Pullman Palace Car Company

Exterior view of a Pullman car

The Pullman Palace Car Company , which was founded by George Mortimer Pullman , manufactured railroad cars from the middle to the end of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th century, during the boom in railroad construction in the USA . Pullman developed a sleeping car that bore his name until the 1980s. The union associated with this company, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters , was one of the most powerful African-American organizations of the 20th century.

Overview

After spending the night on the passenger train from Buffalo, New York to Westfield, New York , trying to sleep in his seat, George Pullman was inspired to design a better railroad passenger car with bunks for all passengers . During the day, the upper bunks could be folded up, as is done today with the overhead lockers in a modern airplane. During the night the upper bunks were unfolded and the two opposite seats below could be folded so that they also formed a relatively comfortable bunk. Today this equipment would be judged to be rather spartan, but at the time it represented a significant improvement over earlier constructions. Curtains created some privacy and there were washrooms for women and men at both ends of the car.

Pullman founded its first company in 1862, building luxury sleeper cars with carpets, curtains, padded seats, libraries, and card tables, and other customer service facilities. Pullman became a generic name due to its high market share. The company also became known through the Pullman strike , which was initiated by its workers and union leaders in 1894: During the economic depression, Pullman reduced working hours and wages, but not the rents of the houses in which the workers lived. This led to the strike. The workers joined the American Railway Union led by Eugene V. Debs .

Interior view of a Pullman car
Pullman car (1910), which served as Business Car No. 101 on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and has now been restored under the name Abraham Lincoln
Pullman carriage at the Saskatchewan Railway Museum
Lower and upper bunk

After the death of George Pullman in 1897, Robert Todd Lincoln , the son of Abraham Lincoln , became President of the Society. The company closed its factory near Pullman, Chicago in 1955.

1930, in the midst of the Great Depression , which bought Pullman Inc. , the Standard Steel Car Company (SSC). The new company was named Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company . This stopped production after the construction of the "Amtrac Superliner" in 1982 and sold the rights to its constructions and developments in 1987 to the company Bombardier, which took over them .

Company history

Pullman Palace Car Company share (1884)

1890 by Pullman for the B & O Royal Blue built railway car, which in today B & O Railroad Museum in Baltimore (Maryland) is issued

The original Pullman Palace Car Company was founded on February 22, 1867.

On January 1, 1900 the company renamed itself after the purchase of various cooperating and competing companies in The Pullman Company , which was characterized by the advertising slogan "Too much Chatter".

In 1924, the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Co. was founded from the previous production department to consolidate the Pullman Company's railroad car construction; the parent company Pullman Company, which its offices in Denver (Colorado) had changed its name on 21 June 1927 in Pullman, Inc. has to offer.

Pullman had its most successful years in the mid-1920s. In 1925 the company fleet grew to 9,800 cars. 28,000 conductors and 12,000 servants for the passengers were employed by the Pullman Company.

In 1930 the Osgood Bradley Car Company was bought.

In February 1931, Pullman built the last heavy standard sleeping car. In 1934 the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Co. merged with the Standard Steel Car Co. to form the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company and continued building railroad cars and trolleybuses until 1982. The Standard Steel Car Company was founded on January 2, 1902 and operated railroad car construction in factories in Butler, Pennsylvania and Hammond, Indiana , before becoming a subsidiary of Pullman on March 1, 1930.

In 1940, just as orders for light railroad cars were growing and sleeper traffic was growing, the United States Department of Justice opened a lack of competition investigation against Pullman, Inc. in the US District Court in Philadelphia (Case 994). The government wanted to separate the operation of the sleeping cars from the wagon construction. In 1944 the court ruled that Pullman, Inc. had to part with either the Pullman Company (sleeping car operation) or the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company (wagon construction). After three years of negotiations, the Pullman Company was sold to a consortium of 57 railroad companies for approximately $ 40 million.

After this separation in 1944, Pullman Inc. was retained as the parent company with the following subsidiaries:

Pullman Company - for the operation of railroad cars (but not as the owner of the railroad cars, these went to the 57 railway companies) - and
Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Co. - for the construction of railroad cars and freight cars .

In addition, Pullman, Inc. operated the leasing of rail freight cars on a large scale.

Pullman advertisement on a 1962 Seaboard Railroad timetable

Drawing of the Pullman Standard Model 800 trolleybus (1947), which is still in use today on the Valparaíso trolleybus in Chile

Pullman-Standard built the last light passenger cars in April 1956; the last order was lot no. 6959 for the Union Pacific Railroad . The company continued to build cars for mass transit and subway trains and , until the early 1980s, superliners for Amtrak .

In early 1974, Pullman-Standard delivered 750 pieces of 22.86-meter-long stainless steel subway cars to the New York City Transit Authority . As the "R46", these cars, together with the "R44" built by the St. Louis Car Company, were intended for speeds of up to 113 km / h, as they should be driven in the new subway line under Second Avenue in Manhattan. After the construction of this line was postponed, the New York Transport Company released these cars for other lines. Pullman also built subway cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for use on the Red Line. By Pullman, Inc. , the Pullman-Standard 1981/1982 in was Pullman Technology, Inc. changed its name. The most important goods were the construction drawings. Under the trade name Transit America , Pullman Technology marketed the construction of the Comet car for local transport (which was first built in 1970 for the New Jersey Department of Transportation ) until 1987, when Bombardier bought Pullman Technology for its designs and patents. Pullman Technology remained an independent subsidiary of Bombardier until 2004.

