Amtrak Gallery Cars?

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Crowbar_k

Service Attendant
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
182
I've seen a few photos, from back in early days of Amtrak, of Amtrak trains with gallery cars. Amtrak paint and everything. However, very little information about these seems to available online. I can't find any images of what they looked like on the inside. I'm curious because they don't seem like they would be suitable for long distance travel, with the need for bigger seats and more baggage space and all. My biggest question is what on earth did the upper level look like? Does anyone here have any information or experience with these elusive Amtrak gallery cars?

1690608331843.png

Thank you very much for your replies.

Edit: I added the picture for reference
 
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They started life as Chicago & North Western "400" streamliner cars. They were built with 'long distance' seating. Some were cab-control cars, others were bar cars. Amtrak used them on a variety of Chicago based regional trains, besides the Valpo commuter's. They ran on the Blackhawk, the Prairie Marksman, the Illini, the Illinois Zephyr, etc. at various times before they were retired.
 
railiner said:
A couple of errors in that...the first gallery cars were designed and built by The Budd Company, not Pullman-Standard.
And the Amtrak Capitol Limited did not run thru Valpo...then or now....
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Correct. Broadway Limited ran through Valparaiso.

He may be confusing the Washington Section 440/441 of the Broadway Limited (40/41) with the Capitol Limited. At that time there was no Amtrak Capitol Limited. That came later.:cool:
 
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railiner said:
A couple of errors in that...the first gallery cars were designed and built by The Budd Company, not Pullman-Standard.
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There is conflicting history online about who developed the gallery cars. So I wouldn't blame the video creator.

Pullman did build the first gallery cab car for the CNW - it still operates at the Illinois Railway Museum along with 2 bi-levels built by St. Louis Car Company that were part of the first order of gallery cars for the CNW.

I feel like the Amtrak California bi-levels use the space better, so it makes sense that amtrak no longer wants gallery cars but it's cool to know that some existed.
 
railiner said:
I just found this from an earlier thread...Post 5 has a couple of photo's from the pre-Amtrak era...
https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/amtrak-gallery-coach.63743/
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Ok. So the upstairs had single seating. Also, it's interesting that the they were originally built for long distance travel and even had club car versions. This sent me down a rabbit hole. It seems odd the CNW would order cars like this for long distance as they have more commuter features, such as the wide, automatic, doors.
 
Amtrak had a train called The Loop. It ran from Springfield IL to Chicago IL. The train originally used the Ex Chicago and Northwestern Bi Level Cars. The cars were eventually replaced by Amfleet Equipment.
 
Crowbar_k said:
Ok. So the upstairs had single seating. Also, it's interesting that the they were originally built for long distance travel and even had club car versions. This sent me down a rabbit hole. It seems odd the CNW would order cars like this for long distance as they have more commuter features, such as the wide, automatic, doors.
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I would imagine the C&NW saved money by "piggybacking" these cars with a larger order of commuter cars. Besides that, at the time, C&NW was rapidly shrinking their long distance network. Just a few years before they ordered these cars, they got rid of hosting Union Pacific-Southern Pacific "City" trains over to The Milwaukee Road, and probably figured they could easily modify these cars into commuter seating later if more routes were eliminated.

I liked the individual seats on the upper levels, too!
 
crescent-zephyr said:
There is conflicting history online about who developed the gallery cars. So I wouldn't blame the video creator.
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I just took a look at the Wiki article, and you are correct...the article is written in a confusing manner...probably because there were many contributors to it, at different times. But the Budd cars were built a full five years before the other's came along.
 
The way I learned that Amtrak existed involves those C&NW long-distance galley cars.

Sometime in the summer of’71, the six-year-old version of me was sitting on the eastbound side of LaGrange Road station. This is what I would do to pass the time while my mother ran errands in downtown LaGrange. Sometimes, if her instamatic camera had film, she’d let me bring it.

I was very familiar with the usual routine of zephyrs and dinkies. And then…that one day in ‘71, a solid C&NW train showed up on what I called “the ten o’clock zephyr”. I was stunned and full of questions my parents couldn’t answer.

