Chapel Hill history page 2

Chapel Hill continued from previous page

   The observation room was originally built to be entered at the center, by way of an S-curve, from the body of the car. The full-size sofa against the wall of State Room D was installed when the C&O squared off the end of the aisle.
   Considering the car's original owner, there is a temptation to take a look at State Rooms C and D, both identical in size, and conclude both were originally configure like C with permanent length-wise lower bed and standard Pullman fold-away upper berth. Actually, Hussar was constructed with both state rooms configured like D, with standard Pullman lower and upper berths.
   The C&O removed the upper berth in State Room D sometime after October of 1963, but evidence of its existence is still visible. [The upper berth in D has been replace since the article was written.] In place of the berth the railroad installed an overhead storage cabinet with sliding doors.
   State Rooms A and B were built as connecting "his and her" accommodations. State Room A is 27 inches longer, as a six-inch wider bed, low dresser and an individual chair. The large storage drawer under the head of the bed in this room is actually a wine cellar and behind the wire waste basket next to the sink you can find the safe built into the car at the time of construction.
   State Room B has the only remaining original German-silver (stainless steel) washing basin remaining in the four state rooms. The rest have been replaced with ceramic basins.
   The dining room was designed to seat eight, increased to ten by the C&O sometime after 1963. The overhead storage rack against the wall of State Room A and the wall mounted television were removed after October 1963. Today a large black-and-white photograph, a gift to the car's present owner from pioneer contemporary private car owner George Pins, hangs on that wall.
   The car's original Baker heater was removed from its location across from the kitchen and an oil-fired Vapor heater installed in the former service vestibule at the head end of the car on the kitchen side. The former Baker heater location is now a storage locker.
   The C&O also removed the car's original ice box, replacing it with a large refrigerator - freezer combination. The freezer can carry enough meat for an entire month on the road.
   "This car is definitely not the same car it was when built," says Patrick O. McLaughlin of Danville, VA., an extensive researcher and compiler of private car history. "And while the Chesapeake & Ohio made numerous changes during the thirty-four years they owned the car, they did leave the most important areas, State Rooms A and B, the dining room and all of the beautiful warm mahogany wood interior pretty much alone. All in all, a very nice private car turned office car interior."
   DeWitt Chapple, Jr., a former Air Force technical officer and today owner of Chapple Leasing, Inc., a Middletown, Ohio-based business specializing in the lease of all makes of automobiles, trucks and equipment bought C&O office car 3 in 1971, two years before Marjorie Post passed away. Chapple retained the car's number and added the name Chapel Hill in honor of his college alma mater, the University of North Carolina.
   Chapple's interest in private cars stems from his early school years when he was a guest of Frank Pidcock III on the Georgia Northern's business car Moultrie which later became the Gold Coast, first private car owned by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg and now an honored show piece at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.
   Why own a private car?
   "Everyone wants something of value," DeWitt says when asked, "and with my early exposure to private cars, it's easy to see what I wanted."
   But he came very close to missing out on this car.
In 1971, DeWitt received a phone call from John Baldwin of San Francisco informing him that C&O/B&O was about to dispose of two business cars. If DeWitt was seriously interested, Baldwin suggested he'd better get on down to Huntington, W.V., in a hurry because time was running out.

