Once by far the most common Pullman accommodation, the open section with an upper and lower berth had almost, but not quite, disappeared in the U.S. by 1971, though it remained in quantity in Canada and Mexico.
Digging through the April 1971 Official Guide I found two trains that listed open section sleepers. There was one more train where a car with open sections was used as a dormitory for the dining car crew.
Trains listing open sections:
The Gulf Wind (L&N/SCL) listed a 4 section, 4 roomette, 5 bedroom, one compartment car. Both L&N and SCL owned cars of this type. The train ran between Jacksonville FL and New Orleans LA.
Trains 35/36 (Union Pacific) listed a 4 section, 6 roomette, 4 Bedroom car that was rebuilt for Butte Special service from a 6 sec, 6 rmt, 4 br car. The removed sections were made over into a buffet for food service. The now unnamed train ran tri-weekly between Salt Lake City UT And Butte MT.
The other train was operated by Penn Central. PC pulled former New Haven 6 sec, 6 rmt, 4 br cars from the Federal after merging with the New Haven in 1969, former PRR passenger management wanting nothing to do with sections. A few of the surplus cars, with bulkheads installed behind the sections, were assigned to New York-Chicago service on train 61-27 and 28-62. The roomettes and bedrooms were used for paying passengers, the sections as dormitory space. In one of Amtrakâs final buys of âheritageâ cars, the cars ended up in Amtrak ownership, though the sections were never used as revenue space.
Iâll post some car histories as soon as I find the books with the details.
As promisedâŚ
The surprising thing about the open section cars is how new most of them were. The UPâs two cars for Butte Special service (American View and American General) were rebuilt in 1962 from cars ordered from ACF in 1960 to a prewar design.
Cars for the Gulf Wind were most likely from Seaboardâs 1954 order for six cars from Budd, four of which (Bay Pines, Cedartown, Henderson and Pinehurst) were still on SCLâs roster in 1970, though actually owned by and leased back from Hamburg Industries of Augusta GA. By 1971 most of L&Nâs sleeping cars had been retired, Their 4-4-5-1s came from Pullman-Standard for the Dixieland, with L&N assigned one car (Florida Traveler) of the nine-car order. L&N got two more of them in the 1957 NC&StL merger.
New Haven received eleven âBeachâ series 6-6-4 cars in 1954/55, part of a joint order with B&M and BAR to allow the retirement of a large number of heavyweights. PC rebuilt four of them: Hammonasset Beach became Biltmore, Ocean Beach became Commodore, Popponesset Beach became Barclay, and Sound Beach became Roosevelt, all named after PC-owned New York hotels.
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The New Haven kept the sections as the government would pay for sections for its employees but not for roomettes. The Amtrak economy sleeper is basically a section with a hard wall-though they donât sell the upper and lower berths independently.
PRR and NYC never had any lightweight sleepers with sections. One other railroad that took special steps to keep sections was the D&RGW, which rebuilt cars built in 1950 for C&O by replacing five roomettes with sections.
Amtrak did get a couple of ex-CB&Q 6-6-4âs built for the American Royal Zephyr, the Ak-Sar-Ben Zephyr and the Blackhawk in 1952. By April 1971, the Blackhawk had been discontinued, and the others were coach-only. They were used the same way as the ex-New Haven cars, and the sections were never sold as accommodations.
VIA Rail in Canada was still operating an overnight train with sections in 1983 that went from Toronto north to Cochrane, where it connected with Ontario Northlandâs Polar Bear Express to Moosonee. My wife and I traveled overnight from North Bay to Cochrane in a sleeper section. She took the upper bunk. The lower bunk offered one of the very best nights aboard a train Iâve ever enjoyed. One outstanding reason was the width of the bunkâmuch wider than anything Iâd experienced on Amtrak. The mattress seemed thicker, too, and it was all topped off with a Canadian National wool blanket. The heavy green curtain and the step ladder were novel to me; as a US railfan I knew I was experiencing a bit of old time railroading for my first and last time. Forty-two years later I still recall that luxurious bed and smooth ride.
Anybody at Amtrak listening? Bringing sections back to rail travel may just help increase long distance ridership for those who just canât sleep in a chair
I donât believe 21st Century people could stand the relative lack of privacy in using sections. Indoor plumbing has changed the sensibilities of the population.
I think that was essentially true in 1971 as well; youâll note that none of the âremainingâ space was even attempted to be sold to the public.
I also remember with some amusement that some time around 2011, people in China independently reinvented the open-section idea and tried to pass it off as a revolutionary new concept in inexpensive sleeper accommodations.
What was becoming discussed before the pandemic was very-low-cost reclining or âhostelâ accommodations as an alternative for trying to sleep in a chair overnight. In a sense these are ways to replicate open sections without some of the obvious drawbacks a revival of the Pullman approach would entail.
Sort of⌠The Slumbercoach (actually a Pullman trademark, though the cars were all built by Budd) was supposed to fix the disparity between coach and sleeper passenger density. With 24 single rooms and 8 double rooms, a full Slumbercoach could sleep 40, not too far off from the 44 or 48 seat modern long-distance coach.
