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UAC TurboTrain

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The UAC TurboTrain was an early high-speed , gas turbine train manufactured by United Aircraft that operated in Canada between 1968 and 1982 and in the United States between 1968 and 1976. It was one of the first gas turbine -powered trains to enter service for passenger traffic, and was also one of the first tilting trains to enter service in North America.

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99-424: A series of design studies carried out by Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in the 1950s used the second-generation Talgo design for their car suspensions. The suspension arms for each neighboring pair of cars were attached to a common bogie ("truck") between them, as opposed to having a pair of separate bogies for each car. The bogies rode the common curve between the two cars, centered by traction springs that centered

198-418: A passageway to run between the engines and under the pod to the nose of the car, where a coupling and doors were hidden behind a pair of movable clamshell covers. That way the train could be attached front-to-end with another, providing some of the flexibility in train lengths that coupled cars offered, while still being as lightweight as a normal articulated design. C&O's early work went undeveloped until

297-448: A UAC division) known as the ST6, downrated from 600 to 300 hp (447 to 224 kW). The PT6 uses a " free turbine " that acts as a torque coupler, so the new design did not require a transmission and was able to drive the powered wheels directly. The power cars had three engine bays on either side of the car and could mount engines in pairs for two to six turbines, depending on the needs of

396-408: A builder of large, cast-in-place smokestacks, silos and chimneys. Wheelabrator-Frye retained both Pullman and Kellogg as direct subsidiaries. Later in 1982 Signal acquired Wheelabrator-Frye. In 1990, the entire Wheelabrator-Frye group was sold to Waste Management, Inc. The Pullman-Kellogg interests were spun off by Waste Management as Pullman Power Products Corporation, and by late 2004 that company

495-772: A company town and factory. Pullman's plan included an expectation that rent collected on the houses in the town would produce a 6% return on investment (ROI), but the ROI never exceeded 4– 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 %. The company built Pullman, Illinois on 4,000 acres (1,600 ha), 14 mi (23 km) south of Chicago, contracting Solon Spencer Beman for design and Nathan F. Barrett for landscaping. Both were considered experts in their respective fields. Beman interned under architect Richard Upjohn. Barrett landscaped areas in Staten Island and Tuxedo, New York, as well as Long Branch, New Jersey. George Pullman 's governing concept placed

594-581: A controlling interest in the Standard Steel Car Company . The vast majority were built for U.S. cities, with only 24 being supplied to Canadian cities and a total of 136 built for cities in South America. The last trolleybuses built were an order of 30 for Valparaíso, Chile , in late 1952. That city's Pullman trolley buses have far outlasted any others, and as of 2015 about a dozen were still in regular service there, four from

693-464: A large freight car leasing operation under the parent company's control. Pullman, Inc., remained separate until a merger with Wheelabrator, then headed by CEO Michael D. Dingman , in late 1980, which led to the separation of Pullman interests in early and mid-1981. Operations of the Pullman Company sleeper cars ceased and all leases were terminated on December 31, 1968. On January 1, 1969,

792-505: A large press contingent. An hour into its debut run, the Turbo collided with a truck at a highway crossing near Kingston. Despite the concerns that lightweight trains like the Turbo would be dangerous in collisions, the train remained upright and largely undamaged. Large beams just behind the nose, designed for this purpose, absorbed the impact of the collision and limited the damage to the fiberglass clamshell doors and underlying metal. The train

891-619: A major redesign, UAC re-arranged the interior of the existing layout. The control room "pod" on top was lengthened to produce a viewing area with seating, and additional seating was added along the main level as well. This produced the Power Dome Cars (PDC) that were 73 feet 3 inches (22.33 m) long (tip of nose to trailing articulated axle, while the Intermediate Cars (IC) were 56 feet 10 inches (17.32 m) long (axle to axle), considerably shorter than

990-564: A nickname that had been used colloquially for the railroad for several years, after the mascot kitten used in ads since 1933. Under Watkins' leadership, Chessie System then merged with Seaboard Coast Line Industries , holding company for Seaboard Coast Line Railroad and several other great railroads of the Southeast (including Louisville and Nashville Railroad , Clinchfield Railroad and others) to form CSX Corporation , with Chessie and SCL as its leading subsidiaries. Watkins became CEO of

1089-584: A number of well known passenger trains including the George Washington , Fast Flying Virginian , Sportsman , Pere Marquette , and Resort Special . While the George Washington was the railroad's flagship, the Sportsman (which connected Detroit with Washington, D.C., and Newport News) and the Resort Special were also well-traveled trains on the system. Much of the reason for

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1188-604: A quieter and smoother ride than conventional cast iron wheels from 1867 to 1915. Once a household name due to their large market share, the Pullman Company is also known for the bitter Pullman Strike staged by their workers and union leaders in 1894. During an economic downturn , Pullman reduced hours and wages but not rents, precipitating the strike. Workers joined the American Railway Union , led by Eugene V. Debs . After George Pullman's death in 1897, Robert Todd Lincoln , son of Abraham Lincoln , became

