Passenger Cars, After Union Pacific
For the past two months I have been working on the roster listings of Union Pacific passenger cars. As with any research project, one thing leads to another thing. I noticed that there were many cars that Union Pacific had sold to Amtrak. Many others had been sold to railroads in Mexico, and many more had been sold to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.
UP Cars Sold To Amtrak | Amtrak Head-End Power
Amtrak purchased a total of 163 former Union Pacific passenger cars. Of those 163 cars, 144 were purchased directly from UP (120 in the initial purchase in November 1971). Of the other 19 cars, which Union Pacific had sold in the 1968-1971 time period, Amtrak purchased seven from Auto Liner Corporation, six came from Penn Central, four came by way of Great Northern, and one each came from Alaska Railroad and Overland Rail Travel Corporation.
Coming to this number of 163 cars took an effort that required the help of many other people with a similar interest. Over the period of a month, several guys graciously sent what they had about the cars that Amtrak had purchased from UP. Still more came from the David Randall’s six-volume series “Railway Passenger Car Annual,” published between 1973 and 1984, and Fred Frailey’s “Zephyrs, Chiefs, and Other Orphans.” This information was added to what I already had from David Seidel’s information, upon which the initial UP passenger car roster was developed five years ago, and the story slowly became clear. Amtrak rebuilt most of the former UP cars for electrical power, replacing their original steam heat features. I knew nothing about Amtrak’s use of HEP (Head End Power), so more research helped tell that story.
UP Cars Sold to Ringling Bros.
A total of 105 former Union Pacific cars were sold to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, either directly in 1972 and 1999, or in other years after service on another railroad. Prior to the purchase of large numbers of former Union Pacific cars, Ringling Bros. used a combination of retired U.S. Army hospital cars when it re-started the operation of its circus train in 1960. Retired New York Central and Rock Island cars were used for the Blue train when it was started in 1970, at which time the original train became the Red Train. In 1972, Union Pacific found that it had a large surplus of passenger cars, after the startup of Amtrak in mid-1971, and Amtrak’s purchase of more than 100 cars from Union Pacific in late 1971. Ringling Bros. purchased its first group of former Union Pacific cars in 1972 to replace the old U.S. Army hospital cars that were ready for retirement. Six-axle baggage cars were rebuilt for use to transport the animals, and the four-axle cars were rebuilt with sleeping quarters for the performers. This work was completed at the Ringling Bros. rail car facility in Palmetto, Florida, which continues today as the site of rail car maintenance.
A total of 39 former Union Pacific passenger cars have ended up on the railroads in Mexico. Many are sleeper cars, and others are coach cars. Subsequent research helped me learn about the changes that Mexico’s railroads have gone through, and how railroad sleeping car service in Mexico had changed over the years.
