The Pullman Car

I recently finished a book called "Westward By Rail" by William Fraser Rae.  The book is the outcome of a series of articles written for English  newspapers in about 1869.  Rae was an Englishman who came to America to write about the rail service across America.  The First Transcontinental railroad had just been completed and he wanted to write about what a rail ride across America was like.  Generally the book is of minor interest but what did impress me was out of a book of about 400 pages, 20 pages were devoted to singing the praises of the Pullman cars he traveled on.  "No Royal personage can be more comfortably housed than the occupant of a Pullman Car, provided the car be an hotel one."  On his trip when he arrived at Promontory Summit and had to change from the Union Pacific Railway to the Central Pacific Railway he found they did not use Pullman Cars instead they used 'Silver Palace cars" a travel car he found greatly inferior to Pullman plus the porters and attendants in those cars were not up to the standard of Pullman Cars. Of interest and not mentioned in the book but Silver Palace Cars were manufactured by two Wilmington Delaware rail car companies; the Jackson and Sharpe Co and the Harlan and Hollingworth Co for T T Woodruff and the Knight Sleeping car company (called the Central Transportation Company of Philadelphia).

above Woodruff's Silver Palace Sleeping Car (standard gauge) for the Central Pacific. Harlan & Hollingsworth, Wilmington, Delaware, 1869.

from https://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/CandS/dsp-passenger/bowers-durecars.htm

I know little of Pullman Cars but the Eastern Shore Railroad Museum in Parksley, Virginia did have one that I viewed.  It was lengthy car that had about fourteen sleeping rooms and a lounge area at one end.  

In a small booklet that was in the car 

The sleeping rooms were described as roomettes 

The rooms were quite small about 4ft by 6ft but they did have a number of fold away items and were for a single person.