Passenger Trains > Pullman operating Budd Cars???

I just finished reading a aritcle from Walthers about Budd passenger car. The one thing that got me was a picture of a UP Budd sleeping car with Pullman arcoss the top of it. How did Pullman end up on a Budd car? Whats the story behind this?


NateF40Amtrak
www.trainweb.org/clevelandtrains

I'm sure there are others who can answer this better than I can, but basically, Pullman originally built and owned all the sleeping cars in the US. As other builders tried to enter the sleeping car market, they were blocked by Pullman's monopoly (basd on it's patents). The other wannabe builders sued and, in the 1930s, I think, Pullman was split, by court order, into two entities. Pullman Standard became the car builder, and The Pullman Company became a leasor/operator of sleepers. The Pullman patents were also released, and that was when Budd and others began to be able to build competing sleeping cars. I don't know if was by legal fiat or mutual agreement, but The Pullman Company somehow became the sole owner and leasor of all sleeping cars in the US.

It was a wierd arrangement, because railroads could specify sleeping cars from other builders (Budd, American Car & Foundry, St. Louis Car Co.), but somehow ownership of the cars went to The Pullman Company, who "rented" them to the railroads, complete with on-board crews. Pullman owned cars (regardless of who built them) were sometimes lettered for the host railroad, with a small "Pullman" label near the end of the car, and sometimes had a large "Pullman" where the railroad name would normally go, and a small railroad name near the end. After about 1960, all mention of Pullman disappeared from Southern Pacific sleepers. The Budd sleepers used on the original California Zephyr carried no mention of the Pullman name, even when delivered in 1949. That was odd, since Burlington Budd sleepers, which the CZ cars were based on, did have a small "Pullman" at the vestibule end. I don't know how they worked that out.

In about 1968, The Pullman Company exited the sleeping car operating business and sold all of it's cars to the railroads that were using them anyway. If you examine photos of UP passenger cars taken after 1968, you'll probably notice the the large "Pullman" has been removed from the letterboard. At the same time, UP added numbers to its sleepers, which had had only names up until then. For the most part, UP never got around to re-lettering them "Union Pacific", and a lot of their sleepers went to Amtrak with no large railroad name above the windows.

Let me add a bit to the explanation. The Pullman Company was the Trailer Train of an earlier era. Even after the court-ordered breakup of the Pullman Company, sleepers might be owned by the railroads (and leased to Pullman for operation) or they might be owned outright by Pullman (which might account for "Pullman" on the letterboard rather than the little Pullman sign at the car end).

In either case, all those sleepers (almost all there were, since only a few railroads operated their own parlor cars and sleepers) formed a nationwide pool. The Pullman Company and the railroads worked out utilization schemes that put many of the Western roads' cars into Florida service in the winter, and sent Seaboard and ACL cars west in the summer.

As a child, I used to ride to Florida from New York in California Zephyr cars, Santa Fe cars, once a Nickel Plate car, and several times in yellow UP cars. The "South Wind" carried an NP dome sleeper during the winter months throughout much of my youth.

This is one of the many things Amtrak lost for us. Selection of mutually incompatible car types for Western and Eastern trains means that there is no "surge pool" of sleepers, and in the winter Amtrak's pitiful excuses for Florida trains run with one or two Viewliners when in the late 1960s the Silver Meteor and the Florida Special would carry a dozen or more Pullmans.

The demise of the Pullman Company (they lasted a few more years in Mexico) hastened the decline of late-60s service and the pressure for government operation of passenger trains.

The New York Central was a big exception and ran their own sleeping cars for years before the termination of the Pullman Company at the end of 1968. I actually think the date was shortly after World War II, but I am not sure about that. The famous 20th Century Limited was NOT a Pullman operation for many of its years of operations.

I think there is a least one other big road that pulled out of Pullman years before the end, but I can't remember it right now. Southern?

My understanding is after the split, that the Pullman Operating Co. common stock was owned proportionally by the railroads themselves. This is similiar to the Railway Express Co. ownership. So that any profits or losses went back to the RR's.
I often wonder if perhaps the Pullman Co. would have been the better business model to "morph" into Amtrak. Reason: it had good management, staff and knew its business. The Railway Express Co. was another sad case. I still see the REAZ marks on piggy back trailers. It tried to modernize but was killed by ICC regulations.

Those REAZ markings trailers in the 80s didn't have anything, I believe, to do with Railway Express. I've forgotten who the leasing company was.

In the 19th Century, New York Central operated Wagner sleeping cars and shunned the Pullman Company. However, after Pullman bought out Wagner, the New York Central was forced to get in line with the rest of the industry.

I believe the 20th Century was never a Wagner operation. The train was inaugurated in 1902, which I believe was after the Pullman/Wagner merger. If you look at the book "The Twentieth Century Limited: 1938-1967 (Richard J, Cook Sr., TLC Publishing, Lynchburg, VA, 1993) there are several builders photos of sleeping cars from the 1938 edition of the train.

The 1948 edition also had its cars initially lettered "Pullman" but by the mid-1960s, sleeper-observation cars "Hickory Creek" and "Sandy Cree," the consists' feature cars read "New York Central" on their letterboards.

In the late 1940s, New York Central ordered new sleeping cars from both Budd and Pullman-Standard. As delivered, both builders' cars sported "Pullman" on the letterboards, but in later years they read "New York Central."

I don't have time to find the exact dates, but NYC pulled out of Pulman around 1958. Southern dropped out in the late sixties, but that move precipitated the final demise and liquidation of Pullman only months later, IIRC.

As a matter of trivia, one time I was looking through the Pullman Archives at The Newberry Library. I found the notice that Graham Claytor give to Pullman that Southern was dropping out. It was handwritten on stationery from, if I remember right, the Boca Raton Resort & Club.

leasing co may have had the marks

Yup, Realco. REAZ reporting marks. Thanks