Slumbercoach routes:
New York-Washington (NYC)
Washington-San Antonio (B&O/MP)
Chicago-Denver/Colorado Springs (CB&Q)
Chicago-Seattle(CB&Q/NP)
BN ended up with all of the ârealâ Slumbercoaches, the four CB&Q, and eight NP cars joined by NPâs purchase of the four NYC, three B&O and one MP cars.
Amtrak used them in various services, including New York-Chicago (Broadway Limited) and Washington-Montreal.
New York Central relabeled their high-density cars âSleepercoachâ after taking them off Pullman lease, adding rebuilt former 22-roomette cars with 16 single rooms and 10 double rooms, for 36 beds.
Two PRR-owned 21-roomette sleepers were painted in UP colors for Slumbercoach service (complete with Slumbercoach logo in red) on the MILW/UP City of Denver, competing with the Denver Zephyrâs real Slumbercoaches for less than a year.
Seaboard Coast Line re-labeled ex B&O 16 Duplex Roomette 4 Double Bedroom cars as âBudget Room Coachesâ for Florida Service in the late 1960s.
Slumbercoach singles were about 24" wide, a little tight for even small people. The singles were pretty claustrophobic, but they had a toilet that could be used with the berth down, not always possible in a roomette.
Iâd have said Touralux first. That was closer to the only-curtains privacy that was traditional open sectionsâŚ
Which were the cars that offered little windows in the letterboard area for passengers in the uppers? Those were as sensible as standee windows on PCCs.
The thing is, people tolerated open sections as necessary evils when the only practical way between cities far apart involved Pullman sleepers. The Slumbercoach was so popular because it was cheap like an open section, but with hard partitions⌠a bit like the equivalent of a Motel Six on increasingly octagonal wheels. And while it did feature pull-it-down-yourself-when-ready beds, they still had to be made up and maintained by porters, and in an age where porters have to be replaced with a decreased number of âconductorsâ or 'service attendants" or whatever, who cannot be scheduled like supervisors to ride the train only between ânighttimeâ station pairs, thatâs not much saving on your crew cost for cheap (even if acknowledged as such) accommodation.
Upper berth windows were installed for compartments (Pullman-built 4 bedroom, 4 compartment 2 drawing room cars) and sections on 6 section, 6 roomette, 4 double bedroom cars, both prewar and postwar.
I rode an Amtrak slumbercoach in the 1980s, I think on the Cardinal. I remember the bed was narrow and high off the floor. I was apprehensive about rolling out of bed, but it still beat sitting up all night
I rode in a Slumbercoach in 1985. I was supposed to be on the Cardinal. But, due to heavy rain storms in West Virginia with flooding, the Cardinal got canceled. Amtrak put me up for the night in a hotel in Chicago. Next day (evening departure) they put me on the combined âCapitol Limitedâ / âBroadway Limitedâ. These two trains were combined out of Chicago because the âCapitolâsâ normal route through Pennsylvania and West Virginia was closed because of the same storms. I got a Slumbercoach single on this train. The single rooms were kind of alternately stacked, high and low. Mine was a low one. So as you slept, your head would be below the feet of the person in the next room. I remember sometime in the night hearing the person in the next room snoring! I got up early next morning. In time to be up and and in the vestibule (and discretely opening the top of the âDutch doorâ) to enjoy my first (and so far, only) view of âHorseshoe Curveâ. WOW!
Later that day, the train was split at Philadelphia, with the âBroadwayâ continuing on to New York and the âCapitolâ going South on the Northeast Corridor to Washington. Quite a trip. My only time in a Slumbercoach!
Amtrak seems to avoid indoor plumbing by eliminating in-room toilets on economy roomettes. Of course, in the old days the contents of the toilet would just flush onto the tracks, so providing all roomettes with toilets was a lot cheaper both to build and to operate then it would be now.
Amtrak did set up a couple of Amfleet II cars on the Cardinal with what could arguably be called open sections. The one-off setup on a secondary train really didnât give the concept any time to take hold.
I was off by a little bitâŚ
The trial was in 1977-1979 on the Shenandoah, a train that operated Washington-Cincinnati via the B&O through Cumberland and Parkersburg, connecting with the Cardinal at Cincinnati. A pair of Viewliner prototype roomettes replaced three pairs of seats each in 60-seat long-distance Amfleet I coaches 22900 and 22901. The âAmpadâ configuration was later replaced by an ex-UP 10-6 sleeper. The start and end dates are a bit fuzzy, with more than a little congressional meddling (read West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd). The cars were returned to standard Amfleet I configuration, later rebuilt again for Metroliner service and later for other services. There were contemporary news articles in Trains, and itâs fairly well discussed across multiple forums.
Were the Viewliner roomettes âmodularâ at that time?
I think you mean Harley Staggers, not Byrd. I had forgotten some of the expedient details behind the âAmpadâ business â the idea actually made sense apart from the bare-bones implementation.
The Shenandoah usually ran 2-3 cars, so there was little point in hauling a full sleeper for what demand there would be on a 14-hour run. But in 1978 the schedule was changed to overnight, and supposedly FRA regulations at the time dictated sleeper accommodations for those who wanted them. The use of presumably modular roomettes in the space of a few Amfleet rows certainly solved the legal requirement, but it did not satisfy Staggers â it was apparently not long before a full sleeper was put on. I uncharitably note that the Shenandoah got the axe in 1981⌠the year Staggers retired.
