| Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Business Car 98 westbound on the rear of a CB&Q steam fan trip at Naperville, Illinois, October 17, 1965, Kodachrome by Chuck Zeiler. This car was on a few of the steam excursions led by 4960. It is seen here on a round trip to Streator, departing Chicago at 9:00 AM DST, leaving Aurora at 10:10 AM, returning to Chicago at 6:30 PM. It was sponsored by the Illini Railroad Club, the fare was $7.50. A nice place to be sitting, in my opinion. The following is from the B&OHS publication, The Sentinel (Vol. 33, No. 2): Built by Pullman and delivered to the B&O on November 15, 1917 to Plan 3334 in Lot 4467 as the 99A, the car was quickly renumbered to 98 in 1918. A 1940 record shows the car assigned to F. G. Hoskins, general manager in Baltimore, and a 1958 record shows the car assigned to W. R. Galloway, general manager of the central region in Pittsburgh. In 1964 the car was back in Baltimore assigned to John Edwards, general manager Eastern Region. In 1955, the six-wheel trucks under the 98 were converted to roller bearing trucks at a cost of $5,205 (try to do that today for that amount of money). Those trucks are still under the car. Number 98 was sold in 1965 to Ralph Atlass of the Intermountain Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. The car was left in Baltimore & Ohio paint, according to several pictures of it running on western railroads. Later an individual in Chattanooga, Tennessee, purchased the car and donated it to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga. The then-president of the TVRM named the car Eden Isle, but retained the number 98. The car remains at TVRM and is used by the museum for charters over its six-mile railroad from Grand Junction Station to East Chattanooga Station and Charters range from $600 to $1600 depending on the trip. While the interior of the car is much the way it was in B&O service, the outside is now painted in an attractive maroon with gold lettering and striping. In their history of the 98, the TVRM states the car was assigned to an executive vice president of the Baltimore and Ohio and that could explain its low number, since cars with numbers 97 to 100 were normally assigned to top executives. They also show the car being rebuilt by the railroad in 1935, but that has not been verified. That could have been when air conditioning was added to the car. It remains a mystery why the car was first numbered 99A. Perhaps it was intended to back up Daniel Willard’s car 99, since he was known to travel the railroad extensively in his position as president. It was long before Universal Machine Language Equipment Register requirements that there be no alphas in the number field. The 99A number appears to have been assigned to the car for less than a year. |