Sleeping car

“ Finding it impossible to sleep, I lay there wondering a number of things: why, for instance, the Pullman sleeping-car blankets were unlike other blankets; why they were like squares cut out of cold buckwheat cakes, and why they clung to you when you turned over, and lay heavy on you without warmth; why the curtains before you could not have been made opaque, without being so thick and suffocating; why it would not be as well to sit up all night half asleep in an ordinary passenger-car as to lie awake all night in a Pullman. ”

“ NOTHING can exceed the air of satisfaction which pervades a sleeping car just after the berths have been made up in the morning. The night is safely past, dressing in one's section has been got through, and one's destination leaps upon one from out the sheathing miles. Pelleas and I came in from breakfast in the dining car and shared in the general cheer. ”

“ Especially when night comes does the ride grow tiresome. As for sleeping-cars, I have long since vetoed them, as far as I am concerned. I decide that they are a nuisance, and I believe the majority of travelers will ratify and endorse my decision—and thus render it legal. I never slept in one yet, that I did not suffer all the time, either from heat or cold. Such a thing as an even or moderate temperature, I never experienced in a sleeping-car. ”

“ It was the first sleeping-car ever seen in the North West, and for a time it was very popular; that is on the eastward bound trip. You see, miners that had made their pile at the mines always took the sleeper when they started for the east, and sometimes we'd have every berth in the car engaged. They were that anxious to spend their money that they would have taken any sort of a car that we might have put on the line and charged an extra price for. ”

“ No, no; the privacy of a French sleeping-car is all very well, but for decency give our friend a good, old-fashioned Pullman sleeper at a third the money, with its curtains swaying with the motion of the car and muting the long-drawn, loud-drawn breathing of the serried sleepers behind them. To be sure, in the morning, when stooping backs begin to round the curtains out, and half-shod feet to thrust into the narrow gangway between them, the effect is of a familiarity, an intimacy ”

“ We get our things off somehow or other—probably we give anyone coming along the aisle the impression that a sea-lion or a dromedary has got into our compartment. And then, our final frantic struggle having made us free, we address ourself to sleep.
Sleeping-cars are so named because you try to and can't. Some people can, of course. When they can, they always snore—fiendishly. ”

“ But no one feels or shows so much arrogance as the sleeping car porters. They cannot pronounce "supercilious," but they can be it. Their disdain for the entire crew of any train that carries merely day-coaches or half-baked chair-cars, is expressed as only a darkey in a uniform can express disdain for poor white trash.
Of all the haughty porters that ever curled a lip, the haughtiest by far was the dusky attendant in the San Francisco sleeper on the Trans-American Limited. ”

“ Though the car was the familiar American Pullman, the slovenly government employees had discarded most of the small conveniences. The aisle was as carpetless as the floors of Brazil, the berth net had long since been turned into a hammock for the brakeman’s baby, the mattress was thin and hard as a Brazilian wooden bed, and the sleep I did not get as we creaked and jounced through the endless low hills explained why sleeping cars and night trains are not more popular in the mammoth republic of South America. ”

“ If you have the habit of feeling as if you could never get refreshing sleep in a sleeping car, first be sure that you have as much fresh air as possible, and then make up your mind that you will spend the whole night, if necessary, in noticing the rhythm of the motion and sound of the cars. If you keep your mind steadily on it, you will probably be asleep in less than an hour, and, when the car stops, you will wake only enough to settle comfortably into the sense of motion when it starts again. It is pleasant to notice the gentleness with which a good engineer starts his train at night. ”

“ Thrower, too, was quite knocked up by it; my powers of sleeping at all times and places prevented my suffering in the same way, and I found these sleeping cars very comfortable. They are ingeniously contrived to be like an ordinary car by day; but by means of cushions spread between the seats and a flat board let down half way from the ceiling, two tiers of very comfortable beds are made on each side of the car, with a passage between. The whole looks so like a cabin of a ship, that it is difficult not to imagine oneself on board a steamboat. ”

“ Not often, that is to say in sleeping-cars. What they may do elsewhere, I can't say, not being myself a married man. Speaking of women, a curious circumstance happened in a sleeping-car about the time I was telling you of, when we used to carry the car full of miners that had made their pile. ”

“ This first sleeping car was, as was later the first Pullman car, an adaption of an ordinary day coach to sleeping requirements. It was divided into four compartments in each of which three bunks were built against one side of the car, and in the rear of the car were provided a towel, basin, and water. No bed clothes were furnished and the weary passengers fully dressed reclined on rough mattresses with their overcoats or shawls drawn over them, doubtless marveling the while at the fruitfulness of modern invention. ”

“ In cold weather there are many advantages in sleeping in the car. If it gets cold the engine can be run a while to warm things up a little. In addition to those car-body beds previously described there are several others on the market which are excellent for the purpose. Any one with tools and a little ingenuity can rig up his own sleeping outfit and without infringing on any patents have as good a bed as the market affords. ”

“ The first English sleeping cars made their appearance in 1873, but they were very inferior to the vehicles now employed. In the most approved type at the present time a passage runs along one side of the car, and off it open a number of transverse compartments or berths resembling ships' cabins, mostly for one person only, and each having a lavatory of its own with cold, and sometimes hot, water laid on. ”

“ The Pullman tourist sleeping car, which you can find on all through trains of the different railroads throughout the United States, are to the traveler of moderate means what the Pullman car is to the millionaire traveler. They are designed for the comfort and convenience of the traveling public to whom the expenditure of a dollar more or less is a matter of moment, and who cannot afford or do not care for the small extra show and tinsel of the Pullman sleeping car, but whose only desire is to make their journey pleasant, comfortable and safe. ”

