Pullman Car Sunbeam

In the 19th century, locomotives built by manufacturer William Mason were said to be "melodies cast and wrought in metal." I would propose that Pullman cars were melodies crafted in wood.

Hildene is the preserved Manchester, Vermont home of Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of Abraham Lincoln. While the Georgian Revival mansion is magnificent, also on the sprawling country grounds is a restored 1903 Pullman railcar. Robert Todd Lincoln was president of the Pullman Company from 1897 to 1911, and the Friends of Hildene acquired the car to tell the business side of Robert Lincoln's story - because it was, after all, Lincoln's Pullman salary that allowed construction of the estate.

Before we get into the car - obviously the subject of this post - I just want to say that the house and grounds are so worth a visit. Peggy Beckwith, a fascinating person and the last Lincoln descendent to live at Hildene, threw barely a thing away and hardly updated the house. As a result, the family's original 1890s china graces the place settings in the dining room; all of the books lining the many bookcases have spent the last century in the house; and the original Aeolian pipe organ still plays tunes for guests entering the home. You can tour the family's rooms as well as the servants' side of the house, and it is a true time capsule experience.

Here's a quick picture of the outside of the house:

Now onto the Pullman car!

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The car is displayed in its own pavilion with a display telling the story of Pullman Porters. Docents greeted us outside the car and gave us a short walk-through of the car's history and that of Pullman Porters before letting us get inside and explore.

photo credit - Hildene

"Sunbeam" was built in 1903. It represents Pullman's executive charter model. Sunbeam and its brethren were built for hosting service - they accomplished the function of today's private charter jets, whisking the top 1% around the country. While some uber-wealthy people owned their own private railcars, Sunbeam and its brethren were available for charter to those who didn't - if you had the money, you could telegram the Pullman Company that you wanted to travel from so and so to so and so on this or that date, and they would send you the car complete with a staff of two Pullman Porters - one of whom would be a trained gourmet chef.

All would be at your service for the duration of your trip. Pullman would work out the travel logistics, communicating with the various railroad companies to send your car over this route and that to your chosen destination. With its nifty rear-end observation platform, Sunbeam's class of car was always attached to the rear of trains, and was entirely private to you and your party. 

My dad doing his best impression of Theodore Roosevelt, who used Sunbeam on a campaign tour.

Detail of wood inlay in Sunbeam's interior.

I commented that even for an international company like Pullman, it must have been a logistical nightmare to schedule cars around the country, transferring smoothly from one railroad to the next without hiccups. To this, our docent said, "Pullman had skilled and connected people."

Pullman was a full-fledged monopoly, manufacturing, selling, and operating rail vehicles. This led to their eventual breakup in 1947, after which they would ONLY manufacture railcars. Before that, though, and particularly during Robert Lincoln's tenure, it was the most elegant way to travel around the country. (Available, sadly, to a select few.)

Pullman didn't operate only private charter cars, though. As stated, they were a monopoly, and plenty of railroads contracted with them to provide parlor cars or even coaches, which were available to the lesser fortunate (i.e. normal people).

Sunbeam's terne metal roof, to protect the car from flaming cinders from locomotive exhaust.

Notable to this blog, the Ulster & Delaware Railroad - the mainline of the Catskills - had a contract with the Pullman Company. Pullman parlor cars like the Marina, pictured below, were assigned to U&D trains. Marina was built the same year as Sunbeam, and although configured differently on the inside, was a visual facsimile on the outside, from the arched stained-glass windows to the arabesque design near the doors. Even the pattern of gold striping is the same. Although Marina no longer exists, Sunbeam does - and I got a huge kick out of seeing a restored Pullman car that, on the outside at least, is a visual doppelganger for the Pullmans that would've run through the Catskills at the height of railroad tourism.

The Pullman Car 'Marina,' from Gerald Best's book The Ulster & Delaware... Railroad of the Catskills. (Arthur Dubin collection.) Cars like this would have seen service in the Catskills.

Yours truly standing next to the same arabesque design on 'Sunbeam.'

When you first enter Sunbeam's interior through the observation end, you are greeted by a small sitting room with a large plate-glass mirror. A narrow hallway then takes you abreast two suites, before opening up into the car's main room.

Cleverly, one suite is made up in its daytime configuration, while the other shows nighttime, showing you how the space can be converted from couch seating to beds. Each suite has a little hidden sink, and a door separates the two suites.

This small sitting room is what you see upon first entering 'Sunbeam.'

A narrow hallway takes you past two private suites.

Bare lightbulbs decorate the car's interior, showing off the new technology of the time.

One suite has its beds unfolded.

The other suite is set up in its daytime configuration.

Beyond the two suites, the main room of Sunbeam is presently configured with everything stowed to allow smooth guest passage, but in "travel mode," the table at the side would have been unfolded and set for the daytime. At night, the table would be folded away and berths dropped from the ceiling to sleep twelve. With the bunks closed off only by curtains, it wasn't as private as the single suites on the car, but given that the only people traveling with you would be your friends, the assumption was you wouldn't mind sharing the space with these people.

