Sleeping car

The sleeping car or sleeper (often ) is a railway passenger car that can accommodate all passengers in beds of one kind or another, for the purpose of sleeping. George Pullman was the main American innovator and owner of sleeper cars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when railroads dominated intercity passenger travel.

The first such cars saw sporadic use on American and English railways in the 1830s; they could be configured for coach seating during the day.

History

Possibly the earliest example of a sleeping car (or ''bed carriage'', as it was then called) was on the London & Birmingham and Grand Junction Railways between London and Lancashire, England. The bed carriage was first made available to first-class passengers in 1838.

In the spring of 1839, the Cumberland Valley Railroad pioneered sleeping car service in the United States with a car named "Chambersburg", between Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A couple of years later a second car, the "Carlisle", was introduced into service.Philip Berlin Historical Marker – Behind the Marker

In 1857, the Wason Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts – one of the United States' first makers of railway passenger coach equipment – produced America's first specifically designed sleeping car. Canadian railways soon followed with their own sleeping cars: first the Grand Trunk in 1858, then the Great Western. The Great Western's sleeping cars were manufactured in-house, with the first three built in 1858, and the railway operating six by 1863.

The man who ultimately made the sleeping car business profitable in the United States was George Pullman, who began by building a luxurious sleeping car (named ''Pioneer'') in 1865. The Pullman Company, founded as the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867, owned and operated most sleeping cars in the United States until the mid-20th century, attaching them to passenger trains run by the various railroads; there were also some sleeping cars that were operated by Pullman but owned by the railroad running a given train. During the peak years of American passenger railroading, several all-Pullman trains existed, including the '' 20th Century Limited'' on the New York Central Railroad, the '' Broadway Limited'' on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the '' Panama Limited'' on the Illinois Central Railroad, and the ''Super Chief'' on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

Pullman cars were normally a dark "Pullman green", although some were painted in the host railroad's colors. The cars carried individual names, but usually did not carry visible numbers. In the 1920s, the Pullman Company went through a series of restructuring steps, which in the end resulted in a parent company, Pullman Incorporated, controlling the Pullman Company (which owned and operated sleeping cars) and the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company. Due to an antitrust verdict in 1947, a consortium of railroads bought the Pullman Company from Pullman Incorporated, and subsequently railroads owned and operated Pullman-made sleeping cars themselves. Pullman-Standard continued manufacturing sleeping cars and other passenger and freight railroad cars until 1980.

For nearly a year during the end of World War II the United States government banned sleeping cars for runs of less than in order to make sleepers available for transporting troops returning to the US from Europe, many being deployed in the Pacific Theater. The development of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and the expansion of jet airline travel in the same decade negatively affected train travel.

Cultural impact of Pullman porters

One unanticipated consequence of the rise of Pullman cars in the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries was their effect on civil rights and African-American culture. Each Pullman car was staffed by a uniformed porter. The majority of Pullman porters were African Americans. While still a menial job in many respects, Pullman offered better pay and security than most jobs open to African Americans at the time, in addition to a chance for travel, and it was a well regarded job in the African-American community of the time. The Pullman attendants, regardless of their true name, were traditionally referred to as "George" by the travelers, the name of the company's founder, George Pullman. The Pullman company was the largest employer of African Americans in the United States.

Railway porters fought for political recognition and were eventually unionized. Their union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (established, 1925), became an important source of strength for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement in the early 20th century, notably under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph. Because they moved about the country, Pullman porters also became an important means of communication for news and cultural information of all kinds. The African-American newspaper, the ''Chicago Defender'', gained a national circulation in this way. Porters also used to re-sell phonograph records bought in the great metropolitan centres, greatly adding to the distribution of jazz and blues and the popularity of the artists.

Open-section accommodation

From the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, the most common and more economical type of sleeping car accommodation on North American trains was the "open section". Open-section accommodations consist of pairs of seats, one seat facing forward and the other backward, situated on either side of a center aisle. The seat pairs can be converted into the combination of an upper and a lower " berth", each berth consisting of a bed screened from the aisle by a curtain. A famous example of open sections can be seen in the movie ''Some Like It Hot'' (1959).

