| Amtrak Baggage 1139 in Chicago, Illinois on an unknown day in April 1982, Kodachrome by Chuck Zeiler. PLEASE SEE COMMENT BELOW. According to the book, Amtrak By The Numbers, there were two AMTK 1139's, the one pictured is second 1139. The first 1139 was built by ACF in 1946-1947 as NYC 9170, became AMTK 1241, then AMTK 1139, then AMTK 695 (power car), retired in 1996. Second AMTK 1139 is a different story, the following information differs from the book, but the author(s) of the book have confirmed that Ted Brumberg (the comment below) is correct and offer corrections to the book at www.amtrakbythenumbers.com. While it resembles an ACF aluminum car, hence the rivet detail, the car was actually built by Saint Louis Car Company in 1962 as UP 6328, after ACF ended their building of passenger cars. The StLCCo. was a small builder of streamline equipment, including the former Army troop hospital and kitchen cars that went on to serve AMTK into the 1980s. After around 1960 StLCCo. began constructing cars for several roads after ACF left the market, following construction plans and diagrams previously developed by the railroads. What is more, 1139 was not sold to Amtrak until 1977 (becoming AMTK 1077), being rebuilt to HEP sometime after 1984 (becoming second AMTK 1139). It's worth noting that any time you find a smooth sided, non-Budd passenger car (baggage and coaches) in the Phase III striping (like on 1139) it was a St. Louis Car Co. car... pretty much the only other builder whose cars were actually in good enough shape to be rebuilt with HEP (the other exception were a couple of ex-Southern Railway baggage cars built by Pullman Standard as baggage - mail, becoming AMTK 1126 and 1127 after being converted... a testament to the extent of maintenance the SOU strived to maintain when keeping their passenger cars in good shape). For the record, the book shows AMTK 1139 as ex-UP 6331, which actually became AMTK 1126, sold in 1992. |