Well. CSX, when I got through to a human, turns out to be polite but pricy. It works out to $4/mile or so, more than I'd hoped. On the good news front, though, I found out that a fully-converted Pullman not far from me is one year older than the one I'm looking at, and I got to tour it! The owner has put serious time and money into it, and it shows- I wish that I had pictures. He used enough of the original fixtures, details and colors to make it unmistakably a Pullman while cleaning it up and making it a home. I hope that ours will someday look as good as this one.
That $4 per mile sounds about right. The tariff rate on boxcars was $0.89 per mile 'way back in 1979 and the rate on freight cars is a lot lower than it is on locomotives or passenger cars, which are a lot more subject to vandalism or damage. You are finding that railroading is a very expensive business. We used to joke that the only thing that could be purchased for a railroad that cost less than $1000. was office supplies!
It is true. Moving the beastie from Atlanta to north of Boston (about a thousand miles northward along the east coast of America, for the Aussie contingent) is going to wind up costing as much as the car itself, I expect. I've joked about just renting a giant SUV- a Ford Excursion or something- and drag it along when the rails are clear (I figure the transmission would hold together for a couple of hundred feet, on level ground. Hills might be a bit harder)
Well! I finally got down to Washington DC where a goodly bunch of 50's Pullmans are stored.As soon as film is developed I'll put up a website with the more useful photos on it. A question for all the old railroad hands who might've worked passenger service- particularly maintenance: The car that looks superior from this lot has thick plexiglass windows- lightly shaded and nonopening. Does anyone know how to get old graffiti off of plexiglas? Right now, I've heard rumours of two chemical solutions that claim to take off paint without crazing the plexi- if I can't find them I either buy all the wet-dry sandpaper that Home Depot owns or bite the bullet and look into replacing the windows (which will probably raise the cost above my budget). Thank you all for the advice and time.