1287-470: A separate company called Pullman Technology, Inc., in 1982. Using the Transit America trade name, Pullman Technology continued to market its Comet car design (first built for New Jersey Department of Transportation in 1970) for commuter operations until 1987, when Bombardier purchased Pullman Technology to gain control of its designs and patents. As of late 2004, Pullman Technology, Inc., remained

1386-534: A series of short jerks rather than the smooth flowing motion promised in press releases". The single-axle bogies on the Turbotrain were very mechanically complex and the suspension arms were "telescopic arms which were in essence ball-bearing screw actuators; the suspension of the inside-bearing powered bogies was "especially complex" and attached to the turbines via "an intricate web of mechanical couplings and shafts". Two Turbotrains (DOT1 and DOT2) were built at

1485-499: A severe economic downturn, the 1894 Pullman Strike by company workers proved to be a transformative moment in American labor history. At the company's peak in the early 20th century, its cars accommodated 26 million people a year, and it in effect operated "the largest hotel in the world". Its production workers initially lived in a planned worker community, known as a company town , named Pullman, Chicago . Pullman developed

1584-581: A subsidiary of Bombardier. Pullman, Inc., spun off its large fleet of leased freight rail cars in April 1981 as Pullman Leasing Company, which later became part of ITEL Leasing , retaining the original PLCX reporting mark . ITEL Rail Leasing (including the PLCX reporting mark) was later divested to GE Rail Services . In mid-1981, Pullman, Inc., spun off its freight car manufacturing interests as Pullman Transportation Company. Several plants were closed and in 1984,

1683-444: A train trip from Buffalo to Westfield, New York , George Pullman was inspired to design an improved passenger railcar which contained sleeper berths for all its passengers. During the day, the upper berth was folded up overhead similar to a present-day airliner's overhead luggage compartment. At night, the upper berth folded down and the 2 facing seats below it folded over to provide a relatively comfortable lower berth. Although this

1782-779: The New Haven Railroad to operate them. The New Haven had been in bankruptcy since July 2, 1961; on January 1, 1969, it was absorbed into the Penn Central Railroad , which inherited the contract. On April 8, 1969, Penn Central placed the equipment in service on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and New York City . The three-car sets carried 144 people and operated at a maximum speed of 100 miles per hour (160 km/h). The TurboTrains were equipped with third rail shoes for operation into Grand Central Terminal . In their first year of operation

1881-645: The Pennsylvania Railroad 's main-line between Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey, on December 20, 1967, one of the TurboTrains reached 170.8 mph (274.9 km/h). This remains the world speed record for gas turbine-powered rail vehicles. On January 1, 1968, the TurboTrain program was transferred from CSC to Sikorsky Aircraft Division (SA) of UAC. The United States Department of Transportation leased both trainsets and contracted with

1980-687: The Pullman Works in Chicago . High-speed testing of the trains was performed from a base at Fields Point in Providence, Rhode Island, using track between Route 128 near Boston and Westerly, Rhode Island (track segments along this section, to this day, are the only areas where Amtrak operates Acela revenue service at 150 mph). After its construction at the Pullman yards in Chicago,

2079-573: The Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company . Pullman-Standard remained in the rail car manufacturing business until 1982. Standard Steel Car Co., had been organized on January 2, 1902, to operate a railroad car manufacturing facility at Butler, Pennsylvania , and, after 1906, a facility at Hammond, Indiana , was reorganized as a subsidiary of Pullman, Inc., on March 1, 1930. In 1940, just as orders for lightweight cars were increasing and sleeping car traffic

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2178-561: The sleeping car , which carried his name into the 1980s. Pullman did not just manufacture the cars, it also operated them on most of the railroads in the United States, paying railroad companies to couple the cars to trains. In return, by the mid-20th century, these railroads would own Pullman outright. A labor union associated with the company, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters , founded and organized by A. Philip Randolph ,

2277-633: The 1880s when coal resources began to be developed and shipped eastward. In 1881 the Peninsula Extension was completed from Richmond to the new city of Newport News located on Hampton Roads, the East’s largest ice-free port. Transportation of coal to Newport News where it was loaded on coastwise shipping and transported to the Northeast became a staple of the C&;O’s business at this time. In 1888

2376-589: The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, using Rosa Parks ' arrest as a catalyst and rallying cry to help organize it. Nixon, whose duties as a porter often saw him out of town for various lengths of time, had to enlist the help of a young, energetic black minister new to Montgomery to run the boycott in his absence: the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Pullman's streetcar building period lasted from 1891 until 1951. The company one

