Portable Hotel - The Saturday Evening Post

14
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
Portable
Hotel
N A CAVERNOUS ew York wareh ouse, a bustling li ttle man s napped ord ers at a sq uad of helpers. Down from acres of shelves cascad ed 1200
freshly laundered sheets, 2400 pillowcases, tan wool
blankets by the hundreds. H o ur a fter hour, h a nd
trucks clan ged o u t with t heir cargo, while motor
trucks lumbered up to a n unloa ding platform with a dditional bedding by the ton. Occasionally the little
man frowned thoughtfully at a new order slip in his
ha nd , deciphering it , then his voice would rise to a
bellow, "Gimme a hundred more linen bags-a nd
d on 't sto p to sleep on 'em! "
Now he had worked his way into a not he r section of
the warehouse. "Roll o u t forty drums of liquid soa p! "
he rasped. "And we'll need three t h ousand tidies." H e
chewed at his pencil for a m om en t a nd then c uttled
on, t ire less, insatiable. Behind him, his m en piled a
fantastic array of eq uipment on t heir trucks, ra nging
from paper towels to star ched whi te uniform jacke ts.
" H avy day," panted one new help r.
"Just average," his companio n grunted.
At s o r s of s imila r warehouses, strategically
spotted a ross t he nation, t here was simila r activity.
The world's gr atest t raveling hotel-The Pullman
Compa ny - had begun a nother week.
That w ek i a ta rtling measure of wartime transpo r tat io n in America. At a minimum, it in volves bedding down some 210,000 soldiers on regular a nd s pecial
II
A
man leaves $14,000 in his
shoe or a woman has a baby in
Lower 7, but it's all in a day's
work to George, major-domo of
. . the Pullman.
tr oop trains, plus 300,000 civilian customers . During
those seven d a y s, soldiers a nd civilian s will use 1,000,000 s heets a nd 5,000,000 towels, a nd they will t ravel
around 380,000,000 miles. That, r em ember , r epresen ts
a m ere week; in 1942, Pullman h a uled 26,000,000 passengers more than 19,000,000,000 miles, or n early d ou ble t he number of the last peacetim e year. And these
p asse nge rs did their traveling on prac tically e very railroad line in the United Sta tes, often without having to
change cars at all, no m a tter how far they journey ed .
This is importa nt; it is the k ey to the ability of our
sleeping-car syste m to m eet the most staggering traffic
rush in history.
The present unified operation of s uch cars didn't always exist. In the middle of the last century, a young
workma n n a m ed·George M . Pullma n left his home in
Chautauqua County, N ew York, to travel to t h e
booming little Midwestern city of Chicago. Between
Buffalo and Chicago the sepa rate railroad ownerships
of the d a y forced him to cha nge trains every few hundred miles. Worse s till, the sleeping cars maintained by
each individual railroad boasted only fuzzy bla nkets
for bedding, while iron-hard bunks, swung in car s
without springs, left passengers sleepless and swearing.
Young Pullma n 's ordeal contributed both aches a nd
a revolutionary idea. H e h a d been a cabinetmaker a nd
knew woodworking. H e ha d a lso ha d contracting experien ce a nd knew som ething a bout large-scale cons truction. Why not build a luxurious, e ntirely n ewtype car which would sleep passengers by night a nd
house them by d a y, a nd contrac t for the car's ser vices,
complete with atte nda n ts, with the r ailroads? Such
car s could then be transferred from roa d to road without disturbing through passengers at all.
October 16, 1943
Pullman designed t he Pioneer, his first de-luxe sleeping car , in 1863. Wit h solid blocks of rubber under the
frame to cushion shocks, folding berths, washrooms a t
either end, a nd even two private bedroom s, the Pioneer
was one of the wonders of that era. Because of its extra width and heigh t, however, railroads balked at
adopting it until Mrs. Abraha m Lincoln r equested
use of the Pioneer to carry the President's funeral
party from C hicago to Springfield. Soon Pullman
was building a nd s upplying s uch cars by the score.
