Photographs courtesy of Mike Gerenday

On May 8, 2019, I contacted Shane Durand to obtain permission to photograph the three ex-ARR coaches next to the old power plant in the Anchorage Yard. Coaches 88 and 43 are WWII era ex-Army hospital cars that were surplused to the Alaska Railroad and rebuilt into coaches in 1949. Numbers 88 and 43 were then sold to the Air Force in the early 1980s to be used as part of their missile train. 

P5 is the other car in the set, and it was a WWII troop kitchen car rebuilt into a power car with a passenger car roof and retained the original door and diaphragm ends.. P5 had a steam generator (boiler) to provide the heat and power to the coaches prior to HEP equipped locomotives/coaches. I don't know when P5 was officially retired, but my guess is in the early 1980s.

As far as I know, these are the only passenger cars on the entire ARR system that have the 1971 DOT scheme that adorned locomotives and coaches. Most of the ex-UP cars had the blue painted over the UP names top and bottom when the ARR first obtained them. The last cars to be repainted in the modern scheme were the baggage cars in the late 1990s, early 2000s. There are a few examples in the transportation museum in Wasilla, and two troop sleepers in Healy in this scheme.