The Pullman Company's sleeper car operation ceased and all leasing contracts ended on December 31, 1968. On January 1, 1969, the Pullman Company was dissolved and the company's property sold. An outward sign of this change was the removal of the Pullman name from all wagons previously owned by the Pullman Company at most railway companies, especially the Union Pacific Railroad . All goods that still remained with Pullman were auctioned off in early 1970 near the former Pullman factory in Chicago .

At first it remained Pullman, Inc. , which split up from 1981: In April 1981 it separated its extensive leasing activities for freight cars as the Pullman Leasing Company . This company became part of ITEL Leasing , retaining its PLCX identification. ITEL Leasing later became GE Leasing .

In mid-1981 it separated its freight car production as the Pullman Transportation Company . Various plants were closed in 1984. The remaining manufacturing facilities as well as the constructions and patents of Pullman-Standard, as far as they concerned freight cars, were sold to Trinity Industries .

After the Pullman, Inc. had separated from the wagon, she remained a conglomerate that more mergers and acquisitions went through undertook until a subsidiary of Wheelabrator-Frye, Inc. was. This in turn merged in January 1982 with M. W. Kellogg , a manufacturer of large factory chimneys, silos and chimneys. The Wheelabrator-Frye-Group kept both Pullman and Kellogg as legally independent subsidiaries. In 1990 the entire group was sold to Waste Management . The Pullman and Kellogg businesses were separated from Waste Management as Pullman Power Products Corporation and in late 2004 that company was called Pullman Power LLC and was a subsidiary of Structural Group , a specialty construction company.

After the separation of the last Kellogg businesses from Pullman-Kellogg, the sale of all railcar manufacturing facilities and the formal dissolution of the old Pullman Company (the sleeping car operating company that emerged from the 1944 split), Waste Management, Inc. separated the remaining Pullman businesses from May 1985 as the new Pullman Company . In November 1985, Pullman bought Peabody International and renamed the new company Pullman Peabody . In April 1987 - after Pullman Technology was sold to Bombardier - the name Pullman Company was resumed . This company merged with Clevite Industries in September 1987 . In 1996, the Pullman Company, with its daughter Clevite, was almost the sole manufacturer of elastomer parts for the automotive industry . In June 1996 the company was sold to Tenneco . Until 2004 the Pullman Company manufactured elastomer parts as a subsidiary of Tenneco Automotive .

Company settlement

Pullman (Illinois)

In 1880, the company built a workers' settlement called Pullman on 16 km² of land 23 km south of Chicago . The city, which belonged to the company in its entirety, consisted of houses, market halls, a library, churches and leisure facilities for around 6,000 company employees and an equally large number of relatives. The employees had to live in Pullman, although cheaper housing was often found in neighboring communities. One employee reportedly said, “We are born in a Pullman house, our food comes from Pullman stores, we are taught in Pullman schools, we pray in Pullman churches, and when we die we go to Pullman schools. Hell! ”Alcoholic beverages were banned in town as George Pullman believed that drinking was a disgusting habit for workers. In the company's own Hotel Florence there was alcohol, but only for hotel guests. The hotel was too expensive for workers.

In 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the company to sell the city. It was then incorporated into Chicago. The surrounding communities, which had previously formed the Hyde Park Township with Pullman, had already been incorporated into 1889. Today Pullman is a National Historic Landmark as the Pullman National Monument and the faithful restoration of the houses is encouraged.

Other corporate facilities

The Pullman Company operated many facilities in other parts of the United States. One of these was the Pullman workshops in Richmond, California , which were attached to the main lines of the Southern Pacific Transportation and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway . Rail cars from all over the western United States were serviced and repaired there. The main building of the workshops as well as the passage still exist today; they're on Pullman Avenue.

Servants for the passengers

A Pullman passenger servant

The Pullman Company was also known for its passenger servants. The society employed African-Americans for this task. While this was an unskilled labor job in many ways, it was better paid and more secure than most of the other jobs open to African Americans at the time. In addition, it opened up the possibility of traveling and was very popular in the Afro-American community at the time. Pullman servants were organized in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under Asa Philip Randolph . Many Pullman employees were referred to as "George" by travelers regardless of their real name. This tradition, which is widely perceived as racist, had its origin in the name of the company's founder, George Pullman. To combat this practice, various conductors founded the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George" . At the time, the Pullman Company was America's largest employer for African-Americans.

Products

Presidents' Committee Conference Streetcar, "A" Series
Chicago Transit Authority 5001-5002 PCC Express Train Passenger Car (1947); decommissioned 1985
Chicago Transit Authority 2001–2180 express train passenger car (1964); decommissioned in 1993
MBTA Red Line 01500/01600 wagon (1969–70)
NJ Transit Comet I commuter cars (1970)
New York City Transit R6 (1936), R7 (1937), R7A (1938), R46 (1975–1978)
Amtrak Superliner (1978–1981)

literature

Larry Tye: Rising from the Rails. Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class . Henry Holt and Company, New York NY 2004, ISBN 0-8050-7850-9 .
Joe Welsh, Bill Howes: Travel By Pullman. A Century of Service . MBI Publishing Inc., St. Paul MN 2004, ISBN 0-7603-1857-3 .