IR saloon car 98

Salon compartment

kitchen

shower

The saloon car 98 was reserved for prominent guests of the Palestine Railways . Today it is in the Israel Railway Museum in Haifa .

history

The car

The car was built by RC&W in Birmingham in 1922, together with a second, no longer preserved saloon car, and was used by Israel Railways (IR) until the 1960s .

When delivered from the factory, the vehicle had a day salon with large, leather-covered armchairs and a well-equipped kitchen. At the end of the 1920s, the car was converted and received six beds for night trips. The salon was reduced in size and now only had a few seats. The car was damaged during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, but was subsequently repaired. After the Six Day War (1967), the Israeli army used the car body in the Refidim army base on the Sinai Peninsula as its headquarters. The car body was later returned to the IR and exhibited in the Haifa Railway Museum, which opened in 1983. The car body showed a lot of damage and the original chassis was lost.

In 2018/19 the car was fundamentally restored and missing parts from other, similar cars were added. However, the roof had to be completely replaced due to its poor state of preservation. During the restoration, six different paints were uncovered and kept open in a suitable “window”. The exterior paintwork corresponds to the color scheme from 1950, as do the re-attached plaques with the IR symbol.

Users

Prominent users of the car were: King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1931), Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (1936), Winston Churchill , the Israeli President Yizchak Ben Zwi and the Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion and Moshe Sharet .

Worth knowing

The vehicle is probably the only surviving one of the former Palestine Railways that has ever made it as far as Istanbul : With a delegation from the Palestinian Railways to the Middle East Railways Conference in 1947.
The following are still preserved: The saloon car no. 97, although not restored and on display today in the old Be'er Scheva station . Salon car 95 has also been preserved, but has lost its bogies and is now used as an exhibition space in Kfar Yehoshua station .

literature

Paul Cotterell: The Railways of Palestine and Israel . Tourret Books, Abingdon 1984, ISBN 0-905878-04-3

Web links

Ann Goldberg: A train lover's joy . In: Jerusalem Post, October 25, 2006; accessed on October 23, 2019.

Individual evidence

↑ Cotterell, p. 35
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d History and Nostalgia: Restauration of PR Saloon 98 . In: HaRakevet 126 (September 2019), p. 5
↑ Cotterell, p. 37
↑ Walter Rothschild: Arthur Kirby and the Last Years of Palestine Railways 1945-1948 . Dissertation 2007 University of London . Private print 2009, note 35
^ Information from Chen Melling, director of the Israel Railway Museum, Haifa.

[1] Cotterell, p. 35

[xx-2] History and Nostalgia: Restauration of PR Saloon 98 . In: HaRakevet 126 (September 2019), p. 5

[3] Cotterell, p. 37

[4] Walter Rothschild: Arthur Kirby and the Last Years of Palestine Railways 1945-1948 . Dissertation 2007 University of London . Private print 2009, note 35

[5] Information from Chen Melling, director of the Israel Railway Museum, Haifa.