Some buyer out there will have the chance if they successfully bid for Florida East Coast business car No. 90, an opulent wooden open-platform car owned privately and stored at the Indiana Transportation Museum. Railroad equipment dealer Ozark Mountain Railcar, based in Kirbyville, Mo., is offering the car for sale.
Perhaps no railroad tycoon personified the wealth and opulence of the Gilded Age as much as Flagler, the pioneering real-estate developer who nearly single-handedly created Florida’s tourism industry and served it by building the Florida East Coast Railroad, including the ill-fated Key West extension, destroyed in a 1935 hurricane.
Born in 1830, Flagler was an early partner of John D. Rockefeller in the creation of Standard Oil, and later in life moved into real estate and railroading. He died in 1913.
Flagler ordered car 90 from the Jackson & Sharpe Company in 1899, stipulating a degree of luxury that was unusual even for its time. From its satin wood-paneled lounge to its intricate stained glass to its spacious windows to its ornate woodwork, the car represents the flower of the carbuilders’ art.
The car features upper and lower sections for four guests and a large master bedroom that includes a shower, along with the usual layout of dining room, galley, and observation room, which boasts a marble gas fireplace.
The car lingered on the FEC roster until 1952, after which it was passed along among a handful of owners.
Alas, due to its age the car must be confined to tourist railroads or shortlines, and cannot operate on the general U.S. railroad system. The car rests on a light frame, atop bolted pedestal trucks with friction bearings, and is equipped with rare Pitt-type couplers at each end.
The buyer will have to truck the car from its location at the museum, which is landlocked along a 37-mile former Nickel Plate branch, shorn of its connections at the south and north ends. More information is available online.
Didn’t Flagler have another private car? I seem to recall reading that it is on display at his estate in Florida.
Do the Museum need to raise funds to pay for the legal defense of the ITM board – who have been accused of financial mis-management over the last several years?
Alas it won’t fit in my back yard. Neat rail car though.
Upper and lower sections? I know of upper and lower berths (one upper berth and one lower berth in each section).
Sad to say, the old terminology is not familiar to most people today, Even VIA does not list roomettes, bedrooms, and drawing rooms, but cabins for one, cabins for two (this includes the compartments) and cabins for three. I do not recall just how they list uppers and lowers in the sections.
A picture would be nice.