A Brief History of the NYC-3 Private Rail Car

The mid to late 1800's was an age of great Westward expansion and the founding of industry in the United States, led first by the steel industrialists and the great railroad builders and followed closely by the first oil industrialists. Huge fortunes were built in these industries as well as in the financial support industries. Names of multi-millionaires like Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Rockefeller became household words that are still well known today.

This railroad car, New York Central 3, was built for Harold Sterling Vanderbilt, who worked as a director of the railroad founded by his family three generations previously. The car, built in 1928, was a typical executive car of this grand era. Such cars were called "private varnish" because of their varnished woodwork and exclusive uses; they served as traveling offices and hotels, and were used for railroad inspections as well as for personal travel and for business entertainment. NYC 3 frequently played host to film celebrities, wealthy tycoons, and even presidential campaigners in what politicians of the day called "whistle-stop" tours: Trains would stop in small towns and politicians would give speeches from the back platform before waving goodbye as the train departed. Adlai Stevenson campaigned on NYC 3 in this manner in his 1956 campaign against President Eisenhower and, far more recently, opera singer Cecilia Bartoli enjoyed its comforts between New York and her West Coast debut in Los Angeles.

As the railroads in the Northeast merged, the car continued to be utilized by high level railroad executives. It was re-numbered as Penn Central 4 around 1968 and subsequently as Conrail 1. By the mid 1970's, many railroads had reduced their business car fleets and limited those that remained to only a few very senior executives. In 1978, the car was sold to a private railroad enthusiast who simply stored the car for 10 years. It was then purchased by a freight car rebuilding shop in Jacksonville, FL and was fully restored and upgraded mechanically in the early 1990's so as to qualify for 110 mph travel on Amtrak. It has undergone significant improvements annually ever since.

The present owner obtained the car in 1992, and, with the aid of original Pullman builders photographs supplied with the car, remodeled it to "approximately 1930's appearance with Y2K mechanics and conveniences." The floor plan is as originally designed with the exception that the working tile fireplace in the dining room was removed during a major renovation following World War II.

Since 1992, the car has traveled more than 300,000 miles, crossing the entire United States and Canada a number of times. Most of the trips were chartered by groups of interested travelers - e.g., 4 couples traveling together; some were chartered by individual wealthy people for personal trips or special occasions; some were marketed on a per-person individual ticket basis; and some were private trips for those who own and maintain the car. (Maintenance is very time-consuming and costly, involving many hundreds of volunteer or professional man-hours. In 1997, the wheels and trucks (the huge wheel frame assemblies) were replaced; the truck rebuild alone cost over $100,000 and required more than 1300 man hours of labor!). Currently, there are approximately 15 privately-owned business cars certified for travel on Amtrak. Privately owned cars of other design types - e.g., sleeping cars, dining cars, lounge cars and dome cars--raise the total number of "Amtrakable" private cars to more than 50.