The Story of the Pullman Car

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The Pullman car invented by George Pullman (1831-1879), an American engineer and industrialist, introduced the railroad sleeping car in 1867 designed after the packet boats on the Erie Canal he recollected from his youth.  In the United States Pullman car refers to a railway sleeping car.  In Europe the word Pullman also can refer to a dining car.  In South America the Pullman name is attached to a luxury bus service.  The Pullman company created the sleeping car and introduced Pullman porters, a service experience formerly enjoyed exclusively by the upper class. Employment as a Pullman porter was almost entirely the domain of African American men until the 1960s and carried a high social standing in the African American community. The Pullman car served on many railroads from 1867 to 1968.  In this book, the evolution of the Pullman car is described as “luxury for the middle class” and the author acknowledges Hungerford’s book The Modern Railroad.  Many illustrations annotate the text.

A digitized vesion of this text is available through the Internet Archive.

Lehigh University Catalog Record: https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/Record/10680091

Joseph Husband (1885-1938)
The Story of the Pullman Car.
Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1917 1st ed.