Rail car returned to former splendor, now Strasburg star.

By Jon Rutter
Lancaster Sunday News
August 10, 2008

She was born to run at 80 mph.

Not that she still wanted to.

Reading Car 10 had been resting on her laurels for decades.

Then last year, the Strasburg Rail Road decided to make a special project of her. The motivation was simple.

She had wheels, said Linn Moedinger, the railroad’s president and chief mechanical officer.

The luxuriously appointed car had never pulled her weight as a static display, Moedinger explained.

Yet, as one of a handful of surviving business cars that had once hauled railroad tycoons, she promised to provide a plush – and unmatched – living history experience for passengers.

The Strasburg toiled several months and spent $150,000 last year to get the sedentary old gal mobile again.

“It sort of balked at being used on a moving train,” said Senior Car Inspector Stephen Weaver, citing especially collicky electrical and plumbing systems. Not to mention the fact that the car might be haunted. (More on that later.)

President’s Car service started in July. Tickets cost $45 and include hors d’oeuvres, desserts, red and white wines and coffee and tea, served on Strasburg Rail Road china and stemware.

The car accommodates up to 18 people and will be coupled to regularly scheduled Strasburg trains at 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. daily through Labor Day.

Passengers must be 21 and show photo ID.

The President’s Car is available any time for chartered excursions, Moedinger said.

“One of the things we’re hoping to do is market it to companies that want to have a little retreat … hanging on the back of a train.”

“The Reading,” as it was known in its younger years, was purchased at auction in 1964 by Strasburg’s Huber Leath, Donald E.L. Hallock and Lynford “Bud” Swearer.

Strasburg formerly called it the Paradise Car.

The 50-year-old railroad activated the car last year to pinch hit for a parlor coach that was being overhauled.

The Reading was built in 1913 for Philadelphia & Reading Railroad President George F. Baer. Creature comforts include sleeping berths, teak, maple and oak woodwork with handcrafted inlays, pop-out electric lights and stateroom washbasins made of nickel.

Air conditioning is thought to have been added in the 1930s. Running the cooling unit in those days required 70 tons of ice, according to Moedinger.

The 83-foot-long land yacht originally cost $55,000 and features an observation room at the rear, a toilet room, a couple of staterooms, a dining area, crew quarters and a kitchen with a range that originally burned charcoal or anthracite.

The car is painted “Pullman green” and accented by gold leaf lettering.

A device on the roof that looks like a railing is actually the antenna from a 1940s-era radiotelephone setup.

Other eccentrities include clattering original electric fans, a Geiger counter to check for radioactivity along the tracks and an onboard safe that Moedinger said he is close to cracking.

“I’m dying to know what’s inside,” he said.

The Reading is rumored to have carried Harry Truman on part of his famed whistle stop tour in 1948.

The car hosted directors’ meetings and other official railroad duties for 50 years and also may have spirited company brass to such vacation spots as Bar Harbor, Maine.

A couple of porters and a chef were part of the package. So were silver, china and linens.

It was a time of executive perks writ large, Weaver said.

The car was also writ large.

Constructed by the Wilmington, Del.-based Harlan & Hollingsworth Company, which also made ships, the thing tips the scales at 108 tons, more than twice the weight of an ordinary passenger coach.

Each of its four trucks has three wheels instead of the usual two. The floor is concrete, designed to give a rock-steady ride.

“It’s quiet,” said JoAnn O’Connell, the railroad’s parlor car manager. “It’s like a Cadillac. It’s the only air conditioned car.”

“We don’t call it the lead sled for nothing,” Moedinger said.

Nobody worried about putting the old dame on a diet, though.

In keeping with the Strasburg’s mission of recreating the world of 1915, the coach appears almost exactly as it would have to Baer.

During an after-hours tour of the car last week, Weaver showed how electrical panels and other updates had been cleverly hidden away behind the walls. Outside, he flipped open the old battery box door to reveal a newly installed refrigerator unit and air compressor.

A modern 240-volt generator has been concealed underneath the car, behind the original water tank shroud.

Weaver flattened himself against the Reading as locomotive Number 90 thundered by on the adjoining track.

“It’s a real privilege to work on this,” he said, adding with a chuckle that the job also had a mysterious side this past winter.

Cabinets in the car repeatedly ended up locked even though the security log registered no intrusions, according to Weaver.

He finally took the locks apart and disabled their mechanisms, he said. “We came back the next morning. The cabinets were locked.”

Maybe it’s just one price to pay for getting the Reading moving again.

The Strasburg’s locomotives have to work harder than usual to nudge the stately old coach into action, Weaver said.

“The engine crews know when it’s on the hind end.”