Château series

The Château series was a fleet of 29 lightweight streamlined sleeping cars that the Budd Company built in 1954 for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The cars were made of stainless steel and left unpainted apart from a Tuscan red letterboard bearing the name Canadian Pacific, and each was named for a distinguished French Canadian rather than numbered. A car held eight duplex roomettes, four sections, three bedrooms and one drawing room, with room for 25 passengers and a private toilet in each room. Budd delivered them as part of a 173-car order that equipped the new transcontinental Canadian and re-equipped the Dominion, and the first, Château Bienville, arrived in Montreal on 4 July 1954. Via Rail acquired the whole fleet in 1978 and rebuilt the cars with a communal shower; all 29 were still on its roster in 2015.