The current owner, Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami-Dade County, Florida, acquired it in 1959.

After the United States entered World War II, it was suggested by Secret Service agent Mike Reilly and White House Press Secretary Stephen Early that President Franklin D. Roosevelt needed a specially equipped and armored car rather than using standard equipment provided by the Pullman Company.

[2] The other Lot 6246 car, Roald Amundsen has also been preserved and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The front end of the car held quarters for two stewards, a pantry, a galley, mechanical equipment, storage and ice bunkers.

The car was protected with 5⁄8 inch (16 mm) armor plate on the sides, top, bottom and ends.

Other features included bank vault style doors at the rear entrance to the car, two escape hatches (located in the lounge and presidential bathroom) for emergency egress, exterior loudspeakers for public addresses, a telephone in every room that could be connected to a trainside telephone outlet provided by the local telephone company and a custom built wheel-chair elevator that could lift Roosevelt from ground level up to the rear platform of the car.

He traveled approximately 50,000 miles (80,000 km) in the car in the next two years, using it for the last time on a trip to Warm Springs, Georgia two weeks[4] before he died there.

During the campaign the car traveled more than 28,000 miles (45,000 km), and Truman gave almost 350 speeches from the rear platform.

The car was last used officially in 1954, when Mamie Eisenhower rode it to Groton, Connecticut, to christen the first nuclear powered submarine USS Nautilus.

In 1984 the Ferdinand Magellan was briefly loaned to the presidential re-election campaign of President Ronald Reagan, who gave a series of "whistlestop" speeches from the rear platform during a one-day trip in Ohio on October 12, 1984.