Nomad Presidential Car

Last year, the Nomad became the oldest private car in the U.S. in daily service. This graceful car has a long and distinguished, if not complicated, history.

In 1878, General Palmer's fledgling Denver & Rio Grande Railway took delivery of three Horton Chair Cars: Oro, Rosita, and Fairplay. These cars represented a huge leap forward in comfort and sophistication. Constructed by the Billmeyer & Small Coachworks in York, Pennsylvania at a cost of $2,532.87 each, they were 42-feet long with 11 gracefully arched windows on each side. For the time, Horton Chair cars were regarded as the epitome of luxury on rails, featuring 25 revolving seats set in single rows along the windows.

Initial operation of these cars was between Denver and Pueblo on both the "San Juan Express" and the "Leadville Express." The Fairplay had lost its name and was numbered as "402" by 1885 and again as "Business Car N" by 1886. It was used as a mobile administrative headquarters, bringing up the rear of a three-car executive office train. By 1891, it boasted ornate silver-plated German Pintsch gas lamps, which illuminated elegant observation and parlor/dining rooms as well as a stateroom. An oversized rear platform and enclosed front vestibule were added by 1899. Railroad officials and visiting dignitaries kept this train busy throughout the vast expanding narrow gauge system. This car was even displayed at the St Louis World's Fair in 1904, and then at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.

In 1913, the D&RGRR's fleet of Business Cars lettered B, D, F, G, K, N, P and R were all reassigned to numbers, becoming B-1 thru B-8 and Car "N" became the "B-2" at Salida, Colorado.

In 1917, the owners of the Sunnyside Mine at Eureka, CO had chartered the D&RG's three-car executive train: B-1, B-2, and B-3, now known as the "Millionaire Special," to bring a party of prospective buyers to the mine, just north of Silverton. When the train was returning to Durango on January 21, it struck ice over the tracks and the locomotive and all three cars turned over. Car B-2

was on the rear and slid about 50 feet down the mountain. All three cars burned, with the venerable B-2 being the only one salvageable. The severely damaged car was shipped to the D&RG's Burnham Shops in Denver and by May of that year was back in service as the new "B-3,"
sporting a brand new interior of mahogany and birch, with the parlor, stateroom, galley, and Pullman type berths that distinguish this car today.

The new "B-3" took to the road again in 1933, traveling to the Century of Progress Fair in Chicago, then again 16 years later to the same city for Chicago's Railroad Fair of 1949. For this latter occasion, the car was painted the new "Rio Grande Gold" with black and silver accents sporting the name General William J. Palmer.

After returning to Colorado in 1950, the future of this elegant lady was uncertain at best. The D&RGW had little use for its remaining executive cars, instead focusing its attention on the modernization of its profitable standard gauge routes. It sat along with other derelict passenger equipment on an unused spur in the Alamosa yards. A July 10 mechanical department order affecting cars B-1 and B-3 read: "These cars, which were built in 1880 and 1878 respectively, are in worn out condition. As they are no longer required, they should be retired and dismantled or otherwise disposed of."

Reprieve came within a year, when a private individual came forth and paid the Rio Grande $1500.00 for the car, moving it west to Durango, where it sat quietly and inconspicuously in a trailer park just west of town for the next seven

years. Purchased in 1957 for $3000.00, the new owners, Harold Wood of Santa Fe, and his financial partner, Ted White of Albuquerque, ambitiously sought to return the car to its former glory. Returned to rails in the Durango yard, the car was finally christened as "Nomad," after a business car once used by founder General William Jackson Palmer. Painted back to its former Pullman Green livery, an additional $5,500 went into the restoration of this historic gem. By 1964, the Nomad was owned by the Cinco Animas Corporation. It joined sister business car B-2, the Cinco Animas, and for the next 16 years, made the occasional 90-mile round trip to Silverton as a charter-only private car on the rear of the D&RGW's last regularly scheduled narrow gauge trains.

When Florida businessman Charles Bradshaw Jr. bought the Silverton Branch from the Rio Grande in 1981, he also purchased the Cinco Animas and Nomad from the Cinco Animas Corporation. The now famous duo continued to ply the narrow gauge rails through the Animas Canyon as charter-only private cars on his renamed Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.

After being pulled from service in 1996, the Nomad emerged once again from the D&SNG's Car shop in December of 1999, after a complete structural and mechanical overhaul. Resplendent with new mahogany siding, Tuscan red paint and gold lettering, the Nomad resumed its respected charter duties, spending the winter months protected within the warmth of the railroad's new Roundhouse Museum. Seven years later, the Nomadwas given a complete interior remodel during the winter/spring of 2007 for daily service as a second "Presidential Class" car. The interior remodel features built-in Pullman seating, Bradbury & Bradbury hand silk-screened wallpaper on the ceiling, new velvet draperies and new carpet.

For those passengers fortunate enough to attain passage on this most remarkable of railroad treasures, sit back and relax in the Victorian opulence of a time when this mode of travel was "state-of-the-art."