Milwaukee Road Skytop Lounges: History, Specs & Floor Plans

Published: September 14, 2026

The Milwaukee Road’s Skytop Lounges were ten glass-ended observation cars designed by Milwaukee industrial designer Brooks Stevens for the last Hiawatha equipment sets after World War II. Four parlor-lounges, the Rapids series, came out of the railroad’s own Milwaukee Shops in 1948 for the daytime Twin Cities Hiawatha. Six sleeper-lounges, the Creek series, came from Pullman-Standard (Lot 6775, Plan 4138) that winter for the transcontinental Olympian Hiawatha. The rear was almost ninety percent glass: twenty-seven panes in fifteen shapes, stacked into a solarium that replaced the older Beaver Tail slope. The railroad called them “the finishing touch to a perfect train.”

Pair of Milwaukee Road Skytop Rapids series lounge observations layover in St Paul Minnesota February 1969

A pair of Milwaukee Road Skytop Rapids-series lounge observations layover in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a bitterly cold night in February 1969. Jim Boyd photo.

On this page: At a glance · Brooks Stevens and the glass end · Rapids parlor-lounges · Creek sleeper-lounges · Service · Roster · Preservation

At a glance

Item	Detail
Fleet	Ten cars. Four parlor-lounges (Rapids). Six sleeper-lounges (Creek)
Designer	Brooks Stevens, Milwaukee
Parlor-lounges	Milwaukee Shops, 1948. Road numbers 186–189
Sleeper-lounges	Pullman-Standard Lot 6775, Plan 4138, delivered December 1948–January 1949. Road numbers 12, 14–18 (13 omitted)
Rapids layout	Drawing room-kitchen, 24 rotating parlor chairs, 12 solarium seats
Creek layout	Eight double bedrooms (16 berths), 19 solarium seats
Glass end	About 90 percent glass. 27 windows in 15 shapes. No drumhead; oscillating marker; Hiawatha script on the flanks
Parlor service	Morning and Afternoon Hiawatha from May 29, 1948. Off the Morning April 1, 1969. Last Milwaukee use January 23, 1970
Sleeper service	Olympian Hiawatha until May 22, 1961. Sold to Canadian National 1964 as Skyview cars
Replaced	Beaver Tail parlor-observations of the 1935–42 Hiawatha sets. Beaver Tail has no leaf on this site
Not this page	Twin Cities Hiawatha train. Olympian Hiawatha train. Super Dome. Milwaukee 4-8-4 261

Layouts and dates from Jim Scribbins, The Hiawatha Story, and Pullman Lot 6775 / Plan 4138. Information compiled September 14, 2026.

Brooks Stevens and the glass end

Otto Kuhler had given the original 1935 Hiawathas their two-tone orange and the Beaver Tail parlor, a sloped closed-end observation with no open platform. After the war the railroad wanted a last new set for the Twin Cities trains and a matching transcontinental. Stevens, a Milwaukee native already working the Olympian Hiawatha as a unit, threw out the Beaver Tail slope and stacked glass to the roof line. The solarium was a greenhouse at 90 mph: curved seating around the perimeter, views up as well as out, and no drumhead. An oscillating rear light sat where other roads hung a sign. Stainless Hiawatha script flanked it on both sides.

The parlor cars were the last observations Milwaukee Shops built. Pullman-Standard took the same Stevens outline and put eight double bedrooms in front of a smaller lounge. Shop-built rears are a tighter bullet; the Pullman cars are a little fuller, with a rear couch about four inches wider, paired bedroom windows, an extra course of glass in the Skytop, and a fluted silver band at the tail that echoed the fluted noses on the Fairbanks-Morse Erie-Builts first assigned to the Olympian. Pullman did not copy Milwaukee’s wood interior paneling.

They are not dome cars. A dome puts a second-story glass blister amidships. The Skytop is an observation whose roof is the glass, at the rear. The dome encyclopedia is dome cars. Milwaukee’s later full-length dome is the Super Dome, Pullman-Standard 1952, ten cars numbered 50–59.

Rapids parlor-lounges: the floor plan

Walk the car from the vestibule (coupled to the train) to the glass:

From vestibule	Accommodation
1	Vestibule and side doors
2	Drawing room-kitchen (private room, typically four seats, with a small pantry)
3	Men’s and women’s rooms, lockers
4	Main parlor: 24 deluxe rotating, reclining chairs. Scribbins: “big, comfortable… a pleasure to sink into”
5	Solarium: 12 seats. Curved sofa around the glass perimeter, meant for sociability as much as for watching the right-of-way. Rear marker and Hiawatha lettering outside

Parlor-car passengers only. The drawing room-kitchen was the private hire; Friends of the 261 still sell Cedar Rapids that way. There is no sleeping space. These four cars were built for a 421-mile daylight run that was still scheduled under seven hours.

Creek sleeper-lounges: the floor plan

Pullman Plan 4138 put the bedrooms first and cut the lounge to fit the overnight train:

From vestibule	Accommodation
1	Vestibule
2	Eight double bedrooms, 16 berths. Paired windows along the sides
3	Solarium lounge: 19 seats under the glass. One extra window course versus the parlor cars

No drawing room. The bedrooms were the revenue space; the Skytop was the after-dinner view across Montana and the Cascades. Road number 13 was skipped. For the Olympian Hiawatha’s first eighteen months the train ran with conventional Pullman compartment-drawing room-observation cars on the rear. The Creek cars arrived December 1948 into January 1949 and finished the Stevens consist.

