Houston, Texas
August 1970
Photos Copyright 1998 by James E. Lancaster
In the late 1960s Judge Roy Hofeinz, owner of the Houston Astros baseball team, began buying retired passenger cars for a railroad theme motel (that was never built). Most of the cars were sleepers and official cars from the SP and the Southern and were stored on tracks at the SP station in Houston. He also bought two SP triple unit cars. I photographed all of the cars in August, 1970. Many were in poor shape. Shown here are an ex-Lark Club and an ex-Shasta Daylight triple unit diner.
A former Lark Club triple-unit coffee shop/kitchen-diner-lounge
stored at the SP's Houston Station. The coffee shop section at
the far end replaced the original crew dormitory.
A former Shasta Daylight triple-unit coffee shop-kitchen-diner still in Daylight colors, albeit very faded!
Probably the same set I photographed at San Luis Obispo in January,
1965 and possibly the only Daylight painted cars to be retired in
the late-1960s without being repainted into the Sunset colors.