Later , seasona l traffic peaks-which m eant idle equipm ent t hroug h much of the y ear for a ny individual
r ailroad -mad e it far cheaper for the roads to have
Pullman furnish sleeping cars than to buy or build
them. When George Pullman died in 1897, his vision
a nd en te rprise h a d m a de him one of America's richest
m en .
Today, Pullman's original pool of sleeping cars has
mushroom ed to a fleet of more than 7000 pera mbula ting
hotels which last year grossed better than $113,000,000.
It is uni ts of t his highly mobile pool, distributed to the
different ra ilroa ds to m eet hour-by-hour needs, which
m a ke possible the efficient h andling of close to 75,000
passen gers a day. The cars, of course, don't simply pop
out of t he ground. Somebody h as to know when they
are needed, where they a re n eed ed , how many a re
n eed ed , and h ow best to a lloca te them to meet wartime emergencies.
The nerve center of this fabulous opera tion lies in a
s ingle room in Chicago, presided over by a whiteha ired , twinkling-eyed oldster n a m ed B. E. D e wey.
D ewey-"Admira l " to generations of Pullma n m enfirst began ha ndling sleeping cars for military and civilian u e in t he Spanis h-American W ar, a nd r ecently
r elinquished retirem ent to aid his employers with a
knowledge of t ra ins a nd schedules proba bly unpreced en ted in United States railroading. As superintendent of car serv ice for The Pullma n Company, he
talks above the bedlam of a score of tele phoning clerks
who so und stra ngely like bookies reciting the n a mes of
favo rite nags: "Scratch Rolyat a nd Syringa. . . .
We' ll take C hic ka dee a nd Genevieve. . . . Put us
down for H elles pont. "
The routing of s uch cars is h andled fairly simply, I
discover ed. "We divide our
(Continl/ed on " a ge 39)
I -":T K Iot S A T I O:'·l AL
Every weck Pullman porLer make up berths for an ave.-age total of
210,000 oldiers on s pecial troop trains, and about 300,000 civilians.
Dc igucd a your Pullman of th e flltliT , this
3-decker i currently u ed only for troops .
THE SATURDAY EVENI NG POST
down berths to why I carry a whisk broom."
It didn't take me long t o discover t h at
(Con.tin.ued/rom Page 14)
it 's the port ers who bear t h e brunt of
operations into seventy-two dis tricts, troop-train work. Alt h o ugh su ch work
spanning every section of the country, " m a kes for overlong hours, hundred s of
D ewey explained. "Then, through the these smiling Negroes have a pplied for
district offices, this central office keeps t roop service exclusively . T he p or ter s
track of where every car is at any given and The Pullma n C ompa ny see to i t t h at
hour. Suppose the War D epartment t h e soldiers get exactly t h e sam e comwants to move thirty-nine hundred m en for ts as civilia ns, including freshly la unfrom Keesler Field, Mississippi, to B en- der ed sh eet s a nd pillowcases every night,
gies, Maryland. With two soldiers in plenty of towels, car s kept m eticulou sly
each lower and one in each upper, we clean, b erths m ad e down by the p orter ,
know we can accommoda t e a bout thirty- a nd even freshly shined sh oes.
N early 600 porters h a ve already gone
eight t o a car. That means that slightly
more than a hundred cars will be needed." t o war them selves, a nd t h e ones left b eImmediately, Dewey and his a ssist ants hind, I found, go out of th eir way t o try
begin getting in touch with district offices t o m a k e lon ely rookies feel at home.
along the route between Keesler Field M a ny frequently lose several nigh ts'
a nd Bengies. From Montgomery, Ala - sleep h a nd-running d oing chores for t h e
bama, cars Star Bay, Stonewall Jackson doughboys; r ecently, a group of p orter s
a nd Lake Pontchartrain are ordered to chipped in and bought a half doze n cases
Mississippi; Atlanta provides ten m.ore ; of soft drinks for thirsty uniformed pasWashington, twenty; New Orlearu:' thirty. sengers traveling across t h e upper r each es
Before night, the 100-odd cars are on of D eath Valley.
