Southern Pacific Parlor Car "Metropedia" - Perkins, OK
Posted by: 
The Snowdog
N 35° 58.895 W 097° 01.890
14S E 677468 N 3983697
This Southern Pacific parlor car, named "Metropedia," is on display at the Cimarron Valley Railroad Museum at the Territorial Plaza in Perkins, Oklahoma.
Waymark Code: WM146GZ
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 04/29/2021
Views: 4
From the
Railroad Museum Web Page:
Built in 1903, by the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) as a wooden dining car, this rail car was converted to a high capacity parlor car in 1917. It was again transformed, in 1919, to a business coach at the CPR’s Angus Shops and was named the
Assiniboine. It was assigned to D. C. Coleman, vice president of the CPR’s western lines at Winnipeg. Coleman went on to become president of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
In the 1920’s, the car got a steel under frame and side sheathing and was renamed the
Metapedia in 1929 when Coleman had a new
Assiniboine coach built for his use. It was then assigned to the Atlantic region of the CPR.
In 1975, the Canadian Pacific Railroad retired the coach and it was purchased by Pierre Trudeau, the former prime minister of Canada, and his cousin, Guy Trudeau, who planned to use it as an office of a lumber company they owned.
Kenneth Mitchell of Guthrie purchased the railroad car in 1978 after seeing a listing in Trains Magazine and had it shipped by rail to Guthrie. The Mitchell family donated the
Metapedia to the Oklahoma Territorial Plaza in 2013.