Party Cars : Lonesome Whistle Seldom Blows on Excursions Aboard Privately Owned Classics of Railroading’s Glamorous Past

The 572 to San Diego lumbered into the Fullerton Amtrak station, and the weekend vacationers climbed in to begin the search for seats.

All except R.N. Basich of Laguna Beach. He strolled to the rear of the train and stepped aboard something very different. Compared to the sleek, airline-style cars to the front, this car was beefy and solid and looked cast-iron heavy. Carefully lettered on its silver sides was “The City of Cleveland.”

Inside, it was an entirely different scene than in the Amtrak cars up front. Here a party was well under way. The galley stove had been glowing and the liquor flowing since the train had left Los Angeles. A waiter in traditional white coat and black trousers brought Bloody Marys to the 20 or so people who sat and chatted in the lounge. There was a view unobstructed by seats to the sides and to the rear and from any of the five first-class bedrooms up front.

Nobody asked for Basich’s ticket, because he and a friend from Pasadena own the car. Selling building materials is Basich’s living, but this artifact from the streamliner era is his passion. He speaks of it in terms of the “joy of restoration” and the “satisfaction in a delightful way to travel.”

“The best way I can describe it is, you can be lying in bed or maybe sitting up with some pillows behind you, and out the window the United States is passing in parade. And if you want, you can have a cocktail in hand. It’s almost like you’re at home and your home is going touring.”

Basich’s railroad car would be the biggest recreational vehicle in Orange County if it weren’t for the seven other zealots who keep equally big private railroad cars on Orange County sidings. They have at least two things in common with Basich: a love for the old-style, first-class grace of the streamliners and a willingness to spend, spend, spend.

“It started out as a hobby,” said Dave Rohr of Fullerton, who owns a dome/lounge/observation car. “The car was only $12,000, but I’ve got 10 to 20 times that invested now. It’s a black hole.”

Because of this economic pressure, Rohr, like the others, has converted his beloved black hole into a business. Consequently, anyone with a fat check can have his own private railroad car for a day or week or whatever he can afford. He and a goodly group of his friends can be pampered by porters and waiters and chefs who look and act like the real railroad porters and waiters and chefs of 40 or 50 years ago.

They will serve drinks, cook sumptuous meals, fluff the pillows in the berths and turn down the bunks in the bedrooms. Leave out your shoes and they will shine them while you sleep in a self-contained world separate even from the train that’s pulling you.

According to Amtrak, which attaches private cars to its regular trains for a fee, the private car business has been growing by leaps and bounds. Art Lloyd, Amtrak’s spokesman in San Francisco who had charge of private car traffic in Amtrak’s early days, said the traffic has doubled since 1980 and quadrupled since Amtrak was formed in 1971. “California probably has more private cars than anywhere else,” he said. “There’s a private car on almost every train that leaves San Francisco for Chicago, and there are private cars on a lot of the San Diego trains.” Basich, board chairman and a founder of the American Assn. of Private Railroad Car Owners, said that when the group formed about 10 years ago, there were only about 20 private cars in use. “There are over 200 active cars in the U.S. now,” he said.

The boom came from Amtrak’s replacement of old railroad cars with newer ones in the 1970s. The best of the old cars were bought up, some at prices cheaper than an economy automobile. Although prices have risen, the old cars will still be bought when available until the supply runs out, Basich said. “No one is making these cars anymore.” Anyone along the Orange County mainline last Super Bowl Sunday would have seen a string of such cars headed to and from San Diego loaded with partying football fans. Inside they were re-creating the Great Gatsby era with decorations and music.

The previous day there had been another private car to San Diego, this one filled with family and friends throwing a surprise birthday party for a train buff. “They just went down and turned around and came back,” said Wayne Penn of Newport Beach, owner of the dome club car they chartered. “All they were interested in was the train ride.”

“San Diego’s our most frequent destination,” said Randy Schlotthauer of Fullerton, who arranges private-car trips through his Slotzy Tours and Travel business. “They party down and party back.” Likewise, San Francisco is popular. Both trips can be made without having to spend the night on the train.

But spending the night is part of the romance for some, and they insist on it. “The Orient Express comes to mind,” Schlotthauer said. “People think, ‘What was it like to ride those great trains?’ ”

Consequently, the cars have gone considerable distances: to the Rocky Mountains for the fall foliage; to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras; to Seattle and then across Canada; far into Mexico.

The trip to New Orleans takes two days and two nights. You can fly there quicker and cheaper, but that’s not the point, said Bryan Reese of Orange, who runs Classic Rail Travel Co.

“We don’t sell transportation, we sell entertainment. You look at the cruise ship market and how it’s booming--this has that in common,” Reese said. “You can fly coast-to-coast for $129. Our excursions run $150 to $200 a day per person. So generally it’s upper-middle-class people, usually 45 or older, who go along. And generally they’re not train freaks.”