"When I r ealize plenty of t h ese boys
their way. To men in charge of the routing this operation is facilitated by the m ay never come ba ck," one porter told
fact that the names of Pullmans, which m e, "wha t e ver I can do for t h em seem s
have puzzled generations of travelers, might y little."
Naturally, Johnny D oughboy co uldn't
have largely been selected to permit
quick identification: "Point " prefixes- m ove on eit her wheels or r ails wi t hout a
Point Plea sa nt Point Lookout- for
cars with ten se~tions and two dra wing
rooms for instance; "Mc " prefixesMcE~en, M cDermott-for twelvesection , single-drawing-room cars; a~d
Autumn Furrows
L a k e, Star a nd similar prefixes for still
By ARTHUR STRINGER
other types.
And t o mee t t he skyrocketing milit ary dema nd for t hese cars, so-called
The harves t s have h een ga the red ,
m obile crews have b een set up to clean
The plow 's good work is dOll e;
a nd service Pullmans at Army pos ts in
On ce ulore t h e ulnbe r f~Tl"oWS
order t o k eep t h e m in a ction a nd cu t
Dt'ink in th e autumn S ~Il.
t u.rn-around t ime t o a minimum. In
L ouisia na, for example, Camps Cla iAnd dark the earth li es w aitin g
borne, B eauregard a nd Livings ton lie
For n e w e r g ifts to y ield
a bout 125 miles from Shreveport. OrWhe re sleep now buns to service
dinarily, Pullmans discharging soldier s
In e ve ry patie nt field.
a t these huge posts would have to r e-
PORTABLE HOTEL
t urn to Shreve port for cleaning and
So e ve n life lies fallow
r estocking b efore t hey coul? c~ry
Whe n tire d hearts l'es t again
troops out again-a round t np whIc h
'that
seed s whic h sleep with sile n ce
might require a s much as twe~ty-four
~'1a y wave a . ripe n ed g rainprecious hours. Instea? , mO~llle crews
ride into camp on the lDcommg slee pTha t th ey who found love fl ee ting
ing cars, clean and r epair theI?' r estock
Aud on ce 'loo freely gave
t he m with linen from pre vlOusly esMa y know som e g reen e r Aprj(
tablish ed supply dumps, a nd have t he
Be yond th e win ter ' grave .
cars r eady t o go again in a n hour or
two.
In September a nd Octo ber of .last
year, when America 's . great Afncan
invasion force was be10g assembled ,
Pullman-troop-tr ain tra vel soar ed to dai ly r atio n of h or se play-alld the p o rnearly 2,000,000,000 passeng~r miles !or ter 's u sual ly t he victim. One por ter
those two months a lone . ThIS s t artling tr a veling out of Mia mi not lo ng ago
figure eclipsed even civilian tr~v~~ in .t h e woke qua king in t he night t o find t hat his
sam e p eriod , a nd y e t not one CIVIlia n lD a khaki-clad p assengers h a d placed a la r ge
thousand r ealized su ch m ass troop move- monkey on his chest; a no th er found a
ments were going on at all. All tog~ the.r, sn arling coyo te lock ed in his linen closet;
nearly 8,000,000 t roops ~ere carned . 10 still a n oth er , driven n early fra nt ic by a
Pullma n s last year; t hiS y ear,. WIth croaking voice in a n a ppa ren t ly empty
civilian a nd milita ry t ravel runrung 60 smoking room, discover ed t h e s peaker ,
per cent a bove 1942, t he troop count concealed und er the leather couch , was a
alone will proba bly soar a bove the talking crow from Fort Knox.
