Sleeping car
The sleeping car or sleeper is a railway passenger car that can accommodate all passengers in beds of one kind or another, for the purpose of sleeping. George Pullman was the main American innovator and owner of sleeper cars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when railroads dominated intercity passenger travel.
The first such cars saw sporadic use on American and English railways in the 1830s; they could be configured for coach seating during the day.
History
Possibly the earliest example of a sleeping car was on the London & Birmingham and Grand Junction Railways between London and Lancashire, England. The bed carriage was first made available to first-class passengers in 1838.In the spring of 1839, the Cumberland Valley Railroad pioneered sleeping car service in the United States with a car named "Chambersburg", between Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A couple of years later a second car, the "Carlisle", was introduced into service.
In 1857, the Wason Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts – one of the United States' first makers of railway passenger coach equipment – produced America's first specifically designed sleeping car. Canadian railways soon followed with their own sleeping cars: first the Grand Trunk in 1858, then the Great Western. The Great Western's sleeping cars were manufactured in-house, with the first three built in 1858, and the railway operating six by 1863.
The man who ultimately made the sleeping car business profitable in the United States was George Pullman, who began by building a luxurious sleeping car in 1865. The Pullman Company, founded as the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867, owned and operated most sleeping cars in the United States until the mid-20th century, attaching them to passenger trains run by the various railroads; there were also some sleeping cars that were operated by Pullman but owned by the railroad running a given train. During the peak years of American passenger railroading, several all-Pullman trains existed, including the 20th Century Limited on the New York Central Railroad, the Broadway Limited on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Panama Limited on the Illinois Central Railroad, and the Super Chief on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
Pullman cars were normally a dark "Pullman green", although some were painted in the host railroad's colors. The cars carried individual names, but usually did not carry visible numbers. In the 1920s, the Pullman Company went through a series of restructuring steps, which in the end resulted in a parent company, Pullman Incorporated, controlling the Pullman Company and the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company. Due to an antitrust verdict in 1947, a consortium of railroads bought the Pullman Company from Pullman Incorporated, and subsequently railroads owned and operated Pullman-made sleeping cars themselves. Pullman-Standard continued manufacturing sleeping cars and other passenger and freight railroad cars until 1980.
For nearly a year during the end of World War II the United States government banned sleeping cars for runs of less than in order to make sleepers available for transporting troops returning to the US from Europe, many being deployed in the Pacific Theater. The development of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and the expansion of jet airline travel in the same decade negatively affected train travel.
Cultural impact of Pullman porters
One unanticipated consequence of the rise of Pullman cars in the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries was their effect on civil rights and African-American culture. Each Pullman car was staffed by a uniformed porter. The majority of Pullman porters were African Americans. While still a menial job in many respects, Pullman offered better pay and security than most jobs open to African Americans at the time, in addition to a chance for travel, and it was a well regarded job in the African-American community of the time. The Pullman attendants, regardless of their true name, were traditionally referred to as "George" by the travelers, the name of the company's founder, George Pullman. The Pullman company was the largest employer of African Americans in the United States.Railway porters fought for political recognition and were eventually unionized. Their union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, became an important source of strength for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement in the early 20th century, notably under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph. Because they moved about the country, Pullman porters also became an important means of communication for news and cultural information of all kinds. The African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender, gained a national circulation in this way. Porters also used to re-sell phonograph records bought in the great metropolitan centres, greatly adding to the distribution of jazz and blues and the popularity of the artists.
Open-section accommodation
From the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, the most common and more economical type of sleeping car accommodation on North American trains was the "open section". Open-section accommodations consist of pairs of seats, one seat facing forward and the other backward, situated on either side of a center aisle. The seat pairs can be converted into the combination of an upper and a lower "berth", each berth consisting of a bed screened from the aisle by a curtain. A famous example of open sections can be seen in the movie Some Like It Hot.File:Kidupper4.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|NH RR's 1942 World War II advertisement "The Kid in Upper 4." This ad depicts an open section of a sleeping car.
