Northwest Railway Museum to preserve Talgo Bistro car
The Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Wash., has acquired a Series VI Talgo Bistro car for preservation. While the car was donated, the museum will launch a fundraiser to offset the $26,000 cost of its move.
The Series VI equipment was a fixture on the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland Amtrak Cascades route from 1999 through 2020. Five of the unique tilting-car-body trainsets eventually operated in Cascades service, three owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation and two owned by Amtrak.
Their service life came to an end following the fatal December 2017 derailment of one of the trainsets in Dupont, Wash., after the National Transportation Safety Board report questioned the safety of the equipment’s design. The Washington-owned sets were scrapped in 2021 and the Amtrak-owned sets were sold for scrap in 2022.
A last-minute negotiation by the museum led to the preservation and donation of the Bistro car by the Rail Excursion Management Co.
Designed by rail designer César Vergara, the Bistro design avoided the use of straight lines and features an illuminated ceiling map of the Cascades corridor from central Oregon to southern British Columbia. The museum intends to use the Bistro car to highlight not only modern rail passenger service in the Pacific Northwest, but also the career of Vergara.
The museum says that “this sole remaining car is exceptionally significant due to both
César Vergara’s beautiful design work and its contributions to the perception of passenger rail travel. The car’s significance has made it eligible to be considered for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.” —