I’m wondering if anyone knows if there are any tourist or excursion railroads still using steam heat in the passenger cars. How about baker heaters? I’ve never even seen one of those but they were pretty common 100 years ago.
I am not aware of any operators of trains using steam heat at all, perhaps there is one: Strasburg. I know, since when I was down there last in October,1994 it was kinda crisp in the morning and both 31 and 90 had their steam lines hooked up and the cars were nicely heated. It is possible C&TS, the Durango & Silverton, and White Pass use steam heat, but I do not know if they do.
I suppose not that many excursion/tourist routes run in the winter. Possibly the Grand Canyon RR ?? I know they run year round.
The Valley RR in Essex.
Baker heaters were around more recently than one hundred years I can think of one streamliner that was equipped with Baker heaters the Great Northern Red River cars were equipped with baker heaters as they were left at the depot overnight in Grand Forks while the E-7 was tucked away in a round house for the next mornings run to the Twin Cities.
Mid-Continent still uses steam heat.
Though not tourist or excursion, I believe the UP’s cars are still steam heated via steam generators on the units …yes or no you guys ???
One reason for this being that cold temperatures are extremely hard on car interiors and stored cars need to be constantly heated in cold weather. Easiest way is to connect all of them in a line and run steam from a stationary company source through the whole line.
In the summer they sit there and bake to a nice sweltering inside temp, but in the winter those cars are kept comfortably warm at considerable company expense.
I believe all the U.P’s business cars are equipped with head end power. One of the power cars does have a steam generator but I’ve been told that is more for keeping the steamers warm when laying over or for getting them fired up from a cold start when out on the road.
Some of the coaches at Steamtown have operational steam heat. The two road engines have all the plumbing to provide the steam, and it works. We do run some specials in the winter months.