“For the most part, rail buffs don’t have that kind of money,” Schlotthauer said.

Sometimes for those with the money, the train becomes a new party venue. “They’ve done yachts, they’ve done tent parties, they’re looking for something different to do,” Schlotthauer said. “Last Christmas, I chartered a black-tie banquet for 90 people on the train to San Diego and back. We served hors d’oeuvres on the way down, dinner on the way back: ham, turkey, trimmings, salad, dessert and fruit. Next year (the hostess) wants to do it on a 747. After that, the Space Shuttle, I guess.”

Schlotthauer said he has arranged bachelor parties, ski parties (for people who can’t bear flying), and once received a query for a train charter to Catalina Island. He said that during a charter to Las Vegas two men were posted on the open observation platform to prevent revelers from falling off. “We had to carry one of (the revelers) off the train after we pulled in,” Schlotthauer said.

Last fall, Penn transported a group of UCLA football boosters to Stanford, “and that’s a party all the way up and back, regardless of whether they win.” (They won, 49-0.)

The fees the parties pay--usually between $2,800 and $3,500 just for a day trip to and from San Diego, according to Penn--are not making anyone rich. Rohr, the only Orange County owner devoting himself to the business full time, said he is just beginning to break even. The reason, he said, is the expense of maintaining the cars.

“You have to like trains, because it takes a lot of time. You have to know a little about everything: wheels, trucks, brakes, electrical systems--and most cars have two or three different voltage systems.

“It ain’t cheap. You start working on something and it’s three times heavier and beefier than it looks. My car weighs 152,000 pounds. Some weigh 200,000 or so.”

One of those “heavyweights,” as they are known, is parked on an Anaheim siding and owned by Gordon Crosthwait of Baywood Park near San Luis Obispo. It was built in 1926 to be a Santa Fe cafe/observation car, but it has been remade by Crosthwait into a combination diner, lounge and sleeping car. Its original wicker seats are now plush parlor chairs, and the carpet suggests an antebellum plantation house. The original “enunciator,” the doorbell-type system for summoning the waiter, has been left in place and still works. Crosthwait believes in customizing cars.

Behind it on the same siding is Reese’s diner--one-third kitchen, one-third lunch counter, one-third dining room. It is one of 10 built for the Western Pacific Railroad’s streamliners, and Reese has gone to great pains to keep the interior original, even down to the railroad menus and notices. “My philosophy is, you keep the interior original, but what you don’t see, you modernize,” Reese said.

That invariable means doing a lot of the work yourself, but, according to Basich, that is no deterrent to anyone who would buy such a thing in the first place.

“You get the same satisfaction you get from restoring old automobiles or anything like that. People like to tinker and make old machines live and run again. Some people are just mechanically inclined, but they’re attorneys and accountants, so they get out their tools and overalls and work on this huge machine on weekends.”

Like Charles and Mona Lowe, who live in Yucca Valley near Palm Springs but live much of the time in the railroad cars they are restoring on an Anaheim siding. The family business deals in real estate and fire alarm installation. After the Lowes chartered and discovered the pleasures of private railroad car travel in 1984, the business included railroad cars.

“It’s a wonderful ego trip,” Charles Lowe said. “I mean, you walk into a group, and they’re saying, ‘I got a Rolls-Royce’ and ‘I got a Mercedes,’ and I say, ‘Well, I’ve got a 1949 Pullman, and I got about $140,000 in it so far.”

ARRANGING A TRIP These people and firms arrange trips in their railroad cars based in Orange County: Acme Tonopah Co. P.O. Box 47 La Quinta, Calif. 92253 (619) 365-2286 or (619) 564-3440 Charters only R. N. Basich 28831 Top of the World Drive Laguna Beach, Calif. 92651 (714) 494-6704 Charters only Classic Rail Travel Co.P.O. Box 6102 Laguna Niguel, Calif. 92677 (714) 495-6314 Charters and excursions Gordon Crosthwait 969 Santa Ysabel Ave. Baywood Park, Calif. 93402 (805) 528-1002 Charters only Golden Spike Tours P.O. Box 3429 Fullerton, Calif. 92634 (714) 680-5090 Charters and excursions Bill Hatrick 2054 S. Halladay St. Santa Ana, Calif. 92707 (714) 549-2162 Charters only Slotsy Tours and Travel 1821 W. Commonwealth Ave., Suite H Fullerton, Calif. 92633 (714) 870-8641 or (800) 432-3200 Charters and excursions Zephyr Rail Travel 6308 W. Coast Highway Newport Beach, Calif. 92663 (714) 839-0720 or (714) 645-7171 Charters and excursions