The Southern Pacific claimed that most dome cars were too tall to fit through its tunnels. So it designed and built its own dome cars out of older cars it had on hand. Its first car was built from a 1938 Coast Daylight observation car using a dome lattice and windows purchased from the Budd Company. The car started work on the San Joaquin Daylight on June 24, 1954.
SP’s first three-quarter-length dome. Click image for a larger view.
At 15-feet, 2-inches tall, these were the shortest domes built: an inch shorter than the Pullman-built domes for the B&O Columbian; five inches shorter than the Milwaukee Super Domes; and eight inches shorter than most Budd short domes. This can be seen from the small forward- and rear-facing windows of the SP domes.
The upper deck of an SP three-quarter-length dome showing the bench seats in the foreground, coach-like seats in the middleground, and tiny end windows in the background. Click image for a larger view.
The SP domes all had seats on an upper deck that extended about half the car. According to this sketch, the upper deck of the first car had about 28 coach-like seats and 16 more seats facing tables. But another source claims the first dome only had coach-like seats on the upper level, while the next five had a combination of coach seats and bench seats at tables, and the last two, which were built for the Shasta Daylight, had only bench seats and tables on the upper deck.
One stairway led straight to a door to the next car, while the other went down into a 20-seat lounge that still had the dome overhead, giving a cathedral-like feeling. The end of the car–the part without a dome–held a small kitchen for serving drinks and snacks to passengers.
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The lounge end of the dome car showing the high dome ceiling. Note that the dome windows require two rows of panes instead of the single row of five-foot high panes used in the full-length domes. Click image for a larger view.
The first dome only also had a crew-dorm at the rear end. The car was also a little shorter (81 feet vs. 85 feet) than the other SP domes. Notice that the car has ten panels of dome windows, while the later domes had twelve. This suggests that the later domes had more seats on the upper deck, but I can’t find any record of how many there were in these cars.
Southern Pacific ads emphasized the cathedral-like lounge rather than the dome.
Beside the San Joaquin Daylight, SP’s domes saw service on the Shasta Daylight and, later, the Coast Daylight. Amtrak ran the cars with the kitchen at the rear, but photographic evidence indicates that the SP at least initially ran them with the kitchen in the front.
SP’s second full-length dome showing twelve panels of glass in the dome as opposed to the ten used in the first dome. Click image for a larger view.