I was buying a train ticket on-line when an accidental click of the mouse landed me in an obscure spur of Via Rail's website. Instead of the “schedules” page, I reached the “Private Railcar” section, which said: “Owners of a private railcar can couple it to a Via Rail train.” It included a list of fees for railway services, such as switching and hook-ups.
Private railcars? I knew that Gilded Age industrialists once used these vehicles to travel to their summer homes, and I remembered from history class that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in one. But who, I asked myself, would still have their own luxurious railway car in the 21st century?
High costs and a tight regulatory environment have made it difficult for Canadian private-railcar owners to run their rolling stock on anything but private tracks. South of the border, however, members of the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners regularly couple their prized cars to the back of Amtrak trains, or hire freight engines to pull the cars along less-travelled short-line railways. This means AAPRCO owners can send their cars just about anywhere Amtrak goes, including Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto. Most of the cars are available for charter, and the ability to travel like yesterday's elite is catching on with families, history buffs, and even corporate groups looking for an unusual — and impressive — venue for a meeting.
AAPRCO recently held its annual convention in Scranton, Pa., and I met its historic convoy — comprised entirely of members' cars — as it rolled from Niagara Falls, N.Y., to Buffalo. The two sleek Amtrak locomotives pulling the train into the Buffalo station were the only two pieces that matched. From there on, the train was a trip through North American railway history, with sedate classics from the 1920s coupled to streamliners from the fifties. There were 16 cars in total, all of them wearing different livery and all of them spotless. I hopped aboard the car on the very end, the Chapel Hill.
This beauty, I learned, is one of the brightest stars in the private-railcar universe. Built in 1922 for the heiress of the Post cereal fortune, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and her husband, stockbroker E.F. Hutton, the Chapel Hill — originally christened Hussar — spent the first part of its life shuttling the couple from New York City to Palm Beach in the winter, and to the Adirondacks in the summer.
After the Huttons' predictable divorce, the car was sold to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in 1937 for use as an office car. In 1971, it was declared surplus, and bought by enthusiast DeWitt Chapple. The affable Cincinnatian gave me a tour and showed me that, aside from regular upgrades to running gear and conveniences, it's the same car that once hosted travelling parties for New York City's elite.
The observation room at the rear is panelled in thick mahogany, as are the dining room, the four bedrooms, and the corridor that ties everything together. The ancient brass speedometer in the master suite was out of order, but it was amusing to imagine how many passengers ended their champagne-and-caviar evenings by hanging their tuxedo in the closet and glancing at the instrument to marvel at the speed of modern travel before slipping into sheets of Egyptian cotton.
The Chapel Hill isn't a relic, however. Like most of the cars that made up this train, it has modern amenities such as GPS tracking, satellite radio and a flat-screen TV concealed in the opulence. Clear the silver off the dining table, and you're sitting in what has to be one of North America's most unusual meeting rooms.
