Hunters Point

Hunters Point

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HISTORIC BACKGROUND: Our sleeping car, Hunters Point, was built in 1941 by the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company for service on the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific-Chicago & North Western Railroad's passenger train- the Streamliner City of San Francisco. The car served on the east-west journey throughout the 1940s and 50s. About 1954, she was displaced from "City" Streamliner duty when the trains were re-equipped with new cars.

Then owned solely by the Chicago & North Western Railway (which had little need for sleeping cars), she was leased to the Illinois Central Railroad for several seasons of service on their Chicago-New Orleans Panama Limited. She was finally retired from railroad service all together in 1961 and became part of a theme motel in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She was donated to Travel Town for historic preservation in 1992.

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PRIVATE ROOM SLEEPING CARS: The Hunters Point features ten private room passenger accommodations; including 4 double bedrooms, 4 compartments and 2 drawing rooms. Cars with this room configuration, commonly referred to as "4-4-2", became a popular standard on the American railroads. Rooms in these cars were designed for couples or families traveling together, as well as single travellers desiring more luxurious accommodations than a roomette or open section. Each room offered complete private toilet facilities, ample luggage space, individual lighting and climate controls, comfortable lounge seating during the daytime and full-length beds for sleeping. The double bedrooms and compartments each featured an upper and lower berth, the compartments being slightly larger (i.e. higher fare) than the bedrooms. The drawing rooms were the most spacious single sleeping car rooms available on the Streamliners. During the daytime, each drawing room featured a lounge sofa and two movable club chairs; two lower and one upper berth could be folded down for sleeping. For added luxury, many of the rooms had connecting doors and could be purchased "en suite". On a given trip aboard one of the Streamliners, you might easily have seen the likes of George Burns and Gracie Allen, or Bing and Dixie Lee Crosby relaxing in a compartment-drawing room suite in the Hunters Point.

Visitors touring our two historic sleeping cars, Hunters Point and Rose Bowl, will be able to see the complete selection of standard sleeping car rooms which were available on American passenger trains during the streamliner era.

RESTORATION GOALS: The goal of the American Southwestern Railway Association, through its Rail Heritage Southwest project, is to cosmetically restore the Hunters Point back to the way it would have appeared during its years of passenger service on the Streamliner City of Los Angeles. We wish to preserve and maintain this condition so that future museum visitors can see, learn from, and enjoy this historic part of America's past. With a promising future ahead for the Travel Town complex, it is our goal that the Hunters Point, together with its companion Streamliner cars Rose Bowl and "The Little Nugget," will be enclosed within a climate-controlled museum structure, becoming the focal point of a series of educational exhibits pertaining to this bygone era of American railroad travel. We greatly appreciate your help and support in attaining these goals.