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Caption: n the waning hours of a cold and blustery Sunday afternoon, the 28th of January 1968, CNR Northern 6218 heads home to Toronto. Passing Brechin, near Mileage 72 of the Bala Sub, the train has almost completed a circle around Ontario's Lake Simcoe. The trip, sponsored by the Upper Canada Railway Society, had traversed 98.8 miles of the Newmarket Sub along the west side of the lake to Washago, junction with the Bala Sub. After that, 88.9 miles down the Bala Sub would bring the excursion train back to Union Station.
The consist featured B&O's Moonlight Dome, which CN leased for Centennial Year and into the early part of 1968. C&O had ordered the car from Budd for its ill-fated Chessie in 1946. Dubbed a Strata-Dome, it featured three drawing rooms, a bedroom and five roomettes. When delivered in December 1950, it was sold to the B&O and used every other day on the Chicago - Jersey City / Baltimore Shenandoah until October 1963. It then served as a backup car to mates Starlight Dome and Sunlight Dome on the Capitol Limited. B&O leased the three cars to the Atlantic Coast Line for use between Richmond and Miami on its Florida Special in 1965-66. After serving with CN, B&O leased it to the SCL in July 1968 and sold it to them in September 1969. Again it served on the Florida Special.
With the advent of Amtrak, the car served until its sale in 1978. It had a variety of owners until 2014 when Birch Grove LLC purchased the dome and based it in Chicago.
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Back in the seventies, I was at a slide show in Edmonton and there was a slide, possibly in the collection of Clayton Jones, of one of these cars being coupled up to an old combine in the Edmonton CN coachyard. The story was the regular coach for the Heinsburg local was bad ordered and all that was in the coachyard in running order that day was this B&O sleeper dome. Must have been a treat for the few riders who took that train.
How cool. I’ll have to ask Clayton about that image.
I was on that excursion. I remember a CN employee (maybe two) showing people around the dome-sleeper. Some rooms were set up for day use and some had the beds down.
Interesting. I imagine that the dome was standing room only. I was a dedicated chaser for most of the trips in that era. I recall that it was a long trip home to Ottawa along Highway 7. We enjoyed a snowstorm for most of the trip!
What a capture Bill!