2475-664: The 1960s. At that time two major forces began operating that would re-invent the concept as the TurboTrain; one was the US Department of Transportation 's desire to update train service in the US as a result of the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965 , the other was CN Rail 's desire to update their passenger service with the ending of "pooled service" (with CP Rail ) between Toronto and Montreal. United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) purchased

2574-691: The 85 feet (25.91 m)-long conventional passenger cars of this period. The ability to connect trains together remained largely unchanged, although the routing of the internal passage changed slightly to rise up into the observation area of the pod, then back down under the control room and from there to the nose. The Turbotrains were evaluated by multiple journalists in the Canadian press as having "rail noise that substantially exceeds that of standard equipment" and having poor riding characteristics, especially on curves, with one journalist stating that "the single-axle articulation in practice negotiates curves in

2673-683: The Blue Ridge Railroad to accomplish the task of crossing the first mountain barrier to the west. During the Civil War the Virginia Central played a key role in several battles but was a target for Federal armies. By 1865 it only had five miles of track still in operation and almost no cash to rebuild. Officials realized that they would have to get capital to rebuild from outside the economically devastated South and succeeded in getting Collis Huntington interested. He supplied

2772-399: The C&O absorbed the Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville Railroad, which had been built diagonally across the state of Indiana from Cincinnati to Hammond in the preceding decade. This gave the C&O a direct line from Cincinnati to the great railroad hub of Chicago. The first small terminal and repair shops were located at Richmond beginning in 1860. After expanding to Huntington in 1872,

2871-614: The C&O built the Cincinnati Division from Huntington down the South bank of the Ohio River and across the river at Cincinnati, connecting with the “Big Four” and other Midwestern Railroads. From 1900 to 1920 most of the C&O’s line tapping the rich bituminous coal fields of West Virginia and Kentucky were completed, and the C&O as it was known throughout the rest of the 20th Century was essentially in place. In 1910,

2970-596: The C&O patents to enter into the DOT's Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project. The TurboTrain was designed by personnel of the Corporate Systems Center Division (CSC) of UAC, at Farmington, Connecticut. The design was similar to the original C&O version, but modified to use turbine power instead of diesel. The chosen engines were a modified version of the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 (also

3069-707: The Canadian National to withdraw all Turbotrains from service again in February 1971. At this point, the CN management publicly expressed great dissatisfaction with these trainsets, with one vice-president claiming, "the trains never did measure up to the original contract and they haven't yet"; the manufacturer United Aircraft Company publicly claimed that CN suspended Turbotrain service for relatively minor technical problems. Railroad analysts, including Geoffrey Freeman Allen (editor of Jane's World Railways ), noted that

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3168-672: The Canadian record to this day. However, in regular passenger service the Turbotrains were limited to 95 mph (153 km/h) in Canada because of the Canadian route's numerous grade-crossings, estimated at 240 public highway grade-crossings and 700 agricultural or private crossings between Montreal and Toronto. Technical problems, including brake systems freezing in winter, required a suspension of service in early January 1969. Service resumed in May 1970; however, technical problems again caused

3267-558: The Florence Hotel was the only place within the town limits where alcohol could be served and consumed. In the residential section, 150 acres (61 ha) were dedicated to tenements, flats and single-family homes with rents from $ 0.50 to $ 0.75 per month ($ 16 to $ 24 in 2023 adjusted for inflation). The residences featured modern conveniences such as gas, running water, indoor sewage plumbing and regular garbage removal. By 1884, there were more than 1,400 tenements and flats. By July of

3366-471: The Ohio River. Thus the only connection to the West was by packet boats operating on the river. Because the mineral resources of West Virginia and Kentucky hadn’t been fully realized yet, the C&O suffered through the bad times brought on by the financial panic Depression of 1873, and went into receivership in 1878. When reorganized it was renamed The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company. Conditions improved in

3465-540: The Pullman Co. reduced wages and laid off employees. Though wages were reduced, residential utility rates and rents remained unchanged. On May 11, 1894, the employees of the Pullman Co. walked off the job initiating the Pullman Strike . Thirty people were killed as a result of the strikes and sabotage. The loss of pride after the strike stayed with the town long afterward. In February 1904, the Pullman Company

3564-592: The Pullman Company was dissolved and all assets were liquidated. (The most visible result on many railroads, including Union Pacific, was that the Pullman name was removed from the letterboard of all Pullman-owned cars.) An auction of all Pullman remaining assets was held at the Pullman plant in Chicago in early 1970. The Pullman, Inc., company remained in place until 1981 or 1982 to close out all remaining liabilities and claims, operating from an office in Denver . The passenger car designs of Pullman-Standard were spun off into

3663-523: The Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company (manufacturing). After three years of negotiations, the Pullman Company was sold to a consortium of 57 railroads for approximately US$ 40 million. In 1943, Pullman Standard established a shipbuilding division and entered wartime small ship design and construction. The yard was located near Lake Calumet in Chicago , on the north side of 130th Street. Pullman built

