Sun Lounge

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Hollywood Beach Train Sun Lounge

Sun Lounge was the name of three streamlined sleeping and dining cars with unusual skylights, which imitated the impression of a viewing car on routes with a narrow clearance because the tunnels on the east coast of the USA are too small for viewing cars. The Sun Lounge cars were built by the Pullman-Standard company in 1956 for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad . They were used by the Seaboard Railroad Company in their high-quality Silver Meteor trains between New York City and Miami and later by the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad and Amtrak .

design

The interior of the Sun Lounge with the unusual roof windows in the 1960s

The design goes back to the Vista Dome , which was tested from 1945. The dome of these cars had longitudinally built seats opposite double-glazed viewing windows with good thermal insulation. Although they were popular with travelers, they could not be used on most routes because they would not have fit through the tunnels. Even the low- rise strata dome designed by Pullman Standard for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway could not be used north of Washington, DC .

The concept of a Sun Lounge or Sun Parlor car was not new to the railroad. The Panama Limited trains the Illinois Central Railroad had in 1911 a Sun Parlor - observation car with surrounding windows and a mahogany -Inneneinrichtung. Since 1931, the Seaboard Railway Company has been using a Lounge Sun Parlor Car on the Southern States Special trains on the route from New York to Florida.

Seaboard asked Pullman for a combined sleeping and dining car that would reflect the atmosphere of a viewing car in a one-story car. The Sun Lounge designed by Pullman had two parts: at one end there were five double cabins, and the other half was a combination of dining and lounge. The lounge was unique because the large side and roof windows gave the impression of a lookout car even without a dome. The interior was in an informal Florida style with lamps made from driftwood. It has been described as something new to the railroad in contemporary advertising literature.

History of use

Pullman supplied three Sun Lounges to the Seaboard Railroad Company named Miami Beach , Palm Beach and Hollywood Beach . All three were used for the Silver Meteor trains from 1956 . When Seaboard merged with its former competitor Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1967 and operated jointly as Seaboard Coast Line Railroad , the Sun Lounges remained in operation under the new names Sun View , Sun Beam and Sun Ray . Amtrak inherited all three Sun Lounges in 1971. Sun View was decommissioned in 1977, Sun Beam and Sun Ray followed in 1981. None of the three cars was converted to end-of-line power as part of the Heritage Fleet Program.

Sun Beam was scrapped in the 1980s. The other two cars are privately owned.

Web links

Commons : Sun Lounge  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John H. White: The American Railroad Passenger Car 1. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 1985, ISBN 0-8018-2722-1 . P. 197
  2. ↑ Craig Sanders: Limiteds, locals, and expresses in Indiana, 1838-1971. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2003, ISBN 0-253-34216-3 . P. 39
  3. ^ Dome Cars Due On Florida Special. In: Palm Beach Post . November 21, 1965, accessed June 8, 2014 .
  4. ^ Arthur D. Dubin: The Panama Limited . In: Trains . tape March 23 , 1963, p. 21 ( trains.com [PDF]).
  5. ^ New Parlor Cars Operate To City. In: Evening Independent . January 7, 1931, accessed June 8, 2014 .
  6. ^ Mike Schafer, Joe Welsh: Classic American Streamliners. MotorBooks International, Osceola, WI 1997, ISBN 0-7603-0377-0 . P. 102
  7. ↑ Bob Johnston, Joe Welsh, Mike Schafer: The Art of the Streamliner. Metro Books, New York 2001, ISBN 1-58663-146-2 . Pp. 66-67
  8. ↑ Sun Lounge Sleeping Cars and Center-Lounge Coaches for your Seaboard Trip to Florida and the South! In: Sunday Herald. November 13, 1955, accessed May 17, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Joe Welsh, Bill Howes, Kevin J. Holland: The Cars of Pullman . Voyageur Press , 2010, ISBN 0-7603-3587-7 , pp. 159 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  10. ↑ Elbert Simon, David C. Warner: Amtrak by the numbers: a comprehensive passenger car and motive power roster, 1971-2011. White River Productions, Kansas City, MO 2011, ISBN 978-1-932804-12-9 . P. 129
  11. ↑ SAL-Seaboard Air Line. Retrieved May 24, 2014 .