Category:Pullman

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"The First Pullman in England", Hornby, 1925

"The First Pullman in England", Hornby, 1925 [image info]

George Pullman (1831-1897) was the American inventor-industrialist who created the "Pullman car" railway carriages.

Pullman got his start building coffins, and then moved from New York to Chicago just as the city needed to put in a long-overdue sewerage system. With experience of his father's method of jacking up buildings and creating new foundations in situ (gained from working on the Erie canal), Pullman became one of the engineers responsible for "lifting" hotels and civic buildings.

As an inventor, Pullman was naturally attracted to the possibilities offered by the railway business, and his study of hotel buildings for the Chicago project, combined with a background with wooden construction (and perhaps, a recollection of the long, thin, "packet boats" that ran on the Erie canal) resulted in his designing the first Pullman cars based around the concept of a mobile hotel on rails, the Palace Car of 1864. His awareness of the funeral industry also came in handy when President Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865, and Pullman scored the public relations coup of having the President's body moved in a Pullman car.

Pullman's business flourished, and he introduced other "non-railway" concepts to the industry. A hotel would be inefficient without passageways that let staff and guests move between its parts, so why couldn't the same be done for Pullman cars? And a great hotel often had a great restaurant, so why not include one of those, too? Pullman introduced and patented the concept of vestibuled sections connecting carriages together, and introduced a sleeper car with an attached Kitchen and restaurant section, the President, in 1867. This was followed by the Delmonico restaurant car, manned by staff from Delomonico's restaurant, NY.

Pullman joined the board of Union Pacific in 1871, and as the business expanded, Pullman set up a private town for his employees, named Pullman, but labour unrest when the business contracted, coupled with the authoritatian method in which the town was administered, led to civil unrest, the Pullman Strike of 1894 that paralysed the country's rail network, and a Government commission that concluded that the town should be released from Pullman's control and allowed to merge with the rest of the growing city of Chicago.

The Pullman company became Pullman-Standard in 1930.

Pullman in Britain (and Brighton)

George Pullman was invited to Britain in 1873 by the Midland Railway, who added eighteen Pullman cars to their rolling stock, and the Great Northern Railway followed with a Pullman Car on one of their services, with other railways "dipping a toe" into the idea of a Pullman option on some services, including the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) in 1875.

The LBSCR embraced the Pullmans and introduced a four-car all-Pullman Pullman Limited Express in 1881. They added new vestibuled "Pullman Pups" cars, and the 1898 London-Brighton Pullman service became the Brighton Limited in 1899. This was followed by the seven-car Southern Belle in 1908 ("The Most Luxurous Train in the World"), and which originated the classic brown and cream livery (Pullmans had previously normally been brown with gold lining). The Southern Belle was also the first British Pullman train to be built in the UK (rather than assembled in the UK from parts shipped from America), and other all-Pullman services started to spring up around the country, including the Bournemouth Belle, the Fleche D'or (Golden Arrow), the Continental Boat Express, and many others. Brighton's Southern Belle was replaced by the new all-electric Brighton Belle in 1934.

References and links

Subcategories

This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total.

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G

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