3762-585: The Rust Division of what is today Washington Group International , a specialty contracting firm that competes directly with Halliburton worldwide. Washington Group International is the successor to the Morrison Knudsen civil engineering and contracting corporation, and is also the owner of Montana Rail Link . After the last of the Kellogg interests of Pullman-Kellogg were spun off, and after

3861-448: The Turbotrain was sent eastward on August 1, 1967, at regular speed and without passengers, to Providence, Rhode Island , in order for UAC Aircraft Systems engineers to tear it down, study it for further development, and then eventual high-speed testing on the PRR's specially-rebuilt track between Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey . In a competition with a GE powered Metroliner on

3960-420: The Turbotrains employed too many advanced, derived technologies which had been packed in "without extended practical evaluation in railroad conditions. From transmission to suspension to auxiliaries, far too many vital components seemed to have been translated straight from the drawing board to the series production line. During the "downtime" CN changed their plans, and in 1971 a rebuild program began, converting

4059-579: The U.S. market for PCC cars, with the balance of around 25% being supplied by Pullman. In addition to rail vehicles, Pullman-Standard also manufactured trolley buses – or trolley coaches , as they were more commonly known at the time – starting in 1931 and concluding in late 1952. A total of 2,007 trolley buses were built by the company. Production took place at a former Osgood Bradley Car Company plant in Worcester, Massachusetts, which had come under Pullman control as part of its 1929/30 acquisition of

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4158-578: The UAC TurboTrains were preserved. Chesapeake and Ohio Railway The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ( reporting marks C&O , CO ) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington , it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where

4257-516: The United States, and in 1963, under the guidance of Cyrus S. Eaton , helped start the modern merger era by "affiliating" with the Baltimore & Ohio . The two lines' services, personnel, motive power and rolling stock, and facilities were gradually integrated. Under the leadership of Hays T. Watkins , in 1973 Chessie System was created as a holding company for the C&O, B&O and Western Maryland Railway . In effect, C&O formally adopted

4356-478: The United States. The legacy of Pullman porters goes beyond the railway. A. Philip Randolph took the lessons learned and experience gained in organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to help organize the nascent black civil rights movement . Likewise, E.D. Nixon , a Pullman porter and leader of a local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, worked with one of his employees to help start

4455-526: The Virginians with the money needed to complete the line through what is now West Virginia. The old Covington and Ohio Railroad properties were conveyed to the C&O in keeping with its new mission of linking the Atlantic Ocean with the “Western Waters” of the Ohio River. Huntington intended to connect the C&O with his Western and Midwestern holdings, but ended up stopping construction at

4554-511: The article offered praise for creating an elevated environment for its workers, it criticized the all-encompassing influence of the company ultimately concluding that "Pullman is un-American" and "benevolent, well-wishing feudalism." During the Panic of 1893, Pullman closed his manufacturing plant in Detroit to move all manufacturing to Pullman. Due to the soft economic conditions of this period,

4653-483: The axle between adjoining car bodies. TurboTrain cars are 2.5 feet (76 cm) lower than conventional cars, to lower the center of gravity in relation to the swinging point at the top of the arms. The arms included air springs to smooth out the motion, although it still felt "odd" while the train navigated short turns in switchyards and stations. Like the earlier articulated trains, this meant that train lengths would be difficult to change. Their solution to this problem

4752-730: The boats in 40-ton blocks which were assembled in a fabrication shop on 111th Street and moved to the yard on gondola cars. In two years, the company built 34 Corvette Patrol Craft, Escorts (PCEs), which were 180 feet long and weighed 640 tons, and 44 Landing Ship, Medium (LSMs), which were 203 feet long and weighed 520 tons. Pullman ranked 56th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. Pullman-Standard built its last sleeping car in 1956 and its last lightweight passenger cars in 1965, an order of ten coaches for Kansas City Southern . The company continued to market and build cars for commuter rail and subway service and Superliners for Amtrak as late as

4851-399: The carrier. Another ST6 drove an alternator to provide 'hotel' electrical power for the train. Each power car had a fuel capacity of 5,774 litres; 1,525 US gallons (1,270 imp gal). The turbine engines were smaller and lighter (300 pounds or 136 kilograms with accessories) than the diesels they replaced, so the original power cars ended up being much larger than needed. Instead of

4950-1209: The cars were written off. The sale of the surviving Power Dome Coach car was cancelled, and it stood spare until a sister unit caught fire and burned in September 1975. The three rebuilt 9-car sets entered service for CN in late 1973. CN ran the Turbos from Toronto-Montreal-Toronto with stops at Dorval , Kingston and Guildwood on the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor . Original train numbers were Train 62 which left Toronto at 12:45 p.m. and arrived in Montreal at 4:44 p.m. Train 63 left Montreal at 12:45 p.m. and arrived in Toronto at 4:44 p.m. (Both were daily trains.) Train 68 left Toronto at 6:10 p.m. and arrived in Montreal at 10:14 p.m., while Train 69 left Montreal at 6:10 p.m. and arrived in Toronto at 10:14 p.m. (The evening trains did not run on Saturdays.) The trip took 3 hours and 59 minutes downtown-to-downtown on trains 62 and 63, while

