Pace831 Posted March 19, 2021 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2021 This RYPN thread has some additional info on the cars in Bensenville. According to Alexander D. Mitchell IV: Quote MTDX is/was a group that bought up a bunch of METRA's retired C&NW gallery cars for brokering out, along with a few locos (the blue E8s that ran on MARC in the 1990s before MARC grabbed ex-BN E's were another of their projects). They got undercut after their buy-up by Federal regs mandating transfer of surplus commuter equipment to other agencies for free/token $1 if Federal dollars had been spent on them, so they ended up with a fleet of C&NW gallery cars that has drifted around randon storage locations in the Chicago area ever since--even, at one point, a Lake Michigan pier. A scant few have ended up in other locations--four got sold/leased to the Gold Coast RR Museum, for example, and stray examples from either Metra or MTDX seem to have replaced the "Lackawanna MU car" as the standard "it shows up everywhere" car of rail preservation, along with the LIRR 'breadboxes." My understanding is that there MAY have, at one point, been some business overlap between MTDX and Iowa Pacific; I know that MTDX owned the (supposedly) ONLY two actual ex-IC (later Paducah-shopped NJT) E8s, and was dickering with IC fanatic Ed Ellis for some time but never, as far as I know, reached any deal. That bunch of locos, last I heard, were over in Cleveland near/in the same facilities as the 2100 group, Cuyahoga Valley Scenic, and/or whoever, along with some "support/storage" baggage cars that have long accompanied the E8s. There was also a Monon-painted E8 (a FairTrain refugee?) in the mess somewhere when the outfit was running out of the EJ&E shops in Joliet around 2000, before they were evicted from there and the shops demolished. Notably, however, I don't recall seeing any of the MTDX fleet being actually used by IPH, nor listed as any of their assets in the various news reports about the revent "implosion" of IPH/SL&RG/SNC/etc. This is, all in all, as probably ambiguous an ownership/custody/ mess as anything else surrounding Iowa Pacific Holdings, SL&RG, etc., and to be honest some messiness surrounds almost any privately-owned rail equipment in the nation, from freight cars owned by equipment trusts or leasing companies but operated under the name of a railroad company, to who actually "owns" any private historic locomotive. So, don't assume that if you see them on adjacent tracks or whatever that they're in the same mess. It might still be a mess or in one, but not IPH's as far as I know (which may not say much after all these years)..... The most recent posts in that thread link to a Railfan & Railroad article about IPH equipment for sale. That page has a link to the equipment list, which includes the bilevel cars in Bensenville for $10,000 each: MTDX 7671 MTDX 7880 SLRG* 8702 MTDX 8706 MTDX 8709 SLRG* 8716 SLRG* 8721 SLRG* 8735 It's interesting that some of them are listed as MTDX and the others as SLRG*. There's no explanation for what the asterisk means, 8713 is not on the list for some reason. SLRG 11-13 are also on this list for $40,000 each. Their location is listed as Stockton, CA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
busfan2847 Posted March 19, 2021 Report Share Posted March 19, 2021 17 hours ago, Pace831 said: Thanks. I've added several cars to the list based on the dates. I'm still not sure how Dan Behr came up with a total of 71, though. I think the Metra document has an error for car 7901. It says it was built by Pullman Standard in 1969, when it should be a St. Louis car built in 1955, the same as 7900. The 7900-7901 were originally CNW 8-9. Why did RTA create a separate number series for these two cars when the remainder of CNW 1-16 became 7600-7613? Were they modified in some way? Yes. These were the two "buffet" cars used on the UP-NW line on the 5:16pm to Harvard. The door area was replaced with a bar and access tp the car was only from adjacent cars. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewFlyerMCI Posted March 20, 2021 Report Share Posted March 20, 2021 On 3/19/2021 at 10:27 AM, busfan2847 said: Yes. These were the two "buffet" cars used on the UP-NW line on the 5:16pm to Harvard. The door area was replaced with a bar and access tp the car was only from adjacent cars. What in the world was Metra doing with buffet cars? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artthouwill Posted March 20, 2021 Report Share Posted March 20, 2021 53 minutes ago, NewFlyerMCI said: What in the world was Metra doing with buffet cars? I could be wrong, but I think this was a holdover from the CNW days when CNW operated the service. Apparently it was popular enough that Metra retained the perk even through UP's acquisition of CNW. I believe budget constraints forced Metra to end the special perk. Someone can provide more detail. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
busfan2847 Posted March 22, 2021 Report Share Posted March 22, 2021 On 3/20/2021 at 5:43 PM, artthouwill said: I could be wrong, but I think this was a holdover from the CNW days when CNW operated the service. Apparently it was popular enough that Metra retained the perk even through UP's acquisition of CNW. I believe budget constraints forced Metra to end the special perk. Someone can provide more detail. Perhaps "buffet" was the wrong description - they were bar cars. They were withdrawn in the early 2000s They were not the only ones. Milwaukee North (6-cars) & West (2-cars) and Rock Island (4-cars) also had some 7300s converted as bar cars which ran until 29 August 2008 (7300-7310 and 7313). "Metra says so long to its rail saloons" https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2008-08-27-0808270116-story.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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