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At one time, just about every passenger rail route in the U.S. with a train that traveled overnight (or over more than one night) had Pullman service or an equivalent.
When I was growing up, my American Flyer trains always had passenger cars that said Pullman in the header band above the side windows. This supplanted the name of the railroad. Coaches with their evenly spaced window arrangements always said Pennsylvania or Santa Fe or New York Central, but the exotic cars with the seemingly unpredictably spaced windows always said Pullman. I came to think of Pullman as the name for that special exotic kind of car, and, in a way, it was.
In America, Pullman signified a sleeping car, which provided the railroad passenger not only, at least, an upper or lower berth, but also available bedrooms and suites of several sizes depending on what the passenger wanted to pay. The possible variations and offerings of Pullman cars was infinitely variable and very colorful.
But Pullman was actually the name of the company that built and ran the cars on America’s railroads (and in some foreign lands.) In its heyday, about 1925, Pullman had almost 10,000 railroad cars, employing 28,000 conductors and 12,000 porters on these cars, all of which had been constructed in the company’s own shops. The cars manufactured by Pullman also included diners, lounges, observation cars, interurban cars, rapid transit cars, and ordinary passenger coaches both for long-distance and commuter travel. Depending on Pullman’s contract with the railroad, all of the latter could be staffed by Pullman, as well.
The U.S. Department of Justice decided, in 1940, that Pullman was violating the antitrust laws, and sued to force Pullman to divest either the service operation (sleepers and sleeper service) or the car manufacturing operation. Pullman sold the former to a consortium of railroads that were already using Pullman sleepers on their regular passenger trains, keeping the car manufacturing business.
Although World War II and the end of the Great Depression increased passenger demand, the government had achieved what it wanted, for whatever reason, as things then were going swimmingly, and the decline of Pullman-like service after the war was virtually assured.
Be careful what you throw away.
Today, Amtrak (or VIA in Canada) runs the sleeper service, though perhaps service is too strong a word. A variety of rooms and roomettes are available, and, thank God, Amtrak does not run any section sleepers, as does VIA on the Canadian. (At least at last report.) Coping with overnight coach passengers on Amtrak is difficult enough, but I think sleeper section mates would be too much.
So we haven’t thrown away sleeping cars, per se, so much as relegated them to a service that runs at the whims of Congress and will add or take off sleepers, also on a whim, to maximize revenue, even when it doesn’t.
I grant that there are a few private operators that attach their more luxurious cars to Amtrak and provide sleeping car service—at premium prices—that mimics the luxury segment of the Pullman service from the 1930s and earlier.
It would be a pipe dream, but I’d like to see Amtrak contract out the diner and sleeper services to a company that would promote them and provide a higher level of service, even if it cost a premium price. I can only imagine what it would be like if Pullman were still in the sleeper business and were the Amtrak contractor. I would have to bet that a journey in the sleeper would be far more pleasurable than it has become under Amtrak.
©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com
(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)
