Believe me, I have driven, hiked and biked many, many miles of the old Lines West transcon. But it's just not the same without rails and a nice, plush ride. Made even worse by my knowing what it looked like with trains running.....
Rather remarkable to consider that the super dome cars lasted barely a decade in transcon service on the MILW.
It's been years since the last time I was there. One of the Milwaukee full domes had been made into a restaurant. It was called "Silver Garden. It was on the east side of Portland next to the tracks between the Burnside and Morrison bridges. I'm not sure if it is still there.
The car eventually ended up on the Ontario Northland, according to a post here: http://www.altamontpress.com/discussion/read.php?1,54515,54551,quote=1
I seem to recall that place. I took a photo of a BN train passing there about 35 years ago. Not sure if it shows in that view.
Absolutely. But what else could it be? The Santa Fe Budd-built Big Domes had fluted sides. But like the GN Great Domes, they also had longer dome windows, lower side windows, and vestibule doors in one end.
Here's how it looked after it was liberated from restaurant use in Portland: According to this info, the side fluting was added so as to match the other cars on the BC Rail dinner train: http://www.trainweb.org/web_lurker/MILWf/ After that rebuild, it looked like this:
I neglected to mention that the photo was taken somewhere along the BNSF while enroute to Minneapolis from Portland, and the motive power was SP 4449 and an Amtrak diseasel.
Thanks for posting. When I was a kid we used to take either the North Coast Limited or the Hiawatha from Montana to Chicago where we would then take the South Shore into Northern Indiana to visit relatives. Next to the dining car, I think my next favorite place was the dome car. They were not used for dining at that time, but for me it would have been the best of two worlds.