5049-479: The company was ordered to divest itself of one of its two lines of sleeping car businesses after having acquired all of its competitors. After the 1944 breakup, Pullman, Inc., remained in place as the parent company, with the following subsidiaries: The Pullman Company for passenger car operations (but not passenger car ownership, which was passed to member railroads), and Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Co., for passenger car and freight car manufacturing; along with

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5148-517: The company's president. In 1922, Haskell & Barker Car Manufacturing was acquired and in 1924 was merged with the other car manufacturing units of Pullman, and a new company was formed, Pullman Car & Manufacturing Company. In 1927, Pullman Company was created as a separate company and Pullman Incorporated was established as a holding company. In 1930, Pullman purchased the Standard Steel Car Company conglomerate which included Osgood Bradley , Standard Motor Truck, and Siems-Stembel. In 1934, it

5247-509: The country. Pullman Company The Pullman Company , founded by George Pullman , was a manufacturer of railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States . Through rapid late-19th century development of mass production and takeover of rivals, the company developed a virtual monopoly on production and ownership of sleeping cars . During

5346-424: The evening trains were slightly slower, taking four hours and four minutes to complete the run. Turbo service was about a full hour faster than CN's previous express trains, the " Rapido ". However, even the runs made by the Turbotrains in the late 1970s still fell substantially short of their intended 120 mph design speed; the fastest average speed for the Turbotrain in regular scheduled Canadian passenger service

5445-469: The five seven-car sets to three nine-car sets. Several minor changes were added. The engine exhaust fouled the roof windows of the power car, so these were plated over, and a grill was added to the front of the engines just behind the clamshell doors. The remaining power and passenger cars were sold to Amtrak as two four-car sets. One of those sets sideswiped a freight train on a test run in July 1973 and three of

5544-409: The following year, the population exceeded 8,600. In charge of the company town was the town agent who was responsible for all services and businesses including street and building maintenance, gas and water works, fire protection, the hotel, sewage farm, and the nursery and greenhouse. Reporting to the town agent were nine department heads and approximately 300 men. There were no elections except for

5643-821: The former C&O also continue to transport intermodal and freight traffic, as well as West Virginia bituminous coal east to Hampton Roads and west to the Great Lakes as part of CSXT, a Fortune 500 company which was one of seven Class I railroads operating in North America at the beginning of the 21st century. At the end of 1970 C&O operated 5,067 mi (8,155 km) of road on 10,219 mi (16,446 km) of track, not including WM or B&O and its subsidiaries. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway never spent lavishly on streamlined passenger trains, or passenger service in general, opting to put most of its resources into moving coal and freight. However, it did have

5742-439: The largest rail hub and third largest city in the country, passenger service to it was discontinued in 1933. Trains continued to run as west as Hammond, Indiana , a Chicago suburb, until 1949. It had accessed the city’s Central Station (and previously, Dearborn Station ) via the former Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville Line. Chessie sported two kittens, Nip and Tuck. During World War II, Chessie's "husband" — Peake — (creating

5841-613: The late 1970s and early 1980s. Beginning in 1975, Pullman started delivery of the massive 754 75 ft (23 m) stainless steel subway cars to the New York City Transit Authority . Designated R46 by their procurement contract, these cars, along with the R44 subway car built by St. Louis Car Company , were designed for 70 mph (110 km/h) speeds in the Second Avenue Subway . After it

5940-666: The merged company. Over the next five years, the CSX railroads began consolidating into one mega-railroad. The process began when SCL merged its railroads into the Seaboard System Railroad in 1982. Western Maryland was merged into B&O on May 1, 1983. B&O was merged into C&O on April 30, 1987. Seaboard changed its name to CSX Transportation on July 1, 1986. Finally, C&O merged into CSX Transportation on Aug. 31, 1987. After acquiring 42% of Conrail in 1999, CSX became one of four major railroad systems left in

6039-533: The name "Chessie Peak", as in Chesapeake) was shown with a bandage on his paw as a war veteran returning from military service. While the kitten was created by the Austrian artist Guido Grünewald, the success of Chessie as a marketing tool is often credited to Lionel Probert, at the time an assistant to the C&O president. C&O continued to be one of the more profitable and financially sound railways in

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6138-450: The passengers and the Pullman company itself, the porters organized and became the first African-American labor union. Founded by A. Philip Randolph the porters formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), which after years of effort, fought for and won a collective bargaining agreement in 1937. At its height the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had a membership of over 18,000 passenger railway workers across Canada, Mexico, and

