Great Dome (railcar)

The Great Domes were a fleet of six streamlined dome lounge cars that the Budd Company built in 1955 for the Great Northern Railway and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Their design was virtually identical to the Big Dome lounges Budd had built a year earlier for the Santa Fe, except that the smooth sides lacked the fluting. The top level seated 57 passengers in coach-style seats with room for 18 more on sofas and in booths, and the lower level held a cocktail lounge decorated with Haida art from the Pacific Northwest. The Great Northern had been slow to buy domes, fearing the cost of heating and cooling them, until rivals added domes to their own transcontinental trains. The cars ran only on the Empire Builder from 1955 until private passenger service ended in 1971. Amtrak kept all six and ran them until Superliners displaced them in 1979; three were rebuilt with head end power for the Auto Train, and the last car, Ocean View, was retired by Amtrak in 2019.