# VIA's Budd Baggage Cars



## Blackwolf (Dec 15, 2011)

Idle curiosity...

Looking through some of my photos taken while riding The Canadian in 2008, I realized that the baggage on my train had several windows along one half of the car. The car was VIA #8609. After doing some research on the web, I've found that this car and several others like it were former Canadian Pacific property and originally contained dorm berths (roomettes?) and a shower for the train crew as well as an office for the conductor. From what I remember of #8609, it had long been stripped of the crew accommodations and was a pure baggage.

Does VIA still run Bag/Dorms on any of their trains, or have all of them been gutted to be pure baggage cars by now?

Considering Amtrak's move to re-introduce Bag/Dorms with the Viewliner II's, I have to wonder why VIA would have ever gotten rid of the concept in the first place considering they had cars specifically built like that. On my Canadian trip the crew were bunking in the room-for-one accommodations on the Chateau and Manor cars, taking up revenue space (and the sleeper spaces were sold-out, even in February!)


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## Bill Haithcoat (Dec 15, 2011)

Blackwolf said:


> Idle curiosity...
> 
> Looking through some of my photos taken while riding The Canadian in 2008, I realized that the baggage on my train had several windows along one half of the car. The car was VIA #8609. After doing some research on the web, I've found that this car and several others like it were former Canadian Pacific property and originally contained dorm berths (roomettes?) and a shower for the train crew as well as an office for the conductor. From what I remember of #8609, it had long been stripped of the crew accommodations and was a pure baggage.
> 
> ...


I do not have an answer for your exact question.

But I can give you a brief overall view of preVia equipment.

You may know that the U.S. fell in love with diesels, streamlining, stainless steel etc in the late thirties and it picked up again after the war.

The two big Canadian lines, Canadian Pacific and Canadian National did not do that until 1954-55

Then in 1954=55 both lines ordered massive amounts of beautiful streamlined equipment. The CP ordered unpainted stainless steel. The CN ordered equipment which was equally beautiful but, not being stainless steel, did not hold up as long.

This was huge big news at the time. Even I, nine or ten years old in far-away Chattanooga was very excitd about it.

At that time there were two transcons on the CP, the Canadian and the Dominion. On the CN there was the Super Continental and the Continental.

Today's Canadian, using CP equipment,actually runs on the CN route.

SO, what I am trying to say to you, if you are interested in things Canadian, no railfun can overlook this event in the mid 50s. NOTE, there MAY have been a few red painted lightweight cars scattered around somewhere in Canada but nothing which remorely tops this.

the CP did aquire some US cars in later years, supplement the big bulk buy described above.

This may seem so long ago, but I promise you that placing the order would have been considered breaking news on CNN if there had been such a thing back then.


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## Blackwolf (Dec 15, 2011)

Bill Haithcoat said:


> I do not have an answer for your exact question.
> 
> But I can give you a brief overall view of preVia equipment.
> 
> ...


Bill,

Yup! I'm many decades too young to have had experience with the introduction of streamliner service in Canada, but I still enjoy that move when ever I am north of the 48th as much as I can. Keep 'em alive and running across the Transcon as long as sanely possible! Via does keep a very good list of their active fleet online, including some of the oddities (such as the former FEC 1939 Budd-built club-bullet lounge "Palisades") I imagine the interior layouts are virtually unchanged from OE specifications in most of the cars, but it would be interesting to know if the Dorm/Baggage build still survives in at least a few of the cars.


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## NS VIA Fan (Dec 15, 2011)

As built, the CP baggage dorms had 15 bunks, 3 tiers high in an open room. The cars went to VIA in the late '70s. They were rebuilt into full baggage cars in the early '80 then HEPed around 1990.

VIA also acquired several exUP baggage cars and these were also rebuilt as part of the HEP program. These are smooth side stainless-steel......not "fluted" like the exCP cars. When they were operating on the UP, they were RPO's.......look closely (panel below windows) you can still read: United States Mail Railway Post Office.


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