Everything about The Sleeping Car totally explained
The
sleeping car or
sleeper is a railroad
passenger car that can accommodate all its passengers in beds of one kind or another, primarily for the purpose of making nighttime travel more restful. The first such cars saw sporadic use on American railroads in the 1830s and could be configured for
coach seating during the day. Some of the more luxurious types have private rooms, that's to say fully- and solidly-enclosed rooms that are not shared with strangers.
In the
United States today, all regularly-scheduled sleeping car services are operated by
Amtrak. Amtrak offers sleeping cars on most of its overnight trains, using modern cars of the private-room type exclusively. In
Canada, all regularly scheduled sleeping car services are operated by
VIA Rail Canada, using a mixture of relatively-new cars and refurbished mid-century ones; the latter cars include both private rooms and "open section" accommodations (described later in this article).
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. Even more basic is the Chinese "hard" sleeping car in use today, consisting of fixed bunk beds, which can't be converted into seats, in a public space. Chinese trains also offer "soft" or deluxe sleeping cars with four beds per room.
History
The
Cumberland Valley Railroad pioneered sleeping car service in the spring of 1839, with a car named "Chambersburg," between
Chambersburg and
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A couple of years later a second car, the "Carlisle," was introduced into service.
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 (named
Pioneer) 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 didn't 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 (which owned and operated sleeping cars) and the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company. In 1947, in consequence of an antitrust verdict, a consortium of railroads bought the Pullman Company from Pullman Incorporated, and from then on railroads owned and operated Pullman-made sleeping cars themselves. Pullman-Standard continued in the manufacture of sleeping cars and other passenger and freight railroad cars until 1980.
Open-section accommodation
From the
19th to the mid-
20th century, the most common 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.
As the 20th century progressed, an increasing variety of private rooms came to be offered. Most of these rooms provided significantly more space than open-section accommodations could offer; some of them, however, such as the rooms of the misleadingly named "Slumbercoach" cars manufactured by the
Budd Company and first put into service in 1956, were triumphs of miniaturization.
Modern times
Today, Amtrak operates two main types of sleeping car: the bi-level
Superliner sleeping cars, built from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, and the single-level
Viewliner sleeping cars, built in the mid 1990s. In the most common Superliner sleeping car configuration, the upper level is divided into two halves, one half containing "Bedrooms" (formerly "Deluxe Bedrooms") for one, two, or three travelers, each Bedroom containing an enclosed toilet-and-shower facility; and the other half containing "
Roomettes" (formerly "Economy Bedrooms" or "Standard Bedrooms") for one or two travelers; plus a beverage area and a toilet. The lower level contains more Roomettes; a Family Bedroom for as many as two adults and two children; and an "Accessible Bedroom" (formerly "Handicapped Bedroom") for a wheelchair-using traveler and a companion; plus toilets and a shower. The Viewliner cars contain an Accessible Bedroom (formerly "Handicapped Bedroom") for a wheelchair-using traveler and a companion, with an enclosed toilet-and-shower facility; two Bedrooms (formerly "Deluxe Bedrooms") for one, two, or three travelers, each Bedroom containing an enclosed toilet-and-shower facility; "Roomettes" (formerly "Economy Bedrooms," "Standard Bedrooms," or "Compartments") for one or two travelers, each Roomette containing its own unenclosed toilet and washing facilities; and a shower room at the end of the car.
A particularly interesting practice in sleeping car operation, one that isn't currently employed in North America, is the use of "set-out" sleepers. Sleeping cars are picked up and/or dropped off at intermediate cities along a train's route so that what would otherwise be partial-night journeys can become (in effect) full-night journeys, with passengers allowed to occupy their sleeping accommodations from mid-evening to at least the early morning.
One possibly unanticipated consequence of the rise of Pullman cars in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was their effect on
civil rights and
African American culture. Each Pullman car was staffed by a uniformed
porter. These were almost always
African-Americans and, by convention, were often addressed as "George" by passengers. Although this was servant's work, it was relatively well-paid and prestigious, and so "Pullman porters" were in a position to become leaders in the black communities where they lived, contributing to the nucleus of the nascent black
middle class. And, like all the other railroad trades, the porters came to be
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 all 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 centers, greatly adding to the distribution of
jazz and
blues and the popularity of the artists.
Night trains today
In
Europe, the
Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (
French for "International Sleeping Car Company") first focused on sleeping cars, but later operated whole trains, including the
Simplon-Orient Express,
Nord Express,
Train Bleu,
Golden Arrow, and the
Transsiberien (on the
Trans-Siberian railway). Today it once again specializes in sleeping cars, along with onboard railroad catering. In present-day Europe, a substantial number of sleeping car services continue to operate, though they face strong competition from high-speed day trains and budget airlines. In the
United Kingdom, a network of trains with sleeping cars operates daily between
London and
Scotland (
Caledonian Sleeper), and between London and the
West Country as far as
Cornwall (
Night Riviera). Using rolling stock designed and formerly operated by
British Rail, these services offer a choice of single- or double-occupancy bedrooms. A very modern company, is
CityNightLine officed in
Switzerland and is a daughter company of the
Deutsche Bahn. They service
The Netherlands,
Austria,
Germany, and recently,
Denmark. The services usually leave at around 20.00 hours and arrive at around 09.00 hours at the destination.
Another of the more substantial examples of current-day European sleeping car service is the
Train Bleu, an all-sleeping-car train. The train leaves the Gare d'Austerlitz in mid evening and arrives in Nice about 8 in the morning; it provides both first-class rooms and couchette accommodations. The train's principal popularity is with older travelers; it hasn't won the same degree of popularity with younger travelers, who, perhaps not fully appreciating the time-saving advantages of comfortable overnight sleeping car travel, are strongly drawn to budget flights or the daytime TGV.
Railroad sleeping cars, though reduced in prevalence in recent decades, retain a powerful ability to provide travel that's both reasonably comfortable and potentially time-saving, especially between points that are between 400 miles (600 km) and 1,000 miles (1,600 km) apart, distances that one can travel in a simple overnight trip, perhaps with dinner at the beginning of the journey and/or breakfast at the end. Persons traveling in this way, engaging in activities on board the train similar to those they'd normally engage in at their home or in a hotel during the same hours, can pass time and distance quite effectively.
Even overnight sleeping car trips that also take up several hours of the preceding and/or following day can in many cases compare favorably with travel by high-speed day train, conventional-speed day train, or airplane, particularly when the origin and/or destination is a smaller community that's hard to reach by air. On certain trips, the use of sleeping car accommodations also offers the possibility of obviating one or two nights of hotel stay at the destination.
The greatest disadvantage of modern sleeping car services is that the rates charged tend to be expensive, often so high that it's cheaper to travel by fast day train or air and stay an extra night at a hotel. Another disadvantage is that not all travelers will find it easy or comfortable to sleep on a moving train.
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