Private accommodations

In the mid-to-late 20th century, an increasing variety of private rooms was offered. Most of these rooms provided significantly more space than open-section accommodations could offer. Open-sections were increasingly phased out in the 1950s, in favor of roomettes. Some of them, such as the rooms of the " Slumbercoach" cars manufactured by the Budd Company and first put into service in 1956, were triumphs of miniaturization. These allowed a single car to increase the number of sleepers over a conventional sleeping car of private rooms.NRHS Bulletin, Summer 2006, Tom Smith, "The Budd Slumbercoach Brings Economy to Pullman Passengers" https://web.archive.org/web/20101128033028/http://srmduluth.org/Exhibits/SlumberCoaches.pdf

Roomettes

A roomette, in the historical sense of the word, was a private room for a single passenger, containing a single seat, a folding bed, a toilet (''not'' in a private cubicle of its own), and a washbasin. When a traditional roomette is in night mode, the bed blocks access to the toilet. Like open sections, roomettes are placed on both sides of the car, with a corridor down the center. Duplex roomettes, a Pullman-produced precursor to the Slumbercoach, are staggered vertically, with every second accommodation raised a few feet above the car's floor level, in order to make slightly more efficient use of the space. Single-passenger Slumbercoach accommodations are a particularly spartan form of roomette; Slumbercoaches also included a few two-passenger units.

Compartments and double bedrooms

Compartments and Double Bedrooms are private rooms for two passengers, with upper and lower berths, washbasins, and private toilets, placed on one side of the car, with the corridor running down the other side (thus allowing the accommodation to be slightly over two thirds the width of the car). Frequently, these accommodations have movable partitions allowing adjacent accommodations to be combined into a suite.

Drawing rooms and larger accommodations

The drawing room was a relatively rare and expensive option for travelers. It could comfortably accommodate three people, again with a washbasin and private toilet on one side of the car. Even rarer are larger rooms accommodating four or more. Generally the needs of large parties were better served with multiple rooms, with or without the ability to combine them into a suite.

Modern Amtrak accommodations

Amtrak's Superliner Economy Bedrooms (now called Superliner Roomettes, although they are structurally closer to open sections) accommodate two passengers in facing seats that fold out into a lower berth, with an upper berth that folds down from above, a small closet, and no in-room washbasin or toilet, on both sides of both the upper and lower levels of the car. Effectively, they are open sections with walls, a door, and a built-in access ladder for the upper berth (which doubles as a nightstand for the lower berth passenger). Superliner Deluxe Bedrooms are essentially the same as historic Compartments and Double Bedrooms, with the toilet cubicle doubling as a private shower cubicle. In addition, each Superliner sleeping car has two special lower-level accommodations, each taking up the full width of the car: the Accessible Bedroom, at the restroom/shower end of the car (below the Deluxe Bedrooms), is a fully wheelchair-accessible accommodation for two, with a roll-in cubicle for the toilet and shower; the Family Bedroom, at the Economy Bedroom end of the car, accommodates two adults and up to three small children, without private toilet or shower facilities.

When the Viewliner sleeping cars were built, the accommodations were patterned after the Superliner accommodations, except that the Economy Bedrooms (or "Viewliner Roomettes") include Roomette-style washbasins and toilets, as well as windows for the upper berths.

Night trains today

Europe

In Europe, the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (French for "International Sleeping Car Company") first focused on sleeping cars, but later operated whole trains, including the '' Simplon-Orient Express'', ''Nord Express'', '' Train Bleu'', '' Golden Arrow'', and the ''Transsiberien'' (on the Trans-Siberian railway). Today it once again specializes in sleeping cars, along with onboard railroad catering.

In modern Europe, a number of sleeping car services continue to operate, though they face strong competition from high-speed day trains and budget airlines, sometimes leading to the cancellation or consolidation of services. In some cases, trains are split and recombined in the dead of night, making it possible to offer several connections with a relatively small number of trains. Generally, the trains consist of sleeping cars with private compartments, couchette cars, and sometimes cars with normal seating.

In Eastern Europe, night trains are still widely used. In Western Europe, they have been in decline for decades. However, in December 2020 the state railways of Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland announced a 500 million euro investment in a network of cross-border night trains linking 13 major European cities, in the largest extension of Europe's night network in many years.

An example of a more basic type of sleeping car is the European couchette car, which is divided into compartments for four or six people, with bench-configuration seating during the day and "privacyless" double- or triple-level bunk beds at night.