The Friends of Hildene started their search for a wooden Pullman car built during Robert Lincoln's tenure in 2009, and found Sunbeam to be the best candidate with the most intact interior. Bob Willetts of South Carolina did the restoration at the shops of the Lancaster & Chester Railroad, and if anything can best epitomize the word "painstaking," it is this restoration.

The main room of Sunbeam, with folded berths.

I asked if the stained glass was original, and the docents told me most of it isn't! However, it's identical. Turns out the company which supplied Pullman the original glass in 1903 is still in business, and what's more, they have a company archive. Kokomo Glass in Indiana was able to find the original patterns used in Sunbeam in 1903, and they even mixed up the same formula glass for the restoration. So although the windows are brand new, everything about them, from the colors to the patterns, makes Sunbeam look exactly as it did when it rolled off the assembly line.

On the inside, the berths in the main room share another instance of impeccable restoration. There's a trick to telling which are original and which aren't. The replica berths don't have numbers, while the originals have a little brass label tacked above them. Since Cuban Mahagony, the wood used for the original berths, is commercially extinct, an artist had to faux grain the replica berths with paint. That's right, folks, the wood grain isn't actual wood grain. I put my face four inches from the replica berths and I could not tell it wasn't real Mahagony. It's that good.

An original berth.

A replica berth - can you tell the difference?

Closeup of the lock on one of the berths. Amazingly, the keys survived over the years and Hildene still has them.

I asked our docent if, like the windows, there was similar research done into the upholstery and carpet pattern, and although he couldn't comment on that, he assumed it was as accurate as possible because the restoration was just "that painstaking."

The ceiling of the car is a gorgeous apple green, with patterns of gold leaf work stenciled on. In the center of the ceiling are light fixtures that look a lot like Pintsch gas globes, but aren't. Apparently the car was equipped with electric lighting from the get-go.

The rope running down the center of the ceiling is for the emergency brake.

There are four lower berths in the main room of the car, and I was delighted by the little swing-out pocket lamps there.

Sunbeam and the rest of its class were in service until 1927, at which point they were retired. All of Sunbeam's sisters were torched - the easiest way to demolish a wooden car while salvaging metal hardware. Sunbeam, however, survived, sold to a private railroad, and then requested by a secretary for use as a summer cabin. That's how it survived until Hildene found it.

It's interesting to note that although most signage says the car was built in 1903, its bones actually date to 1888. Wooden passenger car building back in the day was not dissimilar to wooden ship building, wherein an older vehicle could be stripped down to its frame, cut down the middle, and have an extra section spliced into the middle, thereby lengthening it. This happened to the 1888-built Pullman car Ortega, and the Sunbeam was born from its ashes in 1903. Was Sunbeam built in 1903, or 1888? Well, both. The important thing is it was treated as a new car, and everything you see without peeling back the wall veneer is from 1903, importantly for Hildene during Robert Todd's presidency.

At the far end of the car, the end coupled to whatever train Sunbeam was traveling with, the corridor narrows again and is much less ostentatiously decorated as it passes by the car's restroom, the crew quarters, and the galley. Porters were paid very poorly, treated terribly by clientele, but made "okay" money from tips. It was a terrible job, but it was in many ways the best job available to Black Americans after the Civil War, and Pullman Porters were considered the beginning of the Black working class.

Sunbeam's restroom, with tile floor.

This is very much the working end of the car, with the walls painted a soft blue-green rather than varnished mahagony.

The Porters' quarters.

The galley.

A bare lightbulb in the car's forward vestibule.

Sunbeam's markings from its time on the Charleston and Western Carolina Railroad.

At the very far end of the car, before exiting, a small portion of the wall is unrestored, and carries the name "C&WC 100," the last railroad to operate Sunbeam before its retirement.

After walking through the car three times and having great fun chatting with the three docents, I expressed amazement at the high-effort restoration afforded this Pullman car by an organization whose focus is not even on trains. "There's a vision at Hildene," docent Gary said.

A vision indeed. It can be seen everywhere from the Pullman car and Porter exhibit, to the grounds, to the excellently interpreted Lincoln Family Home.

If you're ever in Vermont, get out there and visit!

Sources

https://manchesterlifemagazine.com/2021/06/02/pullman-car-history-in-motion/

https://www.benningtonbanner.com/local-news/sunbeam-is-more-than-meets-the-eye/article_ebed74c7-22f3-5c5c-a66d-3958e83f04e1.html

Personal interviews with Hildene docents

Note: although I have done my best to research Sunbeam's history, it's not impossible that the newspaper articles and/or the docents at Hildene may have accidentally committed some error. As a museum docent myself, it happens to the best of us. I am only relaying the information as I have got it.