Pullman (car or coach)

In the United States, Pullman was used to refer to railroad sleeping cars which were built and operated on most U.S. railroads by the Pullman Company (founded by George Pullman) from 1867 to December 31, 1968.

It also refers to railway dining cars in Europe that were operated by the Pullman Company, or lounge cars operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Specifically, in Great Britain, Pullman refers to the lounge cars operated by the British Pullman Car Company.

The nickname Pullman coach was used in some European cities for the first long (four-axle) electric tramcars whose appearance resembled the Pullman railway cars and which were usually more comfortable than their predessors. Such coaches (Russian: пульмановский вагон, tr. pul'manovsky vagon) ran in Kiev since 1907 and in Odessa since 1912. Since 1920s tramcars nicknamed Pullmanwagen in German ran in Leipzig, Cologne, Frankfurt and Zurich.

In some Western European countries in the 1940s and 1950s, some especially luxurious motor coaches were sometimes referred to as Auto-Pullmans.

Sleeping car

The sleeping car or sleeper (often wagon-lit) is a railway passenger car that can accommodate all its passengers in beds of one kind or another, primarily for the purpose of making nighttime travel more restful. The first such cars saw sporadic use on American railroads in the 1830s; they could be configured for coach seating during the day. Some of the more luxurious types have private rooms (fully and solidly enclosed rooms that are not shared with strangers).

History

The Cumberland Valley Railroad pioneered sleeping car service in the spring of 1839, with a car named "Chambersburg", between Chambersburg and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A couple of years later a second car, the "Carlisle", was introduced into service.

In 1857, the Wason Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts – one of the United States' first makers of railway passenger coach equipment – produced America's first specifically designed sleeping car.

The man who ultimately made the sleeping car business profitable in the United States was George Pullman, who began by building a luxurious sleeping car (named Pioneer) in 1865. The Pullman Company, founded as the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867, owned and operated most sleeping cars in the United States until the mid-20th century, attaching them to passenger trains run by the various railroads; there were also some sleeping cars that were operated by Pullman but owned by the railroad running a given train. During the peak years of American passenger railroading, several all-Pullman trains existed, including the 20th Century Limited on the New York Central Railroad, the Broadway Limited on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Panama Limited on the Illinois Central Railroad, and the Super Chief on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.