Many if not most Burlington fans are acquainted with the so-called Spearfish combine, the baggage-coach with a very large open observation platform used on the Spearfish Branch mixed train in the Black Hills of South Dakota. That car was chronicled in BB
34, and I'm including here Otto Perry's photo of it in Denver in 1935, three years before it was retired after the Spearfish Branch was abandoned. Recently I acquired a single postcard with two photos of this same car in its earlier incarnation as a full
coach with a large observation platform --again for use on the scenic Spearfish Branch -- and those two images are also attached, along with two others that are the only views which have come to light of coach 5151, which was rebuilt as an observation car
of the classic style, with everything above the belt rail removed (essentially the windows and roof) and replaced by a metal framework with large canvas curtains that could be rolled down during inclement weather. Both known photos were taken the same day
-- August 4, 1931 -- at the Deadwood depot as the car was being switched by K-2 Ten-Wheeler 665, which was the normal power for the Spearfish Branch mixed. The 5151 had been converted from a normal 46'-8" coach (built at Aurora in June 1883) at the Plattsmouth
shops, the work completed on June 15, 1930. It lasted only a few years as an observation coach and was scrapped at Aurora on Nov. 13, 1934.
But these two cars are not what I set out to write about here, but rather two earlier cars shown in Q records simply as observation cars 700-701. The two were given those numbers in the general renumbering of 1904, having previously been B&MR in Nebraska
coaches 104-105. B&MR equipment lists never show them as anything but the first two members of a group of 10 coaches numbered 104-113. Of that group, cars 107-113 became CB&Q 5419-5426 in 1904. They were 53-foot coaches built by the St. Charles Car Company
during the first four months of 1892. Coach 106 does not appear to have survived to the 1904 renumbering, and it is anything but clear if cars 104-105 were part of that 1892 St. Charles lot, though a search of the AC&F predecessors lot number records might
divulge the answer.
At any rate, observation cars 700-701 do indeed appear in the CB&Q listing in the
Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) by July 1904 and in subsequent listings until January 1908, when they vanish. So their time on the railroad -- at least in revenue service -- was brief, extending from 1892 (or possibly 1891) until the end
of 1907, at which time they were likely converted for use in company service. But what did they look like? Were they similar to the later coach 5151, basically long gondolas with seats? Or were they more like the narrow gauge cars that the
Colorado & Southern more appropriately called excursion cars, having low arch roofs over large window areas that had no glass but were protected from the elements by heavy canvas shades? We really don't know for sure, but I believe I may have
found the pair, in a group of photos taken early in the 20th century by Denver photographer Louis C. McClure in an unlikely place: Tolland, Colo., on David Moffat's fledgling Denver, Northwestern & Pacific, known after 1912 as the Denver & Salt Lake and best
known simply as "the Moffat Road."
Refused entry into Denver's union depot and spurned by most Denver railroads, including the D&RG, C&S and UP, the Moffat Road found an early ally in the Burlington, which saw the new company as a potential interchange partner if it was able to achieve its
goal of building through the Rockies and west to Salt Lake City. At the road's start-up, the Burlington provided locomotives and other equipment to the DNW&P until it acquired sufficient equipment of its own. And for a good many years the Q provided passenger
cars to the Moffat when its own fleet was insufficient to meet the demands of a thriving excursion business, initially up to Tolland (first known as Mammoth)
where a large pavilion was erected beside the tracks, and later to the summit of Corona Pass, a climb that began just across the valley from Tolland, from which point the progress of trains up the
"Giant's Ladder" could be watched by summertime picnickers.
It is on the rear of one such Tolland picnic train that I believe the two Q observation cars, 700-701, can be seen. Photographer McClure took a carriage or wagon up the primitive, rocky road that climbed the mountain directly south of Tolland and from a
vantage point above the tiny community photographed a seven-car excursion or picnic train arriving behind DNW&P Consolidation 104, a May 1906 Schenectady product (the Moffat's early 2-8-0s were virtual copies of Burlington D-4-A Consolidations). McClure then
took two additional views of the train, one just short of the depot and pavilion, and another broadside view of the train stopped at Tolland, all but the locomotive and first two cars of the train mostly hidden behind buildings. Enlarging portions of these
photos, it becomes clear that five of the train's seven cars are Burlington coaches, while the first two cars -- a coach-baggage combine and a coach, both with vestibules -- are DNW&P cars, and a close-up view of two such cars from another period photo is
attached to confirm their identity. The remaining five cars are all Burlington coaches, two 47-48-foot open platform cars, a longer vestibule car, and the two coaches of interest to us bringing up the rear. Those two cars, which I believe to be the 700-701,
are quite distinctive in appearance. They are roughly the same length as the vestibule coach ahead of them, but instead of the clerestory roof that was common to virtually all other Q coaches of that era, these two have low arch roofs. And there is only
a single vent on the roof of each of the cars, a vent of the globe type commonly used above toilets in bath bathrooms. There is no smoke jack, meaning the cars have no stoves, and at this time, probably no trainline steam heat. So they were clearly intended
only for warm weather use. They do, however, have glazed sash windows -- meaning the main lower window can be opened upward to the bottom of the smaller gothic or transom window above. Also absent from the roofs are gas lamp vents, and there are no underbody
gas tanks and certainly no battery boxes, so the cars are unlit, further restricting their use to daytime trains such as this picnic special. That's about all that can be told from these photos. The photos here are clearly taken after May 1906, when
the locomotive was built, and if the rear two cars are what I believe them to be, the date of the photos must be either the summer of 1906 or 1907.
I have seen one other photo of one of these cars, but I cannot for the life of me locate it. It is a sharp, ground level view of part of a picnic train parked in the railroad-owned Meadow Park at Lyons, Colo., the Burlington's Lyons Branch. The photos
here are clearly taken after May 1906, when the locomotive was built, and if the rear two cars are what I believe them to be, the date of the photos must be either the summer of 1906 or 1907.
These two cars do not have some of the features we commonly associate with the term "observation car," and they might more appropriately have been called "excursion cars." But studying the photos and the meager roster information available, I have to believe
that these two are in fact CB&Q observation cars 700-701.
Hol
P.S. -- I'm attaching the photos of the Black Hills Cars separately, as there are too many images for a single message.