This photo was originally marked as 2725, and information about 2725 was obtained from Bernard Corbin's book, "Burlington In Transition", however, Rupert Gamlen called my attention to the error as follows:

There is a photo of an ex-motor car labelled 2725, but I think this is 2726. Number 2725 was ex-574, 839 and 9839 built by Saint Louis, while 2726 was ex-847 and 9847 built by Pullman. One of the distinguishing features are the roof vents. The Saint Louis cars have them on the centreline while the Pullmans have box-like ones each side of the centreline. Also, according to Bill Glick's Passenger Car Roster book, 2725 was scrapped in 1958, six years before the photo.

One such event happened one day while the crew was off switching Rochelle. I was left in 3003 by myself, and being a curious 15 year old, I proceeded to inspect every nook and cranny in the car. After a while I got bored and started cleaning the car, hoping to endear myself to the rear end crew, to whom I was an annoyance at best, with my asking all sorts of stupid railroad questions. I noticed the marker lights in the vestibule and decided to clean those as well. I polished and topped off the kerosene fuel, and lit them to view my work. Proud of myself, I placed the markers in the brackets on the rear of 3003. I got off to look at the results. About that time, Number 21, the Twin Cities Zephyr, the fastest train on the Burlington Route, approached from behind for a station stop in Rochelle. A blast of the horn, and 21 ground to a halt just behind 3003 which, although on a siding, was displaying lit markers. Number 21 was faithfully observing Rule 102(a), which states: "Engineman on an approaching train observing an emergency red light displayed must stop immediately and must not pass the red light until it has been ascertained that the track is safe and clear for movement of train." This was ( fortunately ) in the days of radio communication, and from what I gathered later, there was considerable radio conversation about the delay of Number 21. The way freight crew hurried back to the 3003, the Conductor removed the markers and waved 21 on. I was banished to the locomotive for the rest of the trip to Oregon. Obviously, I had failed in my attempt to win over the rear end crew.

In the image Chuck posted the car wears faded mineral red paint, and while there are indications (on the roof at the front end) this this paint might have been applied after the car was placed in building service at Canton (if in fact that's where the photo was taken), there are more indications (especially on the roof ventilators above the coach section) that the mineral red dates to the Q era. Several of these converted PMCs were painted mineral red ( I have a slide of 3651 in red ) when their assignment called for their use primarily as a waycar. In later years, nearly all of them were used primarily as waycars, and none of them were repainted after their conversion into trailers at Havelock. Bear in mind that a good many combines used primarily as waycars were painted mineral red, including a number of the steel-sheathed 3530 series cars and many of the older wooden cars. And of course all the 3900 series CW class cars were mineral red. The fact that the car was still on trucks in 1980 indicates to me that it was one of the three cars that were still around when BN was formed in 1970, and BN used mineral red for company service equipment, so the car could have been painted this way in the BN era and faded to the extent shown in the photo by 1980. I just dug out the diagram sheets for these cars, and the window and door configuration perfectly matches the 3659, which was converted in 1952 from the 9843.

Adding to Hol's information is the following from R. W. 'Bud' Linroth confirming the location:

I have a personal knowledge about this car as I knocked it off the track sometime in the late 1970's. It was the crew locker room/office/supply car. It was located on a short storage stub track down near the International Harvester plant right next to the plant lead. We had just spotted the plant and were reaching in on the stub track to get one car to set it over on a short track on the side of the plant called South Maple. I took the two-unit consist over to the switch, lined it for the stub track and gave the engineer an easy back up sign (we had just passed the car coming out of the plant so the engineer knew it was just in the clear of the plant lead). To make a long story short, the engineer put the engines in reverse and leaned over to put his coffee cup in his grip and did not see me washing out as the engines were coming back too fast. I ran out wide flagging down just in time to see the engines hit the box car. The engines hit the coupler so hard the pin did not drop and the car took off and ran down the stub track about five cars lengths and hit the coach knocking the rear half off of the end of the track. Later the coach was moved about 1½ miles south to where we called two tracks cleaning tracks 1 and 2. These tracks are where the empty box cars for the International plant were stored. It was placed on a couple pieces of panel rail where nobody could hit it again. The power poles in the background of the picture verify this location. No one received any discipline for this incident and the coach/car was not damaged. The only real loss was the afternoon job's conductor had his coat hanging over the stove and the collision knocked it down on the stove where we found it well done. Bud Linroth ex-Canton Road switcher brakeman.

The photo illustrates the Heywood-Wakefield Sleepy Hollow seat. Typical railroad coach seats were little more than padded benches, so the development of a comfortable seat was an innovation at the time. Life Magazine ran an article on February 11, 1946 about the seat , and here it is, entitled; Hooton's Chair Harvard Anthropologist measures 3,867 people for a railway seat:

The science of sitting down inched forward a bit last week. The Heywood-Wakefield Company in Gardner, Mass., biggest maker of railway coach seats, perfected one that more nearly fits the seated human body than any yet made. The company calls it the Sleepy Hollow Chair. Nearly everyone else is calling it the Hooton Chair. Reason for this name was that for months Harvard University's well-known anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton, and his staff of statisticians had been prodding and measuring 3,867 volunteers and compiling statistics to determine what U.S. travelers should have under them. His mass of results were used in making a new seat scientifically tailored to the average railroad rider. Meanwhile, experimenting with a wooden chair filled with sand on which people left the impressions of their posteriors, the Heywood-Wakefield Co. arrived at a set of conclusions which, to their dismay, were precisely the same as Dr. Hooton's. The photo captions stated: Fattest man tested in Dr. Hooton's special measuring chair was Adam Reimer, who weighed 325 pounds and measured 56 inches around the hips. Ordinary railway seat is too hard, too vertical for ample Adam Reimer. Few abnormal sizes were measured because they complicated Hooton's computations. New railway seat fits Mr. Reimer better. The deeper cushioning gives with his curves and the inclined seat distributes some of the load against the chair back.

Reprint of article here: http://streamlinermemories.info/Eastern/LifeSleepyHollow.jpg