Baltimore & Ohio Office 908

Built in 1917 by the Chicago & Alton Railroad as a private railcar. After the Civil War, railroads built luxury railcars for their employees and wealthy patrons. This period was called the “Gilded Age,” and the term for these pieces of rail cars got the nickname “Mansions of the Rails”. Famous people use Office cars like these and could be used for business trips or excursions. They would be decorated and equipped to meet the passengers' needs. This railcar was named after John T Collinson, the President and CEO of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at the time. He would travel on inspection trips of the railroad's right of way as well as for excursions for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Nineteen office cars belonged to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad but were not only used by the railroad employees. Celebrities and politicians got some use out of these office cars. They would either be rich enough to have a locomotive of their own to take them directly where they wanted to, or could be hitched to a scheduled passenger train, which was more common. In 1970, Amtrak regulations prohibited office cars from being hitched onto scheduled passenger trains, and it was also the same era that celebrities would replace railcars with private jets. Today, the Collinson Car is on display outside the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum's roundhouse.