man…can you imagine what they would have said about FDR?
I wonder who paid for this Reagan vanity project?
en.wikipedia.org
".. it was suggested by
Secret Service agent Mike Reilly and
White House Press Secretary Stephen Early...The
Ferdinand Magellan was selected, and the Pullman Company rebuilt the car. The
Ferdinand Magellan became the first passenger railcar built for a President since the
War Department had built a special car for the use of
Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
....
The car was protected with 5⁄8 inch (16 mm)
armor plate on the sides, top, bottom and ends. The windows were replaced with sealed 3-inch-thick (7.6 cm) 12-ply laminated
bullet resistant glass. As the windows were sealed, the car was
air conditioned by blowing the interior air over pipes carrying the meltwater from ice. Other features included bank vault style doors at the rear entrance to the car, two escape hatches (located in the lounge and presidential bathroom) for emergency egress, exterior loudspeakers for public addresses, a telephone in every room.. and a custom built
wheel-chair elevator that could lift Roosevelt from ground level up to the rear platform of the car. The wheel-chair elevator was removed after Roosevelt's death in 1945.
These modifications increased the weight of the car from 160,000 lb to 285,000 lb,
making the Ferdinand Magellan the heaviest passenger railcar ever used in the United States. .. traveled at the end of a special train that included Pullman
sleeping cars for staff and reporters,
baggage cars, and a communications car operated by the
Army Signal Corps.
....
President
Dwight D. Eisenhower made little use of the
Ferdinand Magellan. ..
.. the
Gold Coast Railroad Museum was able to acquire it.
In 1984 the
Ferdinand Magellan was briefly loaned to the presidential re-election campaign of President
Ronald Reagan, who gave a series of "whistlestop" speeches from the rear platform
during a one-day trip in Ohio on October 12, 1984. President Reagan's five-stop train journey required transporting the train from Florida to Ohio, re-assembling it, and putting it back into commission. .. "It was super," remarked campaign director Ed Rollins. 'The President loved it.' Reagan's journey is the last time the car was used..."
en.wikipedia.org
"The platform was not originally intended to be used as a station, but its location made it ideal for unobtrusive access to the Waldorf Astoria when the hotel was built. : 164 Track 61 was famously used by General
John J. Pershing in 1938; by
Franklin Delano Roosevelt during
World War II in 1944;
...
Roosevelt traincar
Track 63 held MNCW #002, a
baggage car, for about 20 to 30 years. The railcar's location near Roosevelt's Track 61 made the former tour guide Dan Brucker and others falsely claim that it was the president's personal train car that transported his limousine. The baggage car was moved to the
Danbury Railway Museum in 2019"
A secret train car deep below Grand Central has long been said to have transported FDR's bullet proof limousine. But did it? We recently went to visit the car and dove into a major investigation with the Danbury Railway Museum.
untappedcities.com
"..In the book
The President Travels by Train: Politics and Pullmans, ..” No. 748 was the car that carried President Roosevelt, a bulletproof Packard car, and two Secret Service cars to Warm Springs, Georgia on Roosevelt’s final train trip before he died on April 12, 1945. Curiously, no mention of a Pierce-Arrow here."
metro.co.uk