Su c h t ricks go on d a y a nd n igh t. R e10,000,000 m ark.
cently, a fter a t r ain h ad picked up a large
contingen t of t roop s a t a camp near a n aThey Also Se rve - t ional park, a couple of soldiers asked the
A few months ago I traveled t o a n porter to m a ke d own t h e ber t h s in t heir
E ast Coast camp to ride half~ay a cross drawing room. Inside the door t h e por ter
the continent on a troop tram. In the started to swit ch on a light-and sudPullman cars as I climbed aboard, bar- denly froze. In the gath ering dusk a
racks bags w~re alread y being stacked in huge, hairy figure rose night marishly
th e women's dressing room to keep the from the couch. The paralyzed darky
aisles clear. Then, with yelps of joy, noted that the apparition made noises
nearly half a hundred inductees ,Simul- resembling a concrete mixer in low gear,
t aneously discovered the porter s call and that its teeth approximated the size
bells. For a few minutes the place rang of railroad spikes. Then he exploded out
like a fi ve-alarm fire. Grinning porters of the doorway like an artillery shell.
Hysterical soldiers heard only the
explained what the Mcth hammo~ks
were for ; how to use the tooth-cleanmg screech of his voice in passage: "Lawdy,
basin in the smoking compartment; Lawdy, t here 's a big Dearin that drawing
where t o put shoes to be shined. "More'n room, and h e was trying to make a Little
half these boys never been on a sleeper," Red Riding Hood outta me! "
R ailroa d officials took a om ewhat
one porter confided . "They w a nt to
know e verything from h ow t o make ja undiced view of th e inciden t and jerked
t h e bruin off the train before dawn the
next day. It t urned out t h at the b ear,
bot tle-raised as a compa ny m ascot, was
already t hree q u a rter s grown when t h e
t r oops smu ggled him int o t he dra wing
r oom, a nd b ig enough to make h ash out
of even a J oe Louis. If soldiers could ride
in sleeping car s, his fond owners apparen t ly figured, why couldn't their fav orite
bear?
Actu a lly, t r oop t r ains, wit h or wi th ou t
bears, r epresent simply one ch a p ter in
P ullma n 's r emarka ble history. Pullma n
built the first enclosed vestibule b etween
cars-an innovation which protected
passengers from t he weath er while p assing be tween cars a nd also eliminated t h e
danger of tumbling from t h e platform to
t h e right of way while t h e t r ain was in
m otion. B efore the World W ar, the same
compa ny constructed t he first steel sleeping car, which proved of su ch m ajor importance tha t during one five-year p eriod
Pullmans carried more tha n 75,000,000
p assengers some 40,000,000,000 miles
without a fa tality.
Railroad R e volution
An t itelescoping con struction , vaporsteam-h eat syst e ms, improved br a kes,
lounge cars wit h sh ower b aths, bedroom
car s, a ll wer e in troduced by P ullma n .
The latest d evice is a n ew -type car
s pring so a djusted t h at it will give
wit h only a fe w pounds of pressure ;
a oot h er n ew de vice, t hrou gh a focusing
len s, qua druples th e e fficie ncy of ber t h
reading ligh t s. And a ir condit ioning in
sleeping cars-a r evolut ionary ad van ce
which n ecessitated the expe ndit ure by
P ullman a nd t h e r a ilroads of $35,000,000 in cash a t t h e bottom of t he
de pression - was like wise d eveloped by
P ullma n engineer s .
T oda y , Pullma n, vit a lly impo r tant
in t h e wa r effor t, is r eally t wo closely
in tegrated orga nizations : The Pullma n
Compa ny, which owns a nd operates
sleeping cars; a nd t h e P ullma n Standard Ca r M a nufacturing C ompany, which builds all t ypes of railroa d
cars, including freigh ts. And P ullma n tandard , as a ca r builder , has done as
much t o alter t r adi tio nal t r a vel con ce pts as Pullma n itself- m ost nota bly
through t he con s truction of t h e first
ligh t weigh t, str eamlined t r a ins.
L ike t h e first Pullma n , th e str eamliner idea didn' t prove easy t o sell. As
early as t h e mid 1920's, Pullma nStanda rd h a d s haved th ousa nds of
po unds from suburba n car s by th e u se
of a luminum alloys, a nd later in vest d
$165,000 in a lightweight, streamlined,
gasoline-power ed car with aer odyna mic
lines.
