I’ll fess up from the get-go: I run freight and MoW rolling stock and have no passenger equipment at all. Not surprising, then, that I don’t understand the number combinations that identify various kinds of sleepers, lounge, and chair cars. Like a 3-2 lounge car, a 10-1-2 sleeper, or a 28-1 parlor car. The combinations seem to be endless. Is there a site out there that explains what those individual numbers represent?
John
Here’s an example of a passenger train consist book & roster by the New Haven RR from 1937:
http://www.alphabetroute.com/nynhh/equipmentlists/NH%204-1937%20PCNST.pdf
Read the explanation of symbols on Page 2.
Generally speaking, Pullman cars are identified by the passenger accomodations inside the car, starting with the cheapest and ending with the most expensive types.
An explanation of each type can be found here:
http://www.railswest.com/pullman.html
Parlors are first class “chair” cars without any sleeping areas. You have to pay extra to ride a parlor but you sit in a swivel/reclining overstuffed chair and are served by a parlor car attendant at your seat. Lounge cars (or areas inside a car) are for passengers to sit in either groups, or to smoke, or to drink, or all of the above. Sometimes they are paid seats, other times they are just open for first class passengers only, sometimes for anyone. Depends on the era and road.
Excellent stuff! Thanks, Paul. All my questions answered - for now.[;)]
John
An additional issue is how cars were numbered. Each car obviously had an individual number which was incidental to the train car number. By the door to the car in a window was a device that could be set to any number up to three digits. This was the train car number. The station agent would read those numbers and the location prior to the trains arrival to facilitate boarding. So car # 8523 on the side of the car is superceded by the #124 in the window next to the door. This allowed railroads to replace cars requiring maintenance with substitute cars not always the same layout but still run an orderly train
Also note in the wooden car and heavyweight eras, Pullman sleeping cars only rarely had numbers, they were only identified by a name. Pullman generally tried to assign similar types of cars similar names, so say a batch of 20 sleeping cars whose names were all “Lake _______” would all look the same inside and out.
The naming was probably what led to the three-max-digit ‘Pullman car number’ on your accommodation ticket. I can only imagine the fun in teleprinting all those characters in a car name on a ticket, then have customers running up and down the train figuring out which of the ‘clubs’ in the consist was theirs. Much simpler to have the number, look for it at the boarding door, and either get on or keep walking… a very similar argument to some justifications I see for limiting DCC to two-digit or 128 (in decimal) addresses… [:-^]
The three-digit car line number really had no relation to the car ID. If you bought a ticket a month in advance, Pullman and the railroad would have no idea which specific Pullman car or cars would be on that train on the day you travel. The line numbers kinda related more to Pullman keeping track of all the different railroads and trains it needed to supply cars to.
Suppose a railroad ran a train that left Chicago every evening and arrived in Des Moines early the next morning. There was enough passengers requesting sleeping accomodations that the railroad asked Pullman to assign one sleeper to the run. Pullman assigns number 210 to that car line. Every day, Pullman will provide a sleeping car to the railroad for it to use on that train. It might be the same car every day for some time, but over the course of a year several different Pullman cars would probably be used.
Your ticket on that train would say you were assigned say Berth 7 on car line 210. You could travel on the train several different times, and perhaps be in a different Pullman car each time. But your Pullman ticket would always say 210.
(I’m doing this from memory of stuff I read a long time ago so it’s probably not exactly right in terminology, but I think the general idea is correct.)
There’s some good information here. Yes, Pullman saaigned “line numbers” to routes. It was complicated. Not every Pullman car on a particular train made the whole “trip” that the actual train (the timetable train number the railroad was operating by).
For instance a train originating in New York ultimately going to Chicago (via the NYC) might have 2 Pullmans going to Montreal. In Albany several cars from Boston may be added. Again in Buffalo cars may be added or removed. Sometimes if it was in the early hours (usually it was for NY-Chi. travel) the passenger could occupy the “set-out” car until a certain, reasonable time later in the morning.
Again in Buffalo cars might be added from Toronto. Farther west, in Cleveland, other cars may be set out and incorporated into a train headed to Cincinnati, Indianapolis or St. Louis. Still other cars may be added from other routes.
By the time this particular train arrives in Chicago it may not look anything like the group of cars that left New York. Still the same train number but several “line” numbers involved. The line number was most important to the accounting department that had the task of recording space sold, tickets issued, employees assigned, etc. There were dozens of rates for clergy, servicemen, pass holders, children and such. The railroad ticketed for transportation separately.
The Designation number (not limited to three characters, as I recall) was the particular number used by the ticketing and reservation system. Usually the first numbers would be the train number and the following number would be the cars location in the train on THAT particular day. For instance car 256 would be the sixth car forward on train 25, the westbound Century. The designation number was left up to each railroad as to how they wanted to assign it.
Notice
Then there is the issue that the feds decided Pullman was a monopoly since they owned the cars and the service so most of the cars had to be purchased by the railroads but were staffed by Pullman employees. Typical of everything the government does that magnifies the old law of unintended consequences.
The choice Pullman was given was to sell either the passenger-car business or the freight-car business. They wisely chose the latter with Pullman-Standard.
Whether this affected the decline and fall of postwar passenger sleeper service is arguable. But Pullman certainly dodged a rather substantial bullet as things worked out…
I’ve got a book showing the ownership of “Pullman” cars in 1950, and there are many still owned by Pullman, perhaps even the majority, since they kept all of the tourist sleepers, except for a very few sold to NP.
I believe the cars that were sold were those in assigned service, and they were (mostly) sold to the railroads that used them. They were then leased back to Pullman for operation and maintenance.
As far as we modelers are concerned, the only difference is what changes of lettering on the letterboard MIGHT have taken place.
Ed