The Bowers-Dure Cars
Being a dissertation on why they looked like they did.
The so-called Bowers-Dure cars have long been a source of fascination to fans
of the Denver, South Park & Pacific. Their distinctive platform roofs make them
immediately recognizable. Their small arched single-pane windows continued to
make them recognizable even after the roofs had been remodeled. Who would
question that the 1927 (or is it 1936?) photo of C&S coach #51 shows a
Bowers-Dure car? How did the South Park come to have these cars, and who built
them, and why are they so unique?
The story of how it came to have them is told under
HISTORY on the
COACHES #16, #17, #22
AND #24 page. The story of the obscure company that built them is told
on the BOWERS, DURE & COMPANY page. The
purpose of this page is to try to suggest why these unique little cars (35'-0")
looked like they did.
If you can’t figure it out, see last line on page. (No, we're not going to make
it easy for you by giving you a link!)
During the period of 1871 to 1886 there were three car-building
firms located in Wilmington, Delaware: Jackson & Sharp,
Harlan & Hollingsworth, and
Bowers, Dure & Co. Almost everyone
interested in railroads is familiar with the name Jackson & Sharp. Some will
have heard of Harlan & Hollingsworth. But who ever heard of Bowers, Dure & Co.?
For some time those seeking information on these cars speculated that the name
might be Bowers, Deere & Co., thinking that the handwritten “u” in Dure on
company records might be a squished
“ee”,
or possibly trying unconsciously to
make a connection with machinery maker John Deere. But Bowers,
Dure
& Co. was real. Simply the smallest and shortest-lived of the three.
At that time, Wilmington lay between Philadelphia and Baltimore
(it probably still does), and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad was an important
connection between the big cities. Sleeping cars had long-ago been invented.
(The first known was running in 1838, twenty years before George Pullman
“invented” it.) And that's where our chronology picks up. See what you can make
of these facts:
|
1838 |
The first sleeping car to be noted in contemporary accounts runs on the
Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore (PW&B). It is so successful that a
second is put into service. |
|
1844 |
PW&B
rebuilds the two sleepers into day coaches. |
|
1851 |
Thomas Wesley Bowers becomes Master Car Builder of PW&B. |
|
1859 |
PW&B
again enters the sleeping car field with two coaches remodeled as
sleepers. |
|
1862 |
The T.T. Woodruff and the Knight Sleeping Car companies unite to form the
Central
Transportation Company at Philadelphia. |
|
1863 |
PW&B
decides to give up its own sleepers and contracts with Central
Transportation Company (Woodruff) to supply them. |
|
1866 |
Woodruff inaugurates its first Silver Palace Cars (below). |
 |
|
(1)
Woodruff standard gauge Silver Palace Car
Empire.
Jackson & Sharp, Wilmington, Delaware, 1869. |
|
1867 |
Woodruff is contesting with Pullman for a contract with the Central
Pacific. It built a “sample” car (below). The CP decides to
go its own way, but apparently licenses the Sliver Palace name and design.
Cars are built by two of the three Wilmington car builders:
Harlan & Hollingsworth
and
Jackson & Sharp. |
 |
|
(2) Woodruff's Silver Palace Sleeping Car
(standard gauge) for the Central Pacific. Harlan & Hollingsworth, Wilmington,
Delaware, 1869. |
|
1871 |
T.
Wesley Bowers, “onetime employee” of the PW&B, testifies for
Woodruff in a suit against him by Pullman, to the effect that the two
sleeping cars existed and had been rebuilt into day coaches by the PW&B in
1844. |
|
1871 |
Jackson & Sharp turns out the
first narrow gauge car built in this country.
It is for the D&RG, and is appropriately named
Denver (below). |
 |
|
(3) Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge Coach
Denver. Jackson & Sharp, Wilmington, Delaware, 1871. |
|
1871 |
Bowers, Dure & Co. is founded by Thomas W. Bowers & Henry Dure. (Bowers
had been Master Car Builder for the PW&B Railroad for 20 years.) |
|
1872 |
Bowers, Dure & Co. builds four narrow gauge coaches and two coach-baggage
cars for the ATSF. (Some say they were all coaches, but that's another
story.) What would such a car look like? |
|
1875 |
Harlan & Hollingsworth
is building First Class coaches like
America for narrow gauge
railroads (below). |
 |
|
(4) Narrow gauge car design by Harlan &
Hollingsworth, Wilmington, Delaware, 1875. |
|
1880 |
The South Park leases/buys six narrow gauge Bowers, Dure & Co. cars from
the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe. Guess what they looked like (below)! |
NOTES on photos.
Photo #1 can be found at
White/Passenger-218.
Photo #2 can be found at
White/Passenger-220.
Photo #3 can be found at
White/Passenger-33 and at
Beebe-43.
Photo #4 can be found at
White/Passenger-34.
Photo #5 is a highly-enlarged detail of a photo by Joseph
Collier. It can be found at
Digerness2-286 and Kindig-41.
For those who either
couldn’t, wouldn’t, or don’t enjoy, putting two and two
together (or found our meanderings too convoluted to follow) —
The Bowers-Dure coaches were designed and built in 1872
according to the then-standard practice of scaling down narrow gauge cars from
standard gauge practice. This “practice” was followed by the three Wilmington,
Delaware, car
builders, which included platform roofs of the
hooded profile that was
apparently developed by Woodruff. By 1880, when the Bowers-Dure coaches were acquired by the South Park,
they were quite “primitive” alongside current equipment. (Or as they say now in
the interior decorating field, “retro!”)
|
