Nostalgia & History > Question about Pine series sleepers

I had the opportunity to get up close and personal with the Pine Tree State, owned by the NRHS Piedmont Carolinas Chapter.

Even thought the Pine Tree State was not one of the Santa Fe's "Pine Series" 10-6 sleepers, it got me thinking about these cars. They supposedly were built by Budd, but pictures of the cars I have seen feature the "Pullman" name on either end of the cars. Why would this be, since the cars were built by a competetor?

-Eric Shock

One possibly:

The Santa Fe purchased the sleepers along with other rolling stock and then at some point transferred control of these sleepers to Pullman.

the following from Illinois Transit web site (www.iltransit.com) on a couple of pine series sleepers:

PINE LEAF, ex-Amtrak 2458, built by Budd in 1950 as 10&6 sleeper, only $23,500.

PINE ISLAND, ex-Amtrak 2460, built by Budd in 1950 as 10&6 sleeper, only $28,000.

Since Pullman operates all ATSF sleeper service (from what I understand anyway), did they have to buy cars from Pullman or could they simply order from anybody and Pullman would operate it. If you think about, if you can get the car sell, at least to can get the operating contract.

I'm just guessing here, maybe something totally different happened.

All of the California Zephyr equipment ordered by CB&Q, Rio Grande, and Western Pacific was built by Budd including the sleepers, and I believe those railroads had contracts with Pullman to operate them as well.

After an anti-trust settlement in, I think, the late 1940s the Pullman company split into Pullman-Standard, which made cars, and the Pullman Company (or some similar name), which operated sleeping cars. I believe that the operating company was owned by the railroads jointly, presumably except for a few (including, as I remember, the NYC) that operated their own sleeping cars. Anyway, the consequence was that any car that Pullman operated was likely to have a "Pullman" label on the car regardless of who built it. Any train with more than one or two sleepers also had a Pullman conductor, whose job was to supervise the porters, deal with passenger problems, and generally make sure that the sleepers ran well. That position ended on January 1, 1969 (I remember because my wife, one-year old daughter, and I had a bedroom on the Cascade (Portland-Oakland) the December before, and the Pullman conductor helped straighten out a problem with our reservations). I'm stretching my memory now, but I think that the railroads all took over operation of their sleeping cars at that time; I do know that there still were sleeping car conductors on some trains afterwards, even after Amtrak began. And, of course, sleeping car conductors were all white while sleeping car porters were all African-American--there was no possibility of a promotion.

Working for ATSF passenger trains, I slept in the Pine series cars quite a bit, but I still think the Palm series by ACF were the finest riding cars.

BobB Wrote:
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> After an anti-trust settlement in, I think, the
> late 1940s the Pullman company split into
> Pullman-Standard, which made cars, and the Pullman
> Company (or some similar name), which operated
> sleeping cars. I believe that the operating
> company was owned by the railroads jointly,
> presumably except for a few (including, as I
> remember, the NYC) that operated their own
> sleeping cars. Anyway, the consequence was that
> any car that Pullman operated was likely to have a
> "Pullman" label on the car regardless of who built
> it. Any train with more than one or two sleepers
> also had a Pullman conductor, whose job was to
> supervise the porters, deal with passenger
> problems, and generally make sure that the
> sleepers ran well. That position ended on January
> 1, 1969 (I remember because my wife, one-year old
> daughter, and I had a bedroom on the Cascade
> (Portland-Oakland) the December before, and the
> Pullman conductor helped straighten out a problem
> with our reservations). I'm stretching my memory
> now, but I think that the railroads all took over
> operation of their sleeping cars at that time; I
> do know that there still were sleeping car
> conductors on some trains afterwards, even after
> Amtrak began. And, of course, sleeping car
> conductors were all white while sleeping car
> porters were all African-American--there was no
> possibility of a promotion.

This history is generally correct. Pullman lost the antitrust action in 1947 and had to divest itself of joint manufacture/ownership and operation of sleeping/parlor/lounge cars. From that point, most of these cars were railroad owned but Pullman operated, with Pullman employees. As Bob B. said, Pullman became a railroad jointly-owned corporate identity. Revenue and costs were allocated back to the owning railroads using accounting formulas.

Pullman maintained ownership of many cars (mostly heavyweights) that were used in pool service, specials and military trains.

Starting in the late 1950's, the overnight sleeping car trade began to decline. By 1968, the Pullman company was bankrupt and was liquidated. On January 1, 1969, the railroads that still operated sleeping cars, did so with railroad employees. The separate Pullman conductor positions were abolished.

It is true that Pullman conductors were white and the porters mostly black. When I was a kid, the Pullman conductor would mostly sit on his butt at his desk the entire trip, whereas, the porters were usually very busy. The black porters and waiters were very nice to us kids. I guess the rules forbade them from engaging in idle conversation with adults but kids were a gray area. When the trip was over, my mom put a nice chunk of silver in the hand of the porter (as did all the other patrons), so the job was not without its rewards.

A previous poster mentioned the ex-New Haven Pine Tree State. Of course, this car is different in every respect from the Santa Fe Pine series. What is notable about this 50 yr-old car is that it is reportably the only remaining, operable, Class 1 interchangeable piece of former New Haven rolling stock, out of the thousands of cars once owned by the NYNH&H. Bob

Interesting string....PINE TREE STATE is a 6DBR-Lounge car built originally to cover the Montrealer/Washingtonian routes and the State of Maine [GCT-Portland] Try Arthur Dubin's CLASSIC TRAINS or MORE CLASSIC TRAINS to learn the complexity of Pullman and railroad psgr service in general.