6237-440: The perfect servants. This led the company to hire black men (many, if not all, of whom were newly freed chattel slaves) almost exclusively for the porter positions. This decision by Pullman wasn't one of altruism but one primarily driven by economics: Pullman paid the black porters a pittance, forcing them to rely on tips from their white clientele for most of their earnings. This allowed the company to increase profits by minimizing

6336-402: The popularity of C&O's passenger trains was because of Chessie, the sleeping kitten , one of the most successful and fondly remembered marketing campaigns ever developed. Chessie was so popular when she debuted in 1933 that the C&O could not keep enough merchandise in stock. The C&O mostly focused on passenger trains in the eastern half of its system. Despite connecting to Chicago,

6435-404: The primary back shops were established on 100 acres of land along Fifth Avenue. These facilities were expanded and modernized over a five year period in three phases beginning in 1916. Another large shop site was established at Clifton Forge, Virginia in 1890 on 1,200 acres of land, including the classification yard. In 1929 the system's primary freight car repair and erecting facility was built at

6534-537: The primary components of the Family Lines System , to become a key portion of CSX Transportation (CSXT) in the 1980s. C&O's passenger services ended in 1971 with the formation of Amtrak . Today Amtrak's tri-weekly Cardinal passenger train follows the historic and scenic route of the C&O through the New River Gorge in one of the more rugged sections of West Virginia. The rails of

6633-414: The railcar manufacturing plants were sold, and with the formal dissolution of the old Pullman Company (the operating company from the 1944 split), the remaining portions of the Pullman interests were spun off in May 1985 by Signal into a new Pullman Company. In November 1985, Pullman bought Peabody International and the new company took the new name of Pullman Peabody. In April 1987 (after Pullman Technology

6732-636: The railroad town (and later city) of Huntington, West Virginia , was named for him. The C&O traces its origins to the Louisa Railroad of Louisa County, Virginia, begun in 1836. By 1850 the Louisa had been built east to Richmond and west to Charlottesville, and in keeping with its new and larger vision, was renamed the Virginia Central Railroad . The Commonwealth of Virginia owned a portion of Virginia Central stock and financed

6831-444: The rebuilt TurboTrains had an availability rate of over 97% for their careers with CN and Via. The LRC suffered from similar teething problems, notably with the tilt system locking the cars in a tilted position. The withdrawal of the Turbotrains was also precipitated by the rise in oil prices during the 1973 oil embargo and the following years, which destroyed "one of gas turbine traction's prime advantages, fuel cost economy". None of

6930-560: The remaining railcar manufacturing plants and the Pullman-Standard freight car designs and patents were sold to Trinity Industries . After separating itself from its rail car manufacturing interests, Pullman, Inc., continued as a diversified corporation, with later mergers and acquisitions, including a merger in late 1980 with Wheelabrator-Frye, Inc., in which Pullman became a subsidiary of Wheelabrator-Frye, Inc. In January 1982, Wheelabrator-Frye merged with M. W. Kellogg Company ,

7029-509: The school board, as all officials were selected by Pullman. After its completion, the Pullman company town attracted national attention. Many critics praised Pullman's concept and planning. One newspaper article titled "The Arcadian City: Pullman, the Ideal City of the World" praised the town as "the youngest and most perfect city in the world, Pullman; beautiful in every belonging." In February 1885, Harper's Monthly published and article by Richard T. Ely entitled "Pullman: A Social Study". Though

7128-409: The service. One of the three remaining trains developed an oil leak and caught fire on the afternoon run from Montréal to Toronto on May 29, 1979. It was stopped west of Morrisburg. It took some time for the fire engines to arrive as they were forced to drive on the trackbed. The power car and two coaches were totally destroyed. There were no injuries, although rapid disembarkation was needed. The train

7227-400: The summer of 1967, but technical difficulties with the trainsets delayed passenger service entry until December 12, 1969; the primary failures concerned the auxiliary equipment and caused the power on the trains to go out. CN and their ad agency wanted to promote the new service as an entirely new form of transit, so they dropped the "train" from the name. In CN's marketing literature the train

7326-409: The thoroughfare it is located on: Pullman Avenue. Another site was Pullman Car & Manufacturing Corp. of Bessemer , Alabama , incorporated on January 15, 1929. The Pullman Company was also noted for its porters . The porters served first-class passengers traveling in the luxurious Pullman sleeping cars. When George Pullman began hiring porters in 1868, he sought people who had been trained to be

7425-450: The town not within the city limits of Chicago but in the adjoining town of Hyde Park . On April 24, 1880, groundwork began. Throughout construction, Pullman sought to minimize costs and maximize efficiency adopting techniques of mass production whenever possible. Some of the earliest departments and shops created included painting, iron, and woodworking. These could then be employed to contribute to continuing construction. By January 1, 1881,

