An observation car/carriage/coach is a type of railroad passenger car, generally operated in a passenger train as the rearmost carriage, with windows or a platform on the rear of the car for passengers' viewing pleasure. The cars were nearly universally removed from service on American railroads beginning in the 1950s as a cost-cutting measure in order to eliminate the need to "turn" the trains when operating out of stub-end terminals.
A heavyweight observation on display at the Illinois Railway Museum.
LNWR observation car No 1503 at Kingscote, Bluebell Railway
Open observation car at the Hanging Bridge of the Royal Gorge on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1918. The enclosed observation car is directly in front of it.
Tokio station, where passengers boarded the train to Ostende, Argentina (1913) Observation car (Decauville wagon)
A whistle stop or whistle-stop tour is a style of political campaigning where the politician makes a series of brief appearances or speeches at a number of small towns over a short period of time. Originally, whistle-stop appearances were made from the open platform of an observation car or a private railroad car.
Early 20th-century photograph of a whistle-stop speech at the train station in Putnam, Connecticut
Republican vice presidential nominee Theodore Roosevelt on a whistle-stop during the 1900 presidential election
Former president Theodore Roosevelt delivers a whistle-stop speech during his third party campaign as the nominee of the "Bull Moose" Progressive Party in the 1912 presidential election
1916 Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes speaking during at the train station in Winona, Minnesota while completing a whistle-stop tour on the Milwaukee Road's Olympian