Milwaukee Road Skytop Cedar Rapids lounge observation in Milwaukee in 1965

Milwaukee Road 'Skytop' lounge-observation "Cedar Rapids" brings up the tail end of the westbound "Afternoon Hiawatha" stopped at the then-new depot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during September, 1965. Ahead of the "Cedar Rapids" is the diner, and then a "Super Dome" (used on the transcontinental "Olympian Hiawatha" from 1952-1961). In 1964, Milwaukee sold six of the ten "Super Domes" to Canadian National. Roy Gabriel photo.

Where they ran

The Rapids cars went on the Morning and Afternoon Hiawatha on May 29, 1948, thirteen years to the day after the first Hiawatha. They stayed on that Chicago–Twin Cities plant through the Super Dome years and the October 1955 Union Pacific City-train partnership that put Armour Yellow on some Milwaukee passenger cars. Jim Boyd’s St. Paul night shot is February 1969, the last winter they still made both trains. The railroad took the lounges off the Morning on April 1, 1969. The Afternoon kept one until the train itself died on January 23, 1970. That was the end of Skytops in Milwaukee paint on a Milwaukee timetable.

The Creek cars owned the rear of the Olympian Hiawatha from delivery until the railroad discontinued the train on May 22, 1961. In 1964 Milwaukee sold all six, with six Super Domes, to Canadian National. CN called them Skyview lounges, numbered 1900–1905, and ran them on the Ocean and the Scotian (Halifax–Montreal), then briefly on Montreal–Toronto corridor trains, then on Gaspé and Jasper–Prince Rupert assignments. CN cut two of the smallest upper windows next to the big vertical posts. Canadian fire rules wanted a second exit; the Skytops had only the vestibule. CN stored them in the 1970s and disposed of the fleet in 1977.

Roster

Rapids series (parlor-lounge, Milwaukee Shops, 1948)

No.	Name	Notes
186	Cedar Rapids	Friends of the 261 / Railroading Heritage of Midwest America. Operating, 2026
187	Coon Rapids	Withdrawn 1970. Last reported in private storage in Michigan
188	Dell Rapids	Chapman S. Root, then Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, Florida
189	Priest Rapids	Scrapped 1970

Creek series (sleeper-lounge, Pullman-Standard Lot 6775, Plan 4138)

MILW	Name	CN	CN name	Notes
12	Alder Creek	1900	Mahone	Scrapped by CN
14	Arrow Creek	1901	Malpeque	Hulk, Milwaukee Road Heritage Center, Montevideo, Minnesota
15	Coffee Creek	1902	Fundy	Iowa Pacific restoration; later Aberdeen, Carolina & Western, North Carolina
16	Gold Creek	1903	Trinity	Hulk, Milwaukee Road Heritage Center, Montevideo
17	Marble Creek	1904	Baddeck	Scrapped
18	Spanish Creek	1905	Gaspe	Scrapped by CN

Two Creek hulks spent years as part of the SS Lansdowne floating restaurant in Detroit before the Milwaukee Road Historical Association moved them to Montevideo in 2009.

What is left

Cedar Rapids is the car that still moves. The Friends of the 261 acquired it in 1998, finished restoration, and run it as premium space behind Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 261. As of 2026 it is still on that consist. Dell Rapids is a museum piece in Daytona Beach. Coffee Creek is the surviving sleeper in private railroad hands in North Carolina. The Montevideo hulks are the rest of the glass end you can still walk up to. Priest Rapids and three of the Creek cars are gone.

Ten cars, two floor plans, one Stevens outline. The parlors were a daylight parlor on 90-mph Racine Subdivision iron. The sleepers were an overnight view of the Pacific Extension. That is the Skytop: not a dome, not a Beaver Tail, and not a second Hiawatha encyclopedia.

Sources

Scribbins, Jim. The Hiawatha Story. Milwaukee: Kalmbach, 1970; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press reprint. Parlor entry May 29, 1948; “finishing touch to a perfect train”; 24 parlor chairs; solarium sofa; Olympian substitutes until Skytop sleepers arrived; Morning lounges off April 1, 1969; Afternoon discontinued January 23, 1970; Olympian Hiawatha discontinued May 22, 1961
Scribbins, Jim. Milwaukee Road Remembered. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008
Pullman-Standard Lot 6775, Plan 4138 (Creek series sleeper-lounges). Exterior painting arrangement, Newberry Library / CARLI
Wisconsin Historical Society, Brooks Stevens Skytop seat note: Rapids series on Twin Cities Hiawathas May 29, 1948; 27 windows in 15 shapes; Creek series Pullman-Standard for Olympian Hiawatha, complete January 1949
Greenlaw, Christopher C. N. VIA Rail. St. Paul: MBI, 2007 (CN Skyview service and disposal)
Friends of the 261, Cedar Rapids car page (drawing room-kitchen, 24 parlor chairs; operating 2026). Northstar Railway Historical Society, Northstar News 40, no. 7 (July 2009), Montevideo hulks from SS Lansdowne
Live American-Rails Hiawatha, Olympian Hiawatha, Super Dome, observation, and Milwaukee 261 pages as linked above

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