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Century of Pullman Cars, A Volume 2 The Palace Cars by Ralph Barger DJ SIGNED
A Century of Pullman Cars Volume 2 The Palace Cars SIGNED and #353 of 500
Hard cover with dust jacket Reflection from light on some photos
Copyright 1990 FIRST EDITION FIRST PRINTING
437 pages
CONTENTS
Preface vi
Foreword viii
How to Use This Book ix
A Half-Century of Palace Cars 12
Painting and Decorating Palace Cars in the 1890s 20
Cars of the 1860s and 1870s 30
Cars of the 1880s 80
Cars of the 1890s 176
The Wooden Pullman Cars of 1900 to 1910 242
The Wagner Palace Car Company 344
The Cars of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad 406
Late Rebuilds of the 1920s 424
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations 430
Acknowledgments 434
Index of Illustrations 435
Much has been published on Pullman travel, most of it seemingly preoccupied with the intangibles of Pullman glamour, luxury and mystique. Indeed it was all that, although perhaps not as much as we now see through the rosy haze of nostalgia. But behind it was something considerably more concrete and substantial - an enormous, constantly changing fleet of sleepers and other first-class cars operating nationwide in a busy, complex web of traffic patterns. These cars came in a staggering variety of interior configurations, many of them tailored to specific trains, markets, or traffic flows; often they were altered as assignments or markets changed. Also, they were often rebuilt or modified to incorporate mechanical or structural improvements.
Thus the job of documenting the details of all the cars operated by Pullman is hardly routine and simple. To accomplish this demands a special combination of patience, perfectionism, organizational ability, and massive doggedness - all of which Ralph Barger has. Yet it also is no esoteric exercise, of interest only to a cult of roster worshippers. More than anything else, this fleet was Pullman and, by extension, was the backbone of first-class passenger services on this country's railroads during a major part of their history. It is as significant a part of American business and transportation history as, for instance, the automobiles produced by Ford and General Motors. In fact, even the social and cultural historian can find rich source material in the changing nature of Pullman passenger accommodations and car layouts.
While Ralph Barger's entire planned series of seven volumes promises to be a priceless reference, this particular one must be the centerpiece. From the viewpoint of scholarship, it unquestionably contains the most unmined gems. Some fine groundwork has been done on 20th Century Pullman equipment, particularly from the 1930s onward, but until now nobody has made an organized effort to catalog the cars used during the company's first fifty years.
Furthermore, this half century saw the most significant events in Pullman's corporate life, as well as the most rapid technological changes in its equipment. George Pullman's sleeping car services grew from a single crude converted coach in 1859 to virtually a national monopoly of the business by the turn of the century. Along the way, the company lost its founder in 1897 and had to make the difficult transition from a classic one-man autocracy to a large and complex modern business organization. Over this same period, car design progressed from raw simplicity to the almost absurdly ornate "Palace Cars" of the 1890s, then swung back to a more austere standardization. And, along with the rest of the railroad industry, Pullman's cars gradually took on the form and features which would become the standard for much of the 20th Century. The earliest cars in this volume were built with hand brakes, link-and-pin couplers, coal stoves, oil lighting, and open vestibules. Passenger comfort was rudimentary. When Pullman's wooden car era ended in 1910, all cars were equipped with air brakes, automatic couplers, steam heating, gas and/or electric illumination, enclosed vestibules, and a wide array of sophisticated accommodations.
In short, these pages contain the body and soul of a vigorous, growing and powerful enterprise in its most exciting era. And even more, they represent the best on rails at a time when rails were the only way to travel.
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