“ The modern Pullman sleeping car is a veritable palace on wheels furnished in the best materials, without regard to expense, comfort, convenience and the safety of the passengers being the main object. ”

“ As the Pullman car was the first sleeping car to be installed for regular service in England, so credit should be given to Colonel Mann for affording the first sleeping car for public service ever operated on the Continent. ”

“ Clyde.
“You won’t practice it, but you can safely believe it,” retorted the doctor. “The atmosphere in a day coach is always better than in a parlor car, because there’s an occasional direct draft through. As for a sleeping-car,—well, I never get into one without thinking of the definition in ‘Life’s’ dictionary: ‘Sleeping-Car—An invention for the purpose of transporting bad air from one city to another.’”
“The poor railroads!” chuckled Mr. Clyde. “They get blamed for everything, nowadays.” ”

“ The earliest sleeping cars were mere bunk cars in which the male passengers might recline during the night hours. Later, bedding was furnished, but the necessity of storing it by day in a closet at the end of the cars created a situation in which order and cleanliness were far from practicable. By the Pullman invention, however, all this was changed. A type of car was developed that was not only comfortable and convenient for day travel, but one that might be quickly transformed into a comfortable sleeping apartment. ”

“ There are sleeping cars made up like little cabins with beds in them and every luxury. But it is tiring to travel on continuously in a French train, as the carriages are made very hot by steam, and French people object to having the windows open at all, so the atmosphere gets almost unbearable, according to our ideas. ”

“ For that reason the sleeping car is provided that you may sleep with as much comfort as if you were in your own home, the dining car is provided to furnish you a good meal on the fly and at a price that all can afford. The library and drawing room cars are provided, where you can make yourself as comfortable as you can in your own house. The porter will get your morning paper, furnish you with writing materials or your morning high ball, and look after you like a hen after her brood. ”

“ On several of the continental lines the Mann Boudoir sleeping-car has been introduced; it is the enterprise of an American, and is a very serviceable vehicle, though less comfortable than the famous Pullman. The Mann car is the ordinary European railway carriage equipped with sleeping accommodations, lavatories and the like; the traveler must have a first-class ticket to be admitted, and he pays in addition about $2.50 per night. ”

“ Take 'em by and large, those miners were generally better behaved on the sleeping-car than the average commercial traveller is nowadays, for all that he gives such airs, and lets on to be at the top of Chicago society.
"There was one thing that the miners wouldn't stand, and that was snoring. They got the conductor to post up a notice in the sleeper, 'No Snoring Aloud,' and any man who wanted to snore after that was expected to do it so quiet that it wouldn't disturb anybody. If a man snored in a loud, tempestuous sort of way, he would be waked up and warned once. ”

“ It is well to be honest, even to our own adulation, and one must confess that the sleeping-car of the European continent is but the nervous and hysterical daughter of the American mother of sleeping-cars. Many express trains are run without any sleeper, and the charges for berths are ludicrously extravagant—five dollars apiece for a single night. ”

“ As I observed last night, a sleeping car is not all that it might be. The day will come when it will have to be improved. However, since it gets us to New York safely and economizes hours of day travel, it is a blessing for which we should be grateful. ”

“ There is one thing about sleeping cars that should be changed, and that is the number of the berth should be on the curtain, so when a man gets up in the night to go out to the back end of the car and look out into the night to see if the stars are shining, and he gets through seeing if the stars are shining, and goes back, he will not get into the wrong berth. ”

“ But, as suggested in argument, a road only 50 miles in length would seldom have a sleeping car attached to its trains; and passengers traveling on roads of that kind do not have the apprehension ordinarily felt by passengers on trains regularly carrying sleeping cars, or having many passenger coaches, on account of the burning of cars in case of their derailment or in case of collision. ”

“ Sleeping in the car gets one away from the intrusion of the creeping and crawling things that abound on the ground, and which will succeed more or less in getting into the tent where that is used for sleeping quarters. Then, too, in time of wet and storm the car is sure to be dry. On the other hand, the sleeping quarters in the ordinary car are very close and crowded. There will be no trouble about ventilation, but pretty much all the space in the tonneau will be occupied by the bed. ”

“ The evolution of the sleeping car; The rise of a great industry; The Pullman car in Europe; The survival of the fittest; The town of Pullman; Inventions and improvements; How the cars are made; The operation of the Pullman car. One aspect of the subject is not touched on, the labor disturbances that have attended the development of the industry. The illustrations, which include reproductions of cartoons made in the early days of the sleeping car, are interesting. ”

“ Why, speaking of snoring, I've known lots of what you would call tragedies to happen in sleeping-cars on account of snoring. You don't hear of 'em in the papers, for the men that do these tragedies don't care to talk about 'em, and the company naturally wants the thing kept quiet. ”

“ It is even safer than gas, and is the most adaptable of any known method of lighting. Some sleeping-cars that have been recently put in service on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway are provided with small electric lamps in the sides of the car, between each two adjoining seats, so that the occupants can read comfortably either when sitting in their seats or lying in their berths.
It is not to be supposed that so large a subject as that of safety appliances can be exhaustively treated within the limits of one article. ”

“ Their criticism of the telephone seems to be that the state of perfection to which it has been brought in this country causes it to be widely used, while their disapproval of our sleeping cars is invariably based on the assumption that they have no compartments—which is not the fact, since most of the great transcontinental railroads do run compartment cars, and much better ones than the best wagons lits, and since, also, all our sleeping cars have drawing-rooms which are incomparably better than the most comfortable European compartments. ”