One of the cars was a former Baltimore & Ohio business car, the other C&O office car 3. Chapple decided to bid on the C&O car following a conversation with a knowledgeable C&O employee who indicated office car 3 was definitely the better buy.
With just three days left to go, DeWitt rushed his bid off to Baltimore.
Chapple had no idea whatsoever that the car had ever been owned by anyone other than the C&O prior to the time his bid was accepted by the railroad. He was told by the C&O that early records for office car 3 had either been lost or misplaced. Clues leading to the discovery, namely in the form of the name Hussar stamped inside drawers and cabinets, would surface later.
DeWitt had the car moved from Huntington to Cincinnati and on to Frankly, Ohio, in freight service where it was stored on an inside siding when not on the road at the business owned by Mr. Tom Wortley, lifelong friend of Chapple.
Three years ago [1984] switching and moving costs to get Chapel Hill back and forth from Middletown to the nearest Amtrak connection in Cincinnati via Conrail finally became prohibitive and Chapel Hill took up permanent residence at Huntington, West Virginia, home base for the car during most of its years on the C&O.
DeWitt has done very little to change the car in keeping with the appearance of Chapel Hill as he acquired it. An interior decorator was called in who suggested replacing the rugs and redoing he car's furnishings in greens and blues to accent the natural mahogany wood interior.
Guests dining aboard are served on Canadian National china purchased from Private Car Limited and eat with Santa Fe silverware. On the table, diners will also find select holloware pieces from the Pennsylvania Railroad, AT&SF, Pullman Company, Canadian National, New York Central and Great Northern.
The Santa Fe flatware came from Reiffel & Company. One evening while DeWitt was in Chicago, he was a guest at Chef Louis Szathmary's restaurant, The Bakery. Noting all of the silverware he was eating with was authentic railroad silver, DeWitt inquired where it came from. "Oh," he was told, "that's from Evelyn Reiffel She's got tons of the stuff."
And DeWitt recently resisted the temptation to have his Chapel Hill repainted in the new CSX blue and gray livery. [In 2001 Chapel Hill still wears the classic C&O blue, gray and yellow colors.]
Beginning with that first private car trip to Philadelphia on the rear of the now gone National Limited in 1972, Chapple has accumulated thousands and thousands of miles on this Chapel Hill. DeWitt was an early private car adventurer to Canada, traveling on the Canadian National before the coming of VIA. Chapel Hill made two trips on the British Columbia Railway as far as Chetwynd in the 1970s when you could ride your private car into western Canada from Seattle via the International.
chapel Hill was one of three private cars in attendance at AAPRCO's first private car convention at Chicago in 1978. On the final day of the convention weekend the three cars, Chapel Hill, Carl and Sandy Michaelsen's Susan Marie and Hampton Roads, then owned by Roy Thorpe, ma a Chicago-Seneca, Ill., round trip out of LaSalle Street Station over the old Rock Island. Still remembered from that day are guests Vernie Barber, John Ford and Bud and Cheri Hensley. Shortly thereafter, STate Room D was named the Texas Hospitality Suite in remembrance of the occasion.
Menus and other remembrances of past trips are displayed throughout Chapel Hill, most notably in the dining room.
Bud and Cheri Hensley would go on to take one of the Canadian trips aboard the Chapel Hill, returning home so impressed with the car that they would name their son, born nine months later, Patrick Chapel Hensley.
DeWitt's most recent trip, centered around AAPRCO's Tenth Anniversary convention, and lasting more than a month, cold be described as a typical long-distance trip for the Chapel Hill. The car departed Huntington October 2 for Washington, was part of the westbound private car train going to Pittsburgh, continuing west on the 19-car private car train returning to Chicago following the convention.
After laying over a few days in Chicago, Chapel Hill was on the road once again for New orleans, St. Louis, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Oakland and Bakersfield before returning home by was of Denver and Chicago. Leaving Salt Lake City on Halloween, Chapel Hill was accompanied as far as Denver by two more private cars, The North Star and Caritas..
In all, Chapel Hill added another 9,400 miles to its long trip log bring the total mileage for just five of the past 16 years DeWitt has owned the car to well over 70,000. Chapel Hill mechanical officer D. Everett Fullerton is just now beginning to get all of the car's trip history into a computer.
Coming up in the near future is a complete conversion to head end power. Initial work will begin this winter, according to Chapple.
The author would like to thank Patrick O. McLaughlin, author of Vanishing Varnish, an illustrated and written catalogue of past and present private cars now in preparation, for his help in assembling key portions of this article.