Dome Car - History

History

Although the design of a dome car can be likened to a cupola caboose, the dome car's development is not directly related. The earliest documented predecessor of the dome car was first developed in the 1880s; known at the time as the "birdcage car", it was used on an 1882 sightseeing tour on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. In 1891, T. J. McBride received a patent for a car design called an "observation-sleeper"; illustrations of the design in Scientific American at the time showed a car with three observation domes. Canadian Pacific Railway used "tourist cars" with raised, glass-sided viewing cupolas on their trains through the Canadian Rocky Mountains in the 1920s.

These dome car designs did not prove successful, and further refinements to the idea didn't come for a few decades. The first successful dome cars were conceived by Cyrus Osborn of General Motors Electro-Motive Division (EMD). In 1944, while traveling in an EMD-built Rio Grande locomotive through Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, it was Mr. Osborn that recognized the wonderful views the passengers could enjoy from a panoramic dome. His idea was to provide a full 360-degree view from above the train in newly built "Vista-Dome" cars.

Mr. Osborn took the idea to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q). The CB&Q took a stainless steel Budd-built coach and rebuilt it at their shops in Aurora, Illinois, with the Vista Dome imagined and sketched by Cyrus Osborn. The dome area featured seats that were positioned lengthwise in the cabin facing double-pane windows which were designed to improve insulation. This first Vista Dome was called appropriately, Silver Dome. On July 23, 1945, the car was tested in the consist of the Twin Cities Zephyr. Vista Domes quickly found their way into many Burlington Zephyr consists, culminating in 1949 with the inauguration of the California Zephyr.

Soon after Silver Dome entered service, railroad managers and passenger train executives met to discuss the merits of the dome car design. In the United States, domes could only be readily used on railroads west of the Mississippi, due to lower clearances in tunnels in the eastern USA. (In Canada, Canadian Pacific would run its domes from coast to coast.) The managers also noted that the passenger carrying space was regarded as non-revenue space because the managers believed that passengers would not want to spend their entire trip in the domes. These factors and the added costs of car construction in adding stairs, two levels of car floors and air conditioning increased the costs to railroads that chose to operate dome cars.

Despite the costs involved, Pullman completed the first four production dome cars for GM's Train of Tomorrow in 1947. The four cars, dubbed Astra Liners, were similar to Silver Dome and were displayed to the press on numerous private charters and to the public at the Chicago Railroad Fairs in 1948 and 1949 before they were sold to Union Pacific Railroad for use between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. Other passenger car manufacturers soon built their own dome car models to compete with Pullman; Budd's first domes, completed in Fall 1947, were the first to feature curved glass and full streamlining effects on the domes and entered service on the Burlington's Twin Zephyrs between Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Pere Marquette Railroad was the first to operate dome cars east of Chicago in 1948, and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became the first railroad to operate dome cars on the east coast when it added domes to the Baltimore-Chicago Columbian. B&O also went so far as to add floodlights on the roofs of its dome cars to illuminate the scenery during nighttime travel.

On September 14, 1950, a monument was established at Glenwood Canyon. Called "Monument to an Idea", this monument celebrated the Vista Dome at the place where it was first inspired. In the late 1980s, the monument was moved to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado, to make way for expansion of Interstate 70.

The first ten full-length domes were built by Pullman for the Milwaukee Road's Chicago-Seattle Olympian Hiawatha. The Milwaukee Road paid $320,000 each for their "Super Domes" and used them on that route until 1961, after which four cars remained in service between Chicago and the Twin Cities; these last four were sold to Amtrak upon its formation in 1971. Like most Pullman domes the Milwaukee domes were 15 ft 6 in tall rather than the Budd/ACF standard 15 ft 10 in. The Santa Fe and Great Northern also bought full-length domes from Budd in 1954 and 1955. All but one of Santa Fe's cars were sold to Auto-Train in 1971.

Since the 1980s dome cars have become rare since Amtrak introduced Superliner bi-level passenger cars that are 16 feet tall over the length of the car (but at a stretch the Superliner lounge car could be considered a dome car). Dome cars are very popular on tourist railways and private charter rail services. While the dome car is a mostly North American feature, a few also operate in the scenic areas of Europe.