a straight suburban coach, more or less, with the usual 180-odd seat configuration.

The best explanation of these cars that I've found can be found in Jim Scribbon's "The 400 Story."

Prairiefire wrote:Wisconsin and Southern Railroad (Horicon/Janesville) has some of the old flat-sided cars (not sure if they are ex-C and NW or Milwaukee Road) ...

The flat-sided cars are ex-C&NW. (Rock Island had a handful but they were assimilated with the C&NW fleet and all of them are gone now.) The Milwaukee and Burlington cars as well as the rest of the Rock Island cars were stainless steel.

... that they use on their executive/special passenger train, which is pulled by a vintage E-9 locomotive from the mid 1950s. All of these have been rehabbed and painted in the Wisconsin and Southern colors. You can see images of these on their website.

WSOR has three ex-C&NW bilevels that have been repainted in red and gray. They are used very infrequently. If anyone's going out looking for them right now, the two trailer coaches are next to the Madison yard office and the cab car is in the Janesville coach yard. There are a bunch of other ex-C&NW and ex-BN bilevels stored in several locations on the WSOR Northern Division.

I heard that UP is using a few bilevels for MOW crews out West.