From the Cab: Office cars

Office cars

Prior to Amtrak, railroads had coupled company owned business and office cars to the rear of passenger trains for the convenience of executive and management personnel. The usually spotless and well maintained fleet of comfortably furnished cars also served as sales offices on wheels for the railroad’s industrial development and traffic departments, allowing potential shippers a first hand view of available parcels of adjacent land upon which to build a factory.

Railroad business cars could be found nestled against bumper posts at terminals in important cities at Christmas. There, heads of government and industry were feted with sumptuous feasts and enticing beverages to help maintain friendly relations.

Everyone saw to it that nothing went wrong, whatever the occasion.

Under Amtrak however, there was far less flexibility, because there were fewer trains. Host railroads were even penalized for adding or taking off business cars from an Amtrak train. With a resulting glut of unused passenger equipment, some freight railroads took the best and assembled office car fleets for personal use. Schedules, routes, and availability, were under the railroad’s exclusive control. Because its flanks were like huge traveling billboards, vintage passenger locomotives found new life, many times in old color schemes. 

Unlike the challenges Amtrak faced, the freight railroads could afford to invest in niceties intended to impress VIPs. Heating and air-conditioning worked, toilets flushed, floors sparkled, and windows were kept spotless. The cars were staffed by attractive, polite, employees who thoroughly understood their role as company goodwill ambassadors. There was no shortage of courtesy or smiles.

As someone who’d come up through the ranks from yard brakeman and engineer, to Amtrak company photographer, until the day I retired, the privilege of traveling aboard our business car, “Beech Grove,” was never lost on me. Once while having dinner in Richmond with the late CSX CEO, Hayes Watkins, I remarked that there was something to be said for riding a railroad office car.

“I’ve forgotten what it was like,” Hayes laughed, as he slapped me on the back, “I always flew on our corporate jets.”  (Whoosh. The sound of the air escaping from my deflated ego was deafening.)

With no passenger trains to operate however, freight railroad employees rostered fewer and fewer engineers who were still qualified to run them, and there are quite a few differences between passenger and freight train speed restrictions. When an office car move is scheduled, the honor of running it goes to the first out extra board engineer, customarily accompanied by a road foreman of engines.

On one occasion, a former coworker, who’d spent his entire career, by choice, drilling cars in a classification yard, was summoned. Bill, we’ll call him, was terrified, but was assured that it was easy. “Just remember, it’s 79 mph instead of freight speed.”

Although no one on the office car seemed aware, and the incident was handled discreetly and with lenience, Bill had sped through one small town, which had a posted 40 mph municipal speed limit at … you guessed it … 79 mph.

If you liked, “From the Cab: Office cars,” don’t forget to check out Doug’s previous column, “From the Cab: All I want for Christmas …”