Milwaukee Road Hiawatha Sky-top lounge cars

[CSXPAID]

Hello all,

I work as a Conductor for CSX out of Willard Ohio, and on my way to Cleveland yesterday I saw a sad site on a westbound train!!! There was a two flat cars behind the engines and the load that was on them was two Milwaukee Road Hiawatha Sky-top lounge cars that were cut up into sections, and I think it is sad that people care more about scrap value than history!!!!

I can not confirm this but I believe the cars were from the Landsdowne great lakes car ferry. Growing up outside of Detroit the Landsdowne was a resturant moored on the Detroit River! It had two skytop lounges on it that served as the dining room! It shut down about 20 years ago and disappeared from the river front, and as of 2005 it was sitting somewhere near Buffalo with a hole in the side half underwater with the sky tops still on it. The last I heard she was going to be scraped along with the cars!! Why the cars did'nt go to a museam is beyond me.

It is truly a sad day in railroad history



The Landsdowne as of December 2005

Later,

Devlyn

 

[stationmaster]

A bit of history, gone forever.

Bob

 

[Espeefan]

I have seen this photo before. Up here in WI, where the Milwaukee Road is almost a religion, there were several discussions. Seems that all that was left of the cars was the outer body shells. No chassis or running gear, and what there was had been badly damaged by corrosion. Not enough left to save unfortunately. There is a surviving example of the car though and it operates regularly on excursions up here.

 

[UP2CSX]

Yeah, I can't imagine how cars that have been gutted and sitting half underwater qualifes as anything but a faint ghost of itself. The time to do something was before the cars were gutted and used as part of a restaurant.