The steel parts used for interior car finish are all standardized, and are formed by powerful presses
Another large press at work on the forming of steel shapes for the interior framing of the cars
The present method of heating an entire train with steam from the locomotive was satisfactorily tested out in the winter of 1887, and was generally adopted the following year. By this improved system the individual heaters in each car were abolished, and a source of much discomfort and complaint was removed. The Pullman cars were immediately altered to benefit by the new system.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE CARS ARE MADE
In former chapters has been told the story of the birth of the Pullman car and its development through the various phases of its evolution. Generally speaking, this evolution for the first forty years was characterized chiefly by the addition, at one time or another, of certain inventions and improvements, such as the electric light and the vestibule, and by a changing style of interior decoration conforming to contemporary fashions. But at no time is recorded a change in the basic idea of car construction that can in any measure compare with the revolutionizing change which was recorded in 1908 by the construction of the first "all-steel" Pullman car.
For a number of years steel sills and under frames had furnished a staunch foundation for all cars manufactured by the Pullman Company for its operation. Further strengthened by steel vestibules, it is to be doubted if the all-steel car offered any very material increase in the safety already afforded to the passengers. But the change which the steel car brought in the process of manufacture was radical in the extreme. The first Pullman cars, and in fact every car up to and through the nineties, was of all-wood construction. Wood-making machinery filled the great shops at Pullman; carpenters and cabinet-makers numbered a big percentage of the pay roll. It was a wood-working industry. At one fell stroke the old order changed to the new. The songs of the band-saw and the planer were stilled and in their stead rose the metallic clamor of steam hammer and turret lathe, and the endless staccato reverberation of an army of riveters. Ponderous machines to bend, twist, or cut a bar or sheet of steel filled the vast workrooms. An army of steel workers, Titans of the past reborn to fulfill a modern destiny, fanned the flames in their furnaces and released the leash of sand blast, air hose, and gas flame.
This machine is at work punching holes for screws etc. in the steel for the inside finish