7524-498: The town was ready for its first resident. A foreman from the Pullman Company's Detroit shop, Lee Benson, moved his wife, child, and sister into the town. Building exteriors were red brick with limestone trim. Interiors featured high ceilings and large windows. Interior walls were purposefully painted in light colors to provide a cheerful environment. When completed, the town included a library, theater, hotel, church, market, sewage farm, park, and many residential buildings. The bar in

7623-669: The trains in 1980. In May 1966, Canadian National Railways ordered five seven-car TurboTrains for the Montreal-Toronto service. They planned to operate the trains in tandem, connecting two trains together into a larger fourteen-car arrangement with a total capacity of 644 passengers. The Canadian trains were built by Montreal Locomotive Works , with their ST6 engines supplied by UAC's Canadian division (now Pratt & Whitney Canada ) in Longueuil, Quebec . The Canadian Turbotrains were originally planned to have been in service by

7722-674: The trains' on-time performance approached 90 percent. They covered the 230 miles (370 km) in three hours and 39 minutes. After railroad bankruptcies and amid threats of more, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) took over passenger service for most U.S. railroads, including the Penn Central, on May 1, 1971. Amtrak continued Turbotrain service between Boston and New York, switching to Pennsylvania Station as its New York terminal. It also briefly ran Turbotrains elsewhere. Some service

7821-509: The wages paid to one of its most important, and numerous, positions. Being a Pullman Porter was seen as safe, steady work and allowed tens of thousands of African-Americans access to middle-class life . This had little to do with the wages being paid to them by Pullman, and more to do with the reliable income stream. Former slaves working in a servile position were treated harshly, and were frequently subject to verbal and physical abuse. In 1925, after decades of discrimination and mistreatment by

7920-679: The west end of the mammoth yard at Russell, Kentucky , called the Raceland Car Shops. By the early 1960s the C&O was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio . In 1972, under the leadership of Cyrus Eaton , it became part of the Chessie System , along with the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Maryland Railway . The Chessie System was later combined with the Seaboard Coast Line and Louisville and Nashville, both

8019-641: Was deferred in 1975, the Transit Authority assigned the cars to other subway services. Pullman also built subway cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority , which assigned them to the Red Line. Pullman-Standard was spun off from Pullman, Inc., as Pullman Technology, Inc., in 1981, and was sold to Bombardier in 1987. In United States v. Pullman Co. , 50 F. Supp. 123, 126, 137 (E.D. Pa. 1943),

8118-693: Was a somewhat spartan accommodation by today's standards, it was a great improvement on the previous layout. Curtains provided privacy, and there were washrooms at each end of the car for men and women. The first Pullman coach was built at the Chicago & Alton shops in Bloomington, Illinois in the spring of 1859 with the permission of Chicago & Alton President Joel A. Matteson . Pullman established his company in 1862 and built luxury sleeping cars which featured carpeting, draperies, upholstered chairs, libraries, card tables and an unparalleled level of customer service. Patented paper car wheels provided

8217-475: Was an intermediate booking from Kingston to Guildwood (102 minutes for the 145.2 miles between the two cities nonstop at an average speed of 85.4 mph (137.4 km/h). By 1974, after substantial modifications of the gearbox device and pendular suspension, and reinforcement of the sound insulation, the Turbotrains finally took up untroubled service. CN operated the Turbos until 1978, when their passenger operations were taken over by Via Rail , who continued

8316-686: Was doing business as Pullman Power LLC, a subsidiary of Structural Group, a specialty contractor. As a side note, other construction engineering portions of Pullman-Kellogg were spun off as a new M. W. Kellogg Corporation, and in December 1998, became part of the merger that formed Kellogg, Brown & Root , a specialty contractor which itself was later sold to Halliburton , an oil well servicing company. In an eventual competitive move, other Kellogg engineering interests were merged with Rust Engineering becoming Kellogg Rust, which itself became The Henley Group , and later Rust International before it became

8415-805: Was established as a National Monument by President Barack Obama. The Pullman Company operated several facilities in other areas of the US. One of these was the Pullman Shops in Richmond, California , which was linked to the mainline tracks of both the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe , servicing their passenger equipment from throughout the Western US. The main building of the Richmond Pullman Shops still exists, as does

8514-512: Was eventually towed back to the Turcot yard in Montréal and remained there for several years, covered by tarpaulins. The Turbo's final run was on October 31, 1982, when they were replaced by the all-Canadian LRC trainsets from Bombardier Transportation , which employed conventional diesel-electric locomotives . Although they had an early reputation for unreliability, according to CN's records,

