Pere Marquette Tavern Lounge Car #113
Eagle Caņon
Eagle Cañon coming around the former
C&O wye at St. Albans, WV,
destination of the side-by-side steam excursion at the 1991 NRHS National Convention.
Eagle Cañon is one of four streamlined tavern-lounge cars originally ordered from Pullman-Standard by the C&O in 1947. Two of these cars were to be used to increase food and beverage service capacity on the popular Pere Marquette streamliners between Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan. These two cars, to have been numbered 112 and 113, were canceled by the C&O, but the D&RGW picked up the order and took delivery of them as well as one other car that the C&O had ordered. On the D&RGW, the car which would have been #113 was named Eagle Cañon and painted in the yellow/black/silver "Prospector" scheme worn by the D&RGW's other P-S cars based on PM and C&O-specified designs. The D&RGW sold it in 1967 to the Pennsylvania where it became their #1149. It was renumbered to #4449 after the Penn Central merger, then went to Amtrak where it was their #3362
Following its purchase in 1980 by Eagle Caņon Car Company, it was restored, renumbered and painted into the scheme that the PM and Pullman-Standard had originally intended that it wear. Along the way, it lost the corrosion-prone corrugated panels below the window line that were a hallmark of the C&O's and the PM's streamlined passenger car fleets.
Eagle Caņon Car Company also owns sister car Chessie Club. This is the only one of the four tavern-lounge cars that the C&O ordered that it accepted. Numbered 1903, Chessie Club was used mainly on the C&O's ex-PM lines in Michigan. It had the large 30"-tall windows that other C&O cars had, as compared to the 24"-tall windows of the two cars ordered for use on the PM. Both Eagle Caņon and Chessie Club now operate out of Romney, West Virginia for the Potomac Eagle train service. Both cars have been leased for service on excursions in the Eastern US, such as those operated during the 1991 NRHS National Convention in Huntington, West Virginia.
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