I am hesitant to post this as the subject, an old C&O K Line 18" Madison passenger car, may have disucssed and riddle solved years ago. A second possibility, that the anomaly will not of much interest to anyone, also comes to mind. That being said, a few years ago I purchased some used K Line C&O passenger cars - some with silhouettes and some with interiors. The silhouettes were set aside for later work when the suitable car interiors could be located and installed. One of the silhouettes car shells (coach) carried identity markings of car # 827 with the name "Carter's Grave". The name briefly caught my attention as being a bit too unusual even for the Pullman company naming committee, but after a quick and unsuccessful search for the name's origin it went car want into the repair box.
Out of mind until yesterday when an ongoing reasearch project focusing on the Pullman company's car naming procedures for the 1923/1924 production runs of steel sleeper cars, revealed that the "Carter's Grave" name spelling was most likely a manufacturer's (K Line) error. Robert Wayner's book "Car Names and Consists" reports that in 1950 the C&O sold all of its heavyweight sleeping cars to the Nationals de Mexico except for the cars Cascades, Old White, Carter's Grove and Fort Eustis. Before the 1950 sale event, in 1938 the steel sleeping car "Iskander" was re-named Homestead", and in the late 1940's the "Homestead" was re-named "Carter's Grove". I am not sure of the Pullman manufacture date of the sleeping car itself. The K Line model may have appeared in a K line catalog, but I do not have access to any.
Carter's Grove plantation still stands at Williamsburg, VA - not sure what happened to C&O's "Carter's Grove"
apolgize for the fuzzy attched images