Private accommodations
In the mid-to-late 20th century, an increasing variety of private rooms was offered. Most of these rooms provided significantly more space than open-section accommodations could offer. Open-sections were increasingly phased out in the 1950s, in favor of roomettes. Some of them, such as the rooms of the "Slumbercoach" cars manufactured by the Budd Company and first put into service in 1956, were triumphs of miniaturization. These allowed a single car to increase the number of sleepers over a conventional sleeping car of private rooms.Roomettes
A roomette, in the historical sense of the word, was a private room for a single passenger, containing a single seat, a folding bed, a toilet, and a washbasin. When a traditional roomette is in night mode, the bed blocks access to the toilet. Like open sections, roomettes are placed on both sides of the car, with a corridor down the center. Duplex roomettes, a Pullman-produced precursor to the Slumbercoach, are staggered vertically, with every second accommodation raised a few feet above the car's floor level, in order to make slightly more efficient use of the space. Single-passenger Slumbercoach accommodations are a particularly spartan form of roomette; Slumbercoaches also included a few two-passenger units.Compartments and double bedrooms
Compartments and Double Bedrooms are private rooms for two passengers, with upper and lower berths, washbasins, and private toilets, placed on one side of the car, with the corridor running down the other side. Frequently, these accommodations have movable partitions allowing adjacent accommodations to be combined into a suite.Drawing rooms and larger accommodations
The drawing room was a relatively rare and expensive option for travelers. It could comfortably accommodate three people, again with a washbasin and private toilet on one side of the car. Even rarer are larger rooms accommodating four or more. Generally the needs of large parties were better served with multiple rooms, with or without the ability to combine them into a suite.Modern Amtrak accommodations
Amtrak's Superliner Economy Bedrooms accommodate two passengers in facing seats that fold out into a lower berth, with an upper berth that folds down from above, a small closet, and no in-room washbasin or toilet, on both sides of both the upper and lower levels of the car. Effectively, they are open sections with walls, a door, and a built-in access ladder for the upper berth. Superliner Deluxe Bedrooms are essentially the same as historic Compartments and Double Bedrooms, with the toilet cubicle doubling as a private shower cubicle. In addition, each Superliner sleeping car has two special lower-level accommodations, each taking up the full width of the car: the Accessible Bedroom, at the restroom/shower end of the car, is a fully wheelchair-accessible accommodation for two, with a roll-in cubicle for the toilet and shower; the Family Bedroom, at the Economy Bedroom end of the car, accommodates two adults and up to three small children, without private toilet or shower facilities.When the Viewliner sleeping cars were built, the accommodations were patterned after the Superliner accommodations, except that the Economy Bedrooms include Roomette-style washbasins and toilets, as well as windows for the upper berths.
Night trains today
Europe
In Europe, the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits first focused on sleeping cars, but later operated whole trains, including the Simplon-Orient Express, Nord Express, Train Bleu, Golden Arrow, and the Transsiberien. Today it once again specializes in sleeping cars, along with onboard railroad catering.In modern Europe, a number of sleeping car services continue to operate, though they face strong competition from high-speed day trains and budget airlines, sometimes leading to the cancellation or consolidation of services. In some cases, trains are split and recombined in the dead of night, making it possible to offer several connections with a relatively small number of trains. Generally, the trains consist of sleeping cars with private compartments, couchette cars, and sometimes cars with normal seating.
In Eastern Europe, night trains are still widely used. In Western Europe, they have been in decline for decades. However, in December 2020 the state railways of Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland announced a 500 million euro investment in a network of cross-border night trains linking 13 major European cities, in the largest extension of Europe's night network in many years.
An example of a more basic type of sleeping car is the European couchette car, which is divided into compartments for four or six people, with bench-configuration seating during the day and "privacyless" double- or triple-level bunk beds at night.
In 2021 the French start-up company, Midnight Trains, announced plans to set up a network of sleeper trains, centered in Paris. Planned destinations include Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Berlin, Venice, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Porto, with some intermediate stops. The plans were backed by telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel, the co-owner of Le Monde newspaper. However, the project later collapsed due in part to a lack of funding. In 2021 Europe saw an increase in the provision of sleeper trains which is thought to be the result of increasing awareness of the environmental effects of long-distance travel.
In 2022 the design and engineering faculties of three European universities – Aalto, KTH and TalTech – discussed plans to reshape sleeping cars for flow production. The ADLNE project aims to create the railcar from modules that are themselves composed of interchangeable segments, compartments and fittings, allowing bespoke designs at low cost.
Since 2023, Belgian–Dutch start-up European Sleeper runs sleeper trains from Amsterdam to Berlin and Prague, as well as a seasonal service to Innsbruck and Venice. European Sleeper has also announced plans for an Amsterdam—Barcelona service in 2026 or 2027.