Sleeping Cars— Improved railway travel may be said to date from 1836, when the first sleeping car was offered to the traveling pub lic. In that year the Cumberland Valley Rail road of Pennsylvania installed a sleeping-car service between Harrisburg and Chambers burg. This first sleeping car was an adapta tion of an ordinary day coach to sleeping re quirements. It was divided into four com partments 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. Candles furnished the light, and the heat was supplied by box stoves burning wood or sometimes coal. Other similar cars were adopted soon after by various railroads and for a number of years these cars found an appreciative patronage, and tem porarily served the patrons of the railroads. Improvements were negligible and the only justification for such cars existed in the ability of the passengers to recline at length during the long night hours. The first fundamental improvement came in 1858 when George Morti mer Pullman put several revolutionizing ideas to practical test by remodelling two Chicago and Alton coaches into sleeping cars. In these Mr. Pullman introduced his invention of upper berth construction by means of which the upper berth might be closed in the day time and also serve as a receptacle for bedding. Other improvements were worked out and tested, and from these first experiments were drawn the plans from which the first cars entirely con structed by him were made. These cars were popular with the traveling public but in 1864 Mr. Pullman put in service a model car, en tirely built according to his own ideas, at the then unprecedented cost of $18,000. This car, named the Pioneer, had improved truck springs reinforced by blocks of solid rubber; it was a foot wider and two and a half feet higher than any car then in service. Other cars of the same type were soon put in service and were universally admired. Within a com paratively short period railroads adopted new and superior accommodations at the popular demand for the increased comfort and safety offered by the new type of sleeping cars. Various companies began the building of ing and parlor cars in competition with the Pullman Company, incorporated in 1867. The Gates Sleeping Car Company and the Wagner Palace Car Company were for a time serious competitors and from 1870 to 1890 the Wagner and Pullman companies were the strongest in the field. Through the control of better patents and in course of competition the Pullman Com pany soon became the only important sleeping car company in the United States. Its business grew rapidly an 1 now it builds and operates sleeping cars throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico on all important lines, and also builds other types of cars, both freight and express, for Europe, South America and England. A few railway companies operate their own sleeping cars. The general arrange ment between the Pullman Company and the railroad companies, over whose lines it operates its cars, differs widely as between different companies. Where the average number of passengers traveling in Pullman cars per car mile is very high, as it is on the line between Boston and New York, the Pullman Company pays the railway company something for carry ing the car on its trams. Where the passenger traffic in Pullman cars per car mile is very light the railway company pays a rental to the Pullman Company for its cars. The Pullman service has kept in advance in service and efficiency of all its competitors. Its standard has always been high. It was a pioneer in in stalling electric lighting and steam heating systems in its cars and many other devices tend ing to increased comfort and safety have been adopted and it is ever ready to adopt new ideas in the construction and equipment of its cars. Its service is superior to that on rail ways which operate their own sleeping cars. Its cars are now constructed entirely of steel and are especially designed to secure the safety and comfort of passengers. Their rates were found to be entirely reasonable after an exhaustive investigation by the Interstate Com merce Commission in 1910. To-day the Pull man Company operates 7,500 cars over 137 rail ways, or a total of 223,489 miles of track. To operate these cars over 10,000 car employees are required, while 7,000 more are employed to keep the cars in repair, and maintain them in a dean and sanitary condition.
Baggage and Combination Cars.—The rail ways define a baggage car as one built for car rying trunks and passengers' baggage and having large side doors. There are usually end doors and a few windows. Where trains have short runs and consequently light demands for baggage, it is common to combine the smoker and baggage car in one, with a bulkhead di viding the compartments. Sometimes the bag gage and mail are combined in a similar way, and a few cars are made with three compart ments, for baggage, mail and smoking. Bag gage compartments are also sometimes built as parts of regular passenger cars.
Freight Cars.— There were 2,500,000 freight cars in service on the steam railways of the United States in 1917, and about 125,000 new cars of this class are being built annually. This is only a small increase in number, but the increase in carrying capacity is probably 6 to 8 per cent, owing to the larger size of the mod em-built cars. Much of the recent construc tion is pressed steel, that is, soft steel plates for the car-bodies, sheared to size at the rolling mill, and pressed into form and riveted and bolted together. The larger steel plates of simple form are cold-pressed, those of intri cate form and small parts are mostly hot pressed. The bolsters and framework of the trucks are also now mostly made of steel by machine forging, the tie-rods and attachments are mostly steel and the wheels are either iron or steel. The notion that some car-wheels are of paper is a pleasing fiction, originating with some newspaper reporter. Its only basis is the use of paper in compound wheels placed be tween the two parts of a car-wheel to deaden the or noise of vibration. These all steel cars involve higher first cost than the wooden cars, but being made in larger sizes and having much greater life, are coming more and more into use. The typical old-fashioned wooden box car is 40 feet long, 8 feet 10 inches wide and 8 feet high, weighs 36,000 pounds and cost, before the war, $1,300, having a carrying capacity of 60,000 pounds. The all steel cars are built of capacities ranging from 80,000 to 120,000 pounds.
Box cars are ventilated when designed for carrying food stuffs and double-walled or in sulated for fruit transportation. When pro vided with icing conveniences they are termed refrigerator cars, and are specially built for carrying meat, beer, produce, etc. Stock cars are built with stalls for horses and cattle and pens for sheep, swine or poultry. Flat cars are the cheapest railway cars, many of them costing not more than WO. They consist sim ply of the running gear, that is, a pair of trucks, with a deck and brakes. Keepers are inserted in the sides of the deck in which up rights can be inserted to keep the load from falling off. They are used for carrying stone, ore, lumber, glass, ordnance and any heavy freight that will bear exposure to the weather. When provided with low sides they are termed gondolas, and may be used for conveying coal. coke, etc. Hopper cars are built with slanting bottoms and gates below, so that the contents can be discharged by opening the gates; two hoppers to a car is a common construction. Dump-cars usually are arranged to tip side ways so as to slide off the load. These are used for conveying earth, gravel and ballast for road filling. Tank cars are built for oil, acids and other fluids that have to be handled in large quantities, and they are usually cylin drical in form.
Special Service Cars.— The steam railways of the United States have in service 125,000 cars designed for their own use, a number twice as great as the total of passenger cars. Perhaps the most familiar of these to the pub lic is the freight caboose, seen on the tail end of railway trains, and serving to house the crew and carry their tools and supplies. There are repair cars with a general equipment of tools—traveling machine shops. Wrecking cars are supplied with very heavy and power ful cranes for lifting wrecked cars or loco motives that have left the track. Every rail way has to keep them at convenient points for use in case of accident, but they also have their uses in construction work Steam-shovel cars are utilized to dig sand and gravel from banks, and pile-driver cars for construction in places. There are ditching cars for ex cavating, track-layer cars and an entire series of other special cars used for modern scientific railway construction and repair work. The snow-removal car plows, some of which have great rotating heads, are among those most readily noted by the public.