In 2021 the French start-up company, Midnight Trains, announced plans to set up a network of sleeper trains, centered in Paris. Planned destinations include Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Berlin, Venice, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Porto, with some intermediate stops. The plans were backed by telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel, the co-owner of Le Monde newspaper. However, the project later collapsed due in part to a lack of funding. In 2021 Europe saw a increase in the provision of sleeper trains which is thought to be the result of increasing awareness of the environmental effects of long-distance travel.

In 2022 the design and engineering faculties of three European universities – Aalto, KTH and TalTech – discussed plans to reshape sleeping cars for flow production. The ADLNE project aims to create the railcar from modules that are themselves composed of interchangeable segments, compartments and fittings, allowing bespoke designs at low cost.

Since 2023, Belgian–Dutch start-up European Sleeper runs sleeper trains from Amsterdam to Berlin and (since 2024) Prague, as well as a seasonal service (since 2025) to Innsbruck and Venice. European Sleeper has also announced plans for an Amsterdam—Barcelona service in 2026 or 2027.

Austria

ÖBB's modern Nightjet services operate in Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Netherlands and Belgium, and Nightjet's partners will also take passengers to Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The services usually leave at around 20:00 hours and arrive at around 09:00 hours at the destination. Some of the Nightjet train units have a maximum speed of 230 km/h.

Former Soviet Union countries

In the Soviet Union overnight train travel formed the most common and accessible mode of long-distance travel, distances between the capital of Moscow and many outlying cities being ideal for overnight trips that depart in late evening and arrive at their destinations in the morning. Sleeping cars with berths are the only reasonable solution for railway trips lasting several days (e.g., trains running along the Trans-Siberian Railway, or direct trains from Moscow or Saint Petersburg to the capitals of the Central Asian Soviet Republics).

Since then, the railroads in the smaller ex-Soviet nations have largely transitioned to daytime intercity trains, such as in Belarus, where the process is based on government-funded purchases of rolling stock supplied by Stadler, which operates a train factory in Minsk, or in Uzbekistan, which has established a 600 km Afrosiyob high-speed rail service between all of its major cities.

In the larger Soviet Union successor states like Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, on the other hand, night trains are to this day a prime method of railway travel, as a shift towards faster daytime trains with seating rather than sleeping arrangements is hampered by insufficient investments in the railway infrastructure restricting the speed, lack of train sets, and most importantly, the distances involved. While certain numbers of high-speed trains have been acquired by the national railways of these countries (such as Talgo 250 in Kazakhstan, Siemens Sapsan in Russia, or Hyundai Rotem HRCS in Ukraine), all of them continue to operate a large number of sleeper trains both on domestic and international routes.

The need to compete against aviation with its soaring passenger numbers forces the railroads to maintain modest ticket prices, starting at below 10 Euros for third-class tickets in Ukraine, if higher in the richer ex-Soviet nations. Rolling stock age and quality also varies by country. In countries like Kazakhstan and Russia, locally-produced cars are purchased regularly to update the fleet, with newly introduced comforts such as showers, dry toilets, or conditioning units in passenger compartments becoming an increasingly common sight; Russian Railroads have also introduced double-deck sleeper cars; yet comfort levels still suffer from a modest degree of innovation in the bogie suspension systems and the passenger compartment design. Some other post-Soviet nations rely more heavily on the rolling stock fleet inherited from the Union, to a large extent based on vintage life-prolonged cars assembled in East Germany or Soviet Latvia back in the 1980s.

Croatia

Modern, air-conditioned sleeping cars and couchette cars are part of Croatian Railways rolling stock. Croatian sleeping coaches include single, double or 4-bed compartments with washbasin and many additional hygienic accessories. Passengers also have catering services at their disposal and are given complimentary breakfast, depending on the type of ticket bought. A night train with sleeping carriages included operates on the route between the two largest Croatian towns, Zagreb and Split, and Croatian sleeping coaches are included on the Zagreb-Stuttgart-Zagreb and Zagreb-Zürich-Zagreb EuroNight lines.

Czech Republic

Sleeping car services in the Czech Republic are operated by České dráhy and RegioJet. ČD operates them on the Prague - Leipzig - Zürich line, Prague - Linz - Zürich line, Prague - Humenné line and others. RegioJet provides them on various trains on the Prague - Košice line.

France

Another of the more substantial examples of current European sleeping-car service is the '' Train Bleu'', an all-sleeping-car train. It leaves Paris from the Gare d'Austerlitz station in mid-evening and arrives in Nice

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