New Car Scoop

Showing posts with label Pullman. Show all posts

Sunday, July 24, 2011

What you could expect for breakfast lunch and dinner in a Pullman full service Cafe Parlor car

a famous opera singer traveling America in her own Pullman Palace Car, perhaps one of the most elegantly decorated, described below (anyone got pictures?)

Apart from the great legend of her voice, Adelina Patti was a very much larger-than-life character ... and a very astute business woman, she traveled the global for her work. But such travel then had it's hazards - not the least being the assurance of payment of a fee after a performance. For Patti, $5000 a night at the height of her powers.

The diva's solution was was novel and affective - that was to insist on her salary in gold before going on stage. Once, when offered only half before a performance, Patti put on one shoe and one foot on stage ... and declared she'd don on the other and begin the performance when the rest arrived. It did.

http://alexderavin.blogspot.com/2009/06/adelina-patti-1843-1919-famed-c19-opera.html

it remained for the Mann Boudoir-Car Company, to produce in Adelina Patti's car a decor which would have gratified Hollywood today and which assuredly popped the eyes of a less sophisticated generation of admirers. Oscar Lewis is authority for the statement that whenever her professional occasions brought her to the Golden Gate and her car was spotted at Oakland Mole, scores of San Franciscans were in the habit of making the ferry trip across the bay just to gaze on its glossy exterior and speculate on its internal wonderments.

The car was built on contract for the Mann Company by the Gilbert Car Manufacturing Company of Troy, New York, and delivered in December 1883. It was only 55 ft. long, almost diminutive by twentieth century standards, with three rooms en suite and a bath with tub.

During one of her San Francisco visits, Mme. Patti permitted the car's interior to be described by a reporter as follows:

The hammered gold and silver effect of the sides and ceiling was in a design of morning glories. The parlor was lighted by plate glass windows and a gold lamp which hung from above. The windows were ornamented with designs representing the four seasons. The hand-carved piano of natural wood corresponded with the rest of the woodwork in the room. There was a couch with satin pillows ornamented with bows and lace tidies opposite the piano. A Square table covered with plush, stood in the center and all around were easy chairs of luxurious depth. Mme. Patti's bedroom was largely pink. The paneling was of satinwood, inlaid with ebony, gold and amaranth. Bevelled mirrors were abundant and the couch had a silk-plush cover of gold embroidered with trailing pink rosebuds and with the monogram "A.P." in the same delicate shade. Over the velvet carpet, beside the bed, was a leopard skin. A stand was mounted with silver and a small bathtub was concealed from view by mirrored doors. There was a closet containing the table service of solid silver, china and glass -- all with the diva's monogram.

The car was rented to MMe. Patti on a per diem basis and carried her name both as a tribute to the occupant and as publicity for the Mann Company. When Pullman took over Col. Mann's company and its useful patents in 1889, the Pullman Company retained its original name and continued to rent it to the singer for her tours and it was at this time that the discovery was made that papier-mache had been extensively used in its interior appointments that had hitherto been believed rare woodwork. On December 23, 1901, the Adelina Patti, by now shorn of the glory of that name and plainly known as Coronet, was sold for $3,800 to Fitzhugh & Company, who specialized in circus and carnival equipment, and it disappear from human ken.

Mme. Patti lived up to every implication of artistic temperament suggested by this decor and once, during the Pullman ownership of the car, complained that the faucet leaked and ruined a number of costumes reposing in the tub at the moment.

Thanks Mary!

If anyone has pictures, please email me ! jbohjkl@yahoo.com

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Boudoir cars and palace cars, the luxury travel of the 1870's -1920's

Woodruff's Silver Palace Sleeping Car, built by the Harlan and Hollingworth Company of Wilmington Delaware, for the Central Pacific Railroad of California in 1869

from the book The American Railroad Passenger Car By John H. White, Jr

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Great variety of old advertising from QuestionableAdvice.tumblr.com (Centuries of Advertisements and Advice)

It's like Shorpy for advertisements! Very cool collection, enjoy more at http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/

Saturday, July 16, 2011

the Pullman Railplane of 1933, self propelled, designed by Stout (of the Stout Scarab)

Feeling the effects of the Depression and declining business, America's railroads (in the 1930s) were looking for ways to reinvigorate passenger travel. As Ralph Budd, president of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy, later explained, railroads had to continue running trains on short routes to handle mail and baggage "whether or not anyone rides the trains." After seeing GM's powerful diesel engines, Budd concluded that what the railroads needed was a new kind of train that was fast, convenient, ultramodern and luxurious enough to fire the public imagination. The Union Pacific Railroad also saw the two exhibits and came to similar conclusions. A race was on to see which of the two railroads would be the first to develop an ultramodern railcar

1934 Century of Progress Fair in Chicago The Union Pacific selected the University of Michigan to find the best aerodynamic shape while CB&Q turned to M.I.T.. The new designs looked like nothing else that had ridden the rails. They looked more like Buck Rogers's space ship than a train. People were tired of living in the Depression and they were ready for a change.

the Pullman-Standard wondertrain powered by 600 HP Winton petrol engine

Union Pacific М-10000 City of Salina weighed 20 per cent as much as a conventional railroad car, but using only two minuscule (by railroad standards) 320-hp six-cylinder truck engines, was able to hit 100 miles per hour, while delivering 5 miles per gallon. By comparison to conventional railcars, the ride was superb, engine noise and fumes were all but eliminated and the seating arrangement - using aircraft-type seats as fitted to the Scarab automobile - made the Railplane quite luxurious

It is Pullman-Standard Railplane

In 1933, the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Company constructed the Railplane to Stout's design (some improvements were later patented by the company, see the positives below). This was merely Stout's familiar triangulated space-frame aircraft fuselage, this time adapted to railroad use. Here too, he was able to preserve his all-time important triumvirate: simplicity, practicality and comfort. The self-propelled car had an aluminum body, 60' in length. It was exhibited at the Chicago World's fair 1934 and then leased to the Gulf, Mobile & Northern in 1935 for service between Tylertown and Jackson, Mississippi. From the railroad point of view, all running gear could be easily serviced from outside, tracks and roadbed lasted longer and operating costs were significantly less. Despite proven advantages, there were no buyers. Union Pacific ordered a three-car version (future City of Salina) , but that's as far as it went.

from http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/sunday-streamline-12-pullman and http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/flying-americans