The n D av id A . G r a wfor d , p r eside n t of T h e Pullman Compa ny since
1929, b ega n t o urge t h at Pullma n Sta ndard carry its research es and pla ns
still fur t h er - from sin gle coach es in t o
ligh tweight trains a nd Pullma n cars.
Pullman-Standard did, but t h e r ailroad s
wer en 't r eady t o buy .
Experimentation with light m etals
continued , however , and by 1933, when
W. A ver ell H arriman, of t h e U nion
P acific, bega n in vestigating th e p ossibilit ies of light weight, low-cost, highspeed t ransportation , Pullman-Standard
was read y. On M a y 29, 1933, Union
P acific signed a contr act wit h PullmanStandard for a t hree-car aluminum
t rain-the first modern streamliIier ordered by a railroad in this country. This
t rain, the City of Salina, was deliver ed
on Lincoln's Birthday, 1934. After being
exhibited in .the nation's capital, it embarked on a nation-wide tour . . Since
then Pullman-Standard has built and
sold nearly 900 lightweight, streamlined
cars plus more than 600 lightweight
Pullmans. Railroad men believe widespread adoption of such high-speed cars
and trains, which can be operated far
more cheaply th a n convent ional heavyweight equipmen t, will go far t oward
EVENING POST
meeting air-transport competition in the
postwar years.
In addition to such lightweight cars,
Pullman, shortly before the war, also developed a car with three tiers of berths.
Because of their extra capacity, cars of
this type, now extensively used for troop
transport, will probably find wide application after the war to provide sleeper
service at a cost even lower than present
tourist cars.
Another important development is a
duplex roomette car which, by placing
private rooms on two different levels,
utilizes car space so efficiently that
twenty-four rooms are fitted into the
s pace formerly occupied by eighteen.
Now in experimental operation, the new
duplex roomette car offers a private
room with complete facilities as a substitute for the lower berth of the opensection car-and at a comparable price.
Right now, however, Pullman has little time to worry about the postwar
period . At half a dozen huge PullmanStandard plants, almost completely converted to war wo . k, little but armaments
rolls off the production lines-tanks, military freight cars, major aircraft subassemblies, naval patrol vessels, mortars,
antiaircraft weldments and many other
items.
The r eal romance of these moving
hostelries, of course, lies in the guests
who sweep through their corridors year
after year. From Rudyard Kipling to
Winston Churchill-not to mention a
few assorted kings, Dorothy Lamour and
AI Capone-these perambulating caravansaries have served the largest and
most diverse group of travelers in the
world. One of their most peculiar patrons
was probably a blowsy, disheveled private who recently climbed aboard a
troop train bound from Southern California to M edford, Oregon. By night, he
saw to it that the porter supplied him
with such comforts as extra blankets, ice
water and brilliantly shined shoes; by
day, the soldier kept the same worthy
busy setting up card tables, emptying
) ash trays and furnishing pillows.
When the train finally arrived at Medford and the troops lined up for roll call,
the captain in charge suddenly discovered that his comfort-loving private
1 wasn't a soldier at all. As the MP's
f
closed m enacingly in, the frightened intruder tried to explain he'd bought a
~ secondhand uniform and come along just
~
for the trip.
OClober 16,
19'~3
"But why-why?" demanded the captain.
"Boss," quavered the stowaway, "I
been riding the rods for nearly thirty
years-and I just had to sleep in a Pullman before I died! "
The Case of the Aspiring Hobo can be
matched by other Pullman stories
equally strange. There was the time, for
example, when a porter, returning freshly
shined shoes to the berths of his sleeping
passengers at three A . M., stood flabbergasted when he saw a trail of $100 bills
blowing along the aisle by the dozens.