Since I could read, my dad eventually brought home from work a copy of The Official Guide. It had all the Amtrak schedules. That answered some questions and created many more. I still have it.
 
railiner said:
And the Amtrak Capitol Limited did not run thru Valpo...then or now....
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Well, there was a period in the late '80s when the Capitol did run as a separate train on the PRR through Valparaiso. Coming back from Chicago on one trip in '89, I actually took the Calumet, and I believe rode on the upper level of one of these cars, then wandered about the town for an hour or so before catching the Capitol to Washington. Catching the Broadway would have involved waiting several hours.
 
fdaley said:
Well, there was a period in the late '80s when the Capitol did run as a separate train on the PRR through Valparaiso. Coming back from Chicago on one trip in '89, I actually took the Calumet, and I believe rode on the upper level of one of these cars, then wandered about the town for an hour or so before catching the Capitol to Washington. Catching the Broadway would have involved waiting several hours.
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I stand corrected. :) From late '86 until '90, Trains 40-41, and 29-30 ran separately thru Fort Wayne. Good catch!
 
The Capitol had a dome car at that point, which made it a special treat in my book.

The Calumet as I recall was quite well used. It plodded through Hammond-Whiting and two stops on the south side of Gary, which looked deserted and a bit scary and where I couldn't see whether anyone actually detrained. Then it came to Hobart, where we passed the local ballfield with a big crowd and a Little League game in progress on a beautiful spring evening, and more than half the passengers detrained there. The rest went on to Wheeler and Valpo, the last two stops.
 
fdaley said:
Well, there was a period in the late '80s when the Capitol did run as a separate train on the PRR through Valparaiso. Coming back from Chicago on one trip in '89, I actually took the Calumet, and I believe rode on the upper level of one of these cars, then wandered about the town for an hour or so before catching the Capitol to Washington. Catching the Broadway would have involved waiting several hours.
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When I took the Broadway Chicago to Paoli PA in summer of 1985, the Broadway and Capitol ran as a combined train as far as Pittsburgh. I remember this because I got to ride in the dome car that was part of the Capitol's consist at the time. I guess they must have made the 2 trains separate shortly after.

I also remember seeing the Valparaiso Local as we passed through that station.
 
AmtrakMaineiac said:
When I took the Broadway Chicago to Paoli PA in summer of 1985, the Broadway and Capitol ran as a combined train as far as Pittsburgh. I remember this because I got to ride in the dome car that was part of the Capitol's consist at the time. I guess they must have made the 2 trains separate shortly after.

I also remember seeing the Valparaiso Local as we passed through that station.
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Yes...they separated them in October 1986, and ran them that way for four years, until they left the PRR line entirely. The Broadway ironically was routed over the former B&O line via Akron from Pittsburgh to Chicago, and the Capitol ran from Pittsburgh up to Cleveland, then over the former NYC line to Chicago, as it currently does. The Valpo local continue on until 1991, and then the entire Fort Wayne line was without passenger service.
 
I have a number of books (one of them is really a binder) detailing Amtraks pre-heritage fleet fluctuations. It’s a fascinating subject on its own; I was going to write a book but I stumbled onto a rabbit hole doing it, ended up promising somebody I wouldn’t discuss what was in it, and decided the book would have been to false to write without including what I found.

There were some really weird pieces of equipment (Amfleet I coach-snack-sleeper, anyone?) in early Amtrak days, and quite a bit of stuff on roster that didn’t turn a wheel in revenue service or even not in revenue service. The Amtrak gallery fleet included snack sections, parlor sections, and even a dining section (tiny kitchen, table service) but as far as I know never included full cars of any of these things- one side would always be coach seating. These pieces of equipment made more sense than Amfleets or standard streamliners on the frequent-stop low-platform routes they served due to their ability to accommodate shorter dwell times.

I suspect that meeting the above was as much a factor in CNWs ordering of this equipment as an intention to convert them to commuter equipment. Also keep in mind that back in the early 70s commuter trains sometimes ran with bar cars, parlour cars, or both. Metra ran snack Cars for quite a while, LIRR ran them and actual parlour cars more or less until the debut of the current double decker cars, and Metro North ran Bar Cars up until almost the withdrawal of M2s; I believe the last run was in 2014.
 
blueman271 said:
Thom of Trains are Awesome recently (like within the hour recent) posted a video about Amtrak gallery cars on YouTube.
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I think this picture may have been photoshopped. The Amtrak gallery cars as people noted were ex-CNW built by Pullman Standard and were smooth sided, not stainless steel fluted sides as in the pic. The fluted galleries were built by Budd but I don't recall Amtrak ever having fluted Budd gallery cars.
 

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