Leonard Seibert, a veteran employee of the Chicago & Alton, told a few years ago of Mr. Pullman’s first attempts to remodel the old coaches of that road into sleeping-cars. Said he:
“In 1858 Mr. Pullman came to Bloomington and engaged me to do the work of remodelling the Chicago & Alton coaches into the first Pullman sleeping-cars. The contract was that Mr. Pullman should make all necessary changes inside of the cars. After looking over the entire passenger car equipment of the road, which at that time constituted about a dozen cars, we selected Coaches Nos. 9 and 19. They were 44 feet long, had flat roofs like box cars, single sash windows, of which there were fourteen on a side, the glass in each sash being only a little over one foot square. The roof was only a trifle over six feet from the floor of the car. Into this car we got ten sleeping-car sections, besides a linen locker and two washrooms—one at each end.
“The wood used in the interior finish was cherry. Mr. Pullman was anxious to get hickory, to stand the hard usage which it was supposed the cars would receive. I worked part of the Summer of 1858, employing an assistant or two, and the cars went into service in the Fall of 1858. There were no blue prints or plans made for the remodelling of these first two sleeping-cars, and Mr. Pullman and I worked out the details and measurements as we came to them. The two cars cost Mr. Pullman not more than $2,000, or $1,000 each. They were upholstered in plush, lighted by oil lamps, heated with box stoves, and mounted on four-wheel trucks with iron wheels. The berth rate was fifty cents a night. There was no porter in those days; the brakeman made up the beds.”
Pullman built his first real sleeping-car in 1864. It was called the Pioneer and he further designated it by the letter “A,” not dreaming that there would ever be enough Pullman cars to exhaust the letters of the alphabet. The Pioneer was built in a Chicago & Alton car shop, and it cost the almost fabulous, in those times, sum of $18,000. That was extravagant car-building in a year when the best of railroad coaches could be built at a cost not exceeding $4,500 each. But the Pioneer was blazing a new path in luxury. From without, it was radiant in paints and varnishes, in gay stripings and letterings; it was a giant compared with its fellows, for it was a foot wider and two and a half feet higher than any car ever built before. It had the hinged berths that are to-day the distinctive feature of the American sleeping car, and the porter and the passengers no longer had to drag the bedding from closets at the far end of the car.
The Pioneer was not only wider and higher than other passenger cars, it was also wider and higher than the clearances of station platforms and overhead bridges. But when the country was reduced to the deepest distress because of the death of President Lincoln, the fame of Pullman’s Pioneer was already widespread, and it was suggested that the fine new car should be the funeral coach of the martyred president. This involved cutting wider clearances all the way from Washington by the way of Philadelphia, New York, and Albany to Springfield, Ill.; and gangs of men worked night and day making the needed changes. Pullman knew that the increased convenience of an attractive car built upon proper proportions would justify these changes in the long run, and it is significant that the height and width of the Pullman cars to-day are those of the Pioneer; the changes have been made in the length. Not long after that car had carried President Lincoln to his grave, General Grant started on a trip west, and the Michigan Central Railroad anxious to carry him over its lines from Detroit to Chicago, widened its clearances for the same celebrated car. After that there were several paths open for the big car, and work was begun upon its fellows. It went into regular service on the Chicago & Alton Railroad; and the Pullman Palace Car Company was formed in 1867. The alphabet soon ran out, and the company to-day operates between four and five thousand cars in regular service. There is a popular tradition, several times denied, to the effect that Pullman for many years gave his daughters $100 each for the names of the cars, and that that formed the source of their pin money.
An interior view of one of the earliest Pullman sleeping-cars
Interior of a standard sleeping-car of to-day
While the dimensions of the car were largely set, improvements in its construction have gone steadily forward, as has been told in an earlier chapter. The interior of these luxurious modern cars has not been neglected. From the beginning they have been elaborate in rare woods and splendid textile fittings. The advancing era of American good taste has done much toward softening the over-elaboration of car interiors—the sort of sleeping car that George Ade used to call “the chambermaid’s dream of heaven.” The newest cars present the quiet elegance and good taste of a modern residence. Nothing that may be added in wealth of material or of comfort is omitted, but the foolish draperies and carvings that once made the American car the laughing-stock of Europeans have already gone their way.