He was sure no one h a d either entered or
left the car, yet - - Next morning h e
discovered a rich oil man had put into
one of his shoes $14,000 that he was carrying to purchase a lease, and then
thoughtlessly stuck his shoes ~.:'.der the
berth edge to be polished. When t::~
porter walked up to the smoking compartment loaded down with footwear to
be cleaned, he had carried the oil m an's
shoe upside down and every bill had fluttered to the floor .
It is such carelessness by passengers
which most bewilders Pullman personn el.
More than 100,000 valuable articles,
ranging from rings to wallets, are left in
berths a nd turned into The Pullma n
Company offices every year; for months
on end, such property will average $2000
a week. Yet, in 95 cases out of 100, the
vanished object ultimately finds its way
back to its owner.
The methods used to retrieve such belongings are ingenious. Recently, for example, a rich Chicago man reported that
one of his daughters had lost a $750 solidgold-mesh bag, set with pearls and other
jewels, on a trip to New York. At the
Chicagoan's r esidence, a Pullman lostand-found employee discovered that another daughter owned an exact duplica te
of the missing bag. Hanging the duplicate bag against a wall, the Pullma n
sleuth photographed it, developed a large
number of prints, and colored them wi 11
oil paint. These prints, distributed to
special Pullman agents in New York, r esulted in r ecovery of the missing bag
within twenty-four hours. It had been
picked up by a station redcap-who
failed to report his find until confronted
with the bag's picture in the ha nd of a
s pecial agent.
A similar case was solved even more
spectacularly. On a recent train rolling
into Chicago, two men accidentally
(Continued on Pa,ge 42)
· EVENING POST
(Continuedjrom Page 40)
switched valises of almost identical appearance. One man's valise, however,
contained more than $1500 worth of jewelry and clothing, while the second passenger's held nothing but a few shirts,
collars and toilet articles.
The loser of the valuable valise reported its disappearance, but by this
time the second man had vanished. His
bag h eld nothing to reveal his identity
save his laundry mark, and the mark
might have come from any city in the
United States. Through laundry associations, however , Pullman found clues to
several towns where such marks were
used, and ultimately the missing bag was
tracked down and recovered with all its
contents. It turned out that the man
who had the valise didn't report it under
the old theory of finders keepers, but he
readily gave it up when his identity became known.
In the main, there are few thefts on
Pullmans, but when they do occur,
Pullman's special agents often display
deductive qualities which would delight
Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
Several years ago, a woman passenger reported two expensive diamond rings
missing. A Pullman agent on the train,
puzzling over the theft while enjoying a
cigar in the smoking room, noticed a window opened beside him. It was a chilly
day, therefore the window shouldn't be
open; there wasn't any safe place to hide
stolen objects inside a train - - Presto!
He reached under the outside window
October 16, 1943
ledge and came up with the rings. The
thief had stuck them there with chewing
gum.
One of Pullman's greatest problemsparticularly in these days of shortagesis that of supplies. For the appetite of
these speeding hotels is both voracious
and insatiable: 95,000 yards of carpet
yearly, 600,000 hand towels, more than
300,000 sheets, 170,000,000 drinking cups,
400,000 light bulbs, $1,000,000 worth of
laundry work, and enough food and drink
to make around 100,000,000 servings a
year in Pullman's 300 r estaurant, lounge
and buffet cars. Contrary to common
belief, Pullman operates full-fledged dining cars regularly on only one railroadthe Nickel Plate.
It isn't supplies, however, which bothers the average Pullman porter. Apparently, there's something about a hotel on
wheels which irresistibly attracts the
stork. Babies have been born on sleepers
from Maine to California, and the average porter lives in constant dread of the
excited call for a doctor who's seldom
there.
Recently, one porter, the name of
whose car-Gorgeous Rose-had just
been immortalized by being conferred on
a new infant he had ushered into the
world while speeding through Colorado,
watched contentedly as a group of soldiers stepped briskly aboard .
"Boss," he murmured complacently,
"them boys may do a little roughhousing, but at least none of 'em is gonna
become a mamma tonigh t I "