The Shadow
CLIFTON?FORGE — The Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest and largest groups studying a single railway, has announced the acquisition of the ex-C&O business car Chessie 29.
The 85-foot vintage passenger car has been transported to the C&OHS’s Heritage Center museum in Clifton Forge.
The car was donated to the C&OHS through the generosity of Al Barbour of Pennsylvania.
The car was transported to Clifton Forge from the Pitts-burgh region of Pennsylvania.
During its journey, it passed through Charleston,?W.Va. Much like the “Miracle on the Hudson”?airplane that passed through West Virginia’s capital in 2011 by interstate transport, Chessie 29 was an oversized sight for Charleston travelers and workers near its approved route on I-79 south and I-77 south.
The C&OHS is calling the car its “Cold War Soldier” because it was used to take President Dwight D. Eisen-hower to the C&O-owned Greenbrier Hotel at White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in May 1956.
It was during this trip that Eisenhower and C&O Rail-way President Walter J. Tuohy initiated a plan for construction of the now-famous “bunker” under the posh hotel. This clandestine facility was, in fact, the continuity-of-government re-fuge for the U.S. Congress in the event of nuclear war.
Chessie 29 was built in 1950 and converted for C&O President Tuohy’s use in 1951. He used the car as his “rolling office” until his death in 1966. The car was sold by the C&O Railway to private interests in 1971.
Barbour purchased the rail car in 2016 and its donation to the C&O Historical Society was just completed.
The C&OHS expects to restore and refurbish the car for future interpretative and instructional use.
Donations toward Chessie 29’s historic restoration can be made by calling the C&O Historical Society’s business office in Clifton Forge at 862-2210.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society is a non-profit corporation dedicated to interpreting the American railway experience using C&O?Railway’s history through drawings, documents and artifacts, which the society collects, preserves and makes available to as broad an audience as possible.
It was organized in January 1969, and in 1975, it was incorporated as a non-profit eleemosynary organization.
