Amtrak #4 (the eastbound Chief) had a guest in its consist today, the trailing car was BNSF full dome #30, Glacier View. I saw this today at the Aurora Transportation center today where #3 and #4 met (quite a site to see both these trains together on the elevated main line through Aurora)
…Wonder if that full length dome was functioning as a BNSF business car or a priviately owned unit…?
From this site: http://www.trainweb.org/web_lurker/GNf/
This section covers the six full-length dome lounge cars built by Budd in 1955 for service on the Great Northern “Empire Builder”. Although they are referred to as “Great” domes, GN applied that term to ALL their domes, including the “short” coaches, using the “Great” to reference their road name rather than the size of the car.
Although all were painted in GN colors, 1395 was purchased by CB&Q as its’ share of the Empire Builder “pool”. The cars were reserved for Pullman passengers. During the “BN” renumbering scheme of 1970, all of these cars retained their original GN/CBQ numbers. All of them were later sold to Amtrak and became Amtrak 9360-9365.
“Glacier View” - to BN 3/70 (same number), to Amtrak 9360, used on Amtrak’s “Empire Builder” until replaced by Superliners and retired 4/81, then sold/traded (for baggage cars!!!) to the BN in 1983 to become BNA-24 “Glacier View” and was assigned Amtrak private car number 800075. To BNSF ownership 9/95. Smooth siding panels were removed and replaced with fluted siding as BNSF 30 (1997) - car name retained.