The Story of the Pullman Car

by Joseph Husband

This fact shows that the public has a deep interest in improvements in traveling conveniences. We do not remember that any previous invention or improvement has ever excited such general public interest. Mr. Pullman has again struck the popular chord.

The first vestibule train to the land of the Aztecs, the "Montezuma Special," was naturally of Pullman construction, and began regular tri-monthly trips from New Orleans to the City of Mexico and return, via the Southern Pacific, Mexican International, and Mexican Central Railway, on February 7, 1889. Four magnificent cars, electrically lighted, comprised the train. The initial trip of 1,835 miles was made in about seventy-one hours, and on its arrival in the City of Mexico a banquet was given to President Diaz and his cabinet to signalize the advent of the first international vestibule train into the capital of Mexico.

The lighting of railway cars shows an interesting evolution. Undoubtedly candles were used at the earliest period, but the use of oil dates back beyond the birthday of the Pullman car. Oil lamps, at best, were a poor substitute for the light of day. Casting a dim, yellow light, flickering in every draught, smelling and smoking when not properly cared for, and vitiating the car atmosphere, it was small wonder that the public showed prompt appreciation of the first substitute that was provided.

The brilliant Pintsch light, which for a number of years had had wide use in Europe, was first introduced into America by the Pullman Company on the crack Erie train in the through New York-Chicago service in 1883. The gas used for these lights was of high candle power and was manufactured from petroleum. As a car illuminant it has held its own almost to the present day.

It is impossible to exaggerate the part played by the Pullman Company in the development of electric lighting of cars. Without its inspired initiative and its vast resources for practical and costly experiment it is fair to believe that electricity would not have been successfully utilized for this purpose for many years. The Railroad Gazette of January 25, 1889, expresses this thought:

Without extended experiments we can scarcely hope to develop a good system of electric lighting for railroad service. Such experiments are rather expensive, and it is only by the co-operation of liberal-minded managers that anything like a perfect system can be expected in a reasonable time. The Pullman Company has great confidence in the success of electric lighting, and therefore, in spite of the annoyance and expense of the present system, expresses a determination to use it, expecting that something better will result in the near future from the extended experience now being obtained.

Although the incandescent electric lamp was introduced by Edison in 1879, following by two years the introduction by Brush of the arc lamp, it was on an English railway in an American Pullman car supplied with electricity by French accumulator cells that the electric light on October 14, 1881, barely fifty years from the first suggestion of the iron horse by Stephenson, cast its brilliant light for the first time in a railway carriage.

The trial was made in a Pullman car, forming part of a special train on the Brighton Railway. A number of officials of the road, a representative of the Pullman Company, and Mr. F. A. Pincaffs and Mr. Lachlan of the Faure Accumulator Company composed the party, and at 3:25 the train pulled out of the Victoria Station for Brighton.

Only a few months before, Mr. Faure had sent to Sir William Thomson his little box of lead plates coated with red oxide and fully charged with electricity. The great physicist saw at once its possibilities, and in a relatively short time inventors were developing countless applications of the new wonder. Its application to car lighting was an important test.

The Pullman car on which this first experiment was made, carried beneath it on a shelf some thirty-two small metal boxes or cells, each containing lead plates coated with oxide. Stored in these cells was the power to light the car. It was nothing more than the most elementary storage battery, a far cry from the compact batteries of today and the massive generator swung beneath the floor of the modern car.