8613-544: Was formed on June 21, 1927. The best years for Pullman were the mid-1920s. In 1925, the fleet grew to 9800 cars. Twenty-eight thousand conductors and twelve thousand porters were employed by the Pullman Co. Pullman built its last standard heavyweight sleeping car in February 1931. Pullman purchased controlling interest in Standard Steel Car Company in 1929, and on December 26, 1934, Pullman Car & Manufacturing, along with several other Pullman, Inc. subsidiaries, merged with Standard Steel Car Co. and its subsidiaries to form

8712-562: Was from Washington, DC, through West Virginia and Ohio to Chicago. In September 1976, Amtrak ceased revenue runs of Turbotrain trainsets and moved them to the Field's Point Maintenance Yard in Providence, Rhode Island, pending any possible sales to CN . An additional attempt was made to sell the units to the Illinois Central , but the poor mechanical condition of the trainsets caused the deal to fall through. Amtrak finally disposed of

8811-502: Was given a court order to sell the company town but delayed compliance until 1907. Today, Pullman is a Chicago neighborhood , and a historical landmark district on the state , National Historic Landmark and National Register of Historic Places lists. In 2014, the National Park Service initially considered the concept of turning Pullman into a new, urban National Park. On February 19, 2015, Pullman's company town

8910-497: Was growing, the United States Department of Justice filed an anti-trust complaint against Pullman Incorporated in the U.S. District Court at Philadelphia (Civil Action No. 994). The federal government sought to separate the company's sleeping car operations from its manufacturing activities. In 1944, the court concurred, ordering Pullman Incorporated to divest itself of either the Pullman Company (operating) or

9009-648: Was merged with Pullman Car & Manufacturing Company to be known as Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company . The company closed its factory in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago in 1955. The company ceased production after the Amtrak Superliner cars in 1982 and its remaining designs were purchased in 1987 when it was absorbed by Bombardier . The original Pullman Palace Car Co. had been organized on February 22, 1867. On January 1, 1900, after buying numerous associated and competing companies, it

9108-547: Was one of just three builders (and one of only two in the U.S.) of the PCC streetcar , a standardized type of streetcar purchased by numerous North American transit systems between 1936 and 1952 and nearly 5,000 of which were constructed. Pullman built the body of the very first all-new PCC car, a prototype called "model B", in 1934, but the first production-series Pullman PCC cars were not built until 1938 (and delivered in early 1939). The St. Louis Car Company captured about 75% of

9207-419: Was one of the most powerful African-American political entities of the 20th century. The company also built thousands of streetcars and trolley buses for use in cities. Post- WWII changes in automobile and airplane transport led to a steep decline in the company's fortunes. It collapsed in 1968, with a successor company continuing operations until 1981. After spending the night sleeping in his seat on

9306-564: Was referred to simply as the "Turbo", although it retained the full TurboTrain name in CN's own documentation and communication with UAC. A goal of CN's marketing campaign was to get the train into service for Expo 67 , and the Turbo was rushed through its trials. It was late for Expo, a disappointment to all involved, but the hectic pace did not let up and it was cleared for service after only one year of testing – most trains go through six to seven years of testing before entering service. The Turbo's first demonstration run in December 1968, included

9405-562: Was reorganized as The Pullman Co., characterized by its trademark phrase, "Travel and Sleep in Safety and Comfort." In 1924, the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Corporation was organized from the previous Pullman manufacturing department and recently acquired Haskell & Barker Car Company, to consolidate the car building interests of The Pullman Co. The parent company, The Pullman Co. was established as its own company and Pullman, Inc.,

9504-419: Was returned from repairs within a week. No one was killed, though this event has been cited as a main deterrent to Canada's efforts to develop modern passenger rail. Initial commercial service started soon after. On its first westbound run the Turbo attained 104 mph (167 km/h) 10 minutes outside of Dorval. During speed runs on April 22, 1976, it achieved 140.55 mph (226 km/h) near Gananoque ,

9603-412: Was sold to Bombardier), the name was changed back to Pullman Company. In July 1987 the company acquired Clevite Industries . By 1996, Pullman Co., with its Clevite subsidiary, was almost solely a supplier of automotive elastomer (rubber) parts, and in July 1996 the company was sold to Tenneco . As of late 2004, Pullman Co. (now the brand name Clevite), as a manufacturer of automotive elastomer products,

9702-553: Was still under the control of Tenneco Automotive. In 1877, the United States experienced the Great Railroad Strike. Part of its legacy included more powerful unions and a tendency for employers to consider the broader well-being of their employees. Pullman's objective in building a company town was to attract a superior type of employee and further elevate these individuals by excluding baneful influences. In late April 1880, George Pullman announced his plans to build

9801-415: Was to modify the power cars (engines) to allow the trains to be coupled end-to-end. Since articulated trains required "special" cars at either end anyway (to fill in the otherwise missing bogie), the C&O was double-ended, with a power car at each end. The power cars were organized with their two diesel engines on either side of the train, and the operators' cabin in a "pod" on top. This left enough room for

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