User:Dalbury/Workspace/Boca Raton Airport
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The Ferdinand Magellan is a former Pullman Company observation car which served as Presidential Rail Car, U.S. Number 1 from 1943 until 1958. The Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami-Dade County, Florida acquired the Ferdinand Magellan in 1959. The Ferdinand Magellan was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service in February of 1985. As of 2006, it remains the only railroad car on the list of historic landmarks.
The Ferdinand Magellan was built in 1928 by the Pullman Company as a "private car" (i.e., rented as a unit rather than taking individual passengers). It was one of six similar cars named after famous explorers, Ferdinand Magellan, David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, Marco Polo, Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen. After the United States entered World War II, it was decided that the President needed a specially equipped and armored car rather than using standard equipment provided by the Pullman Company. The Ferdinand Magellan was selected, and the Pullman Company rebuilt the car. The six bedrooms in the car were reduced to four, and the dining room and observation lounge were enlarged. The car was protected with 5/8" (15 mm) armor plate on the sides, top, bottom and ends. The windows were replaced with sealed three inch (76.2 mm) thick 12-ply laminated glass. As the windows were sealed, the car was air conditioned by blowing the interior air over pipes carrying the meltwater from ice. These modifications increased the weight of the car from 160,000 pounds (72,563 kg) to 285,000 pounds (129,252 kg), making the Ferdinand Magellan the heaviest passenger railcar ever used in the United States.
Like other observation cars of its era, the Ferdinand Magellan had an open platform on the rear end of the car. Observation cars were normally placed at the end of a train, so that the occupants of the car had an unobstructed view in three directions. This is the platform from which Harry Truman gave his "whistlestop" campaign speeches. In 1984 the Ferdinand Magellan was briefly loaned to the presidential re-election campaign of Ronald Reagan, who gave a series of "whistlestop" speeches from the rear platform during a one-day trip in Ohio.
