Sleeping Car, The: A General Guide | Theodore Shrady

book: Sleeping Car, The: A General Guide | Theodore Shrady

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Sleeping Car, The:...

	Sleeping Car, The: A General Guide Theodore Shrady ACL-SAL Historical Society, 2004 - 82 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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"The Sleeping Car: A General Guide, just published by the ACL & SAL HS, is author Ted Shrady's latest expertly written work on the rich history of passenger trains. The Sleeping Car is an overview of sleeping car history, design, technology, and accommodations. Ted is well known for his book 'Orange Blossom Special', co-authored with the late Arthur Waldrop. "Ted has spent many hours researching this new book, including careful study of Pullman archives at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He covers all the basics of sleeping cars and their operations, with strong emphasis on the Pullman Company (which owned and operated most of the sleepers used in this country). Chapters cover the history of sleeping car development, evolution of heavyweight and streamlined designs, interior design and accommodations, car types and construction, rebuilding programs, car names and how they were chosen, how Pullman personnel managed their vast "rolling hotel" fleet, and much more. The book concludes with a postscript on Amtrak sleeping car operations, and is complete with a variety of appendices and a detailed index. "The information is national in scope but applies directly to the Pullman cars that ACL and Seaboard used and owned. In addition, many of the nearly 150 illustrations show ACL, Seaboard, and SCL cars. The photos include a large color section with a wide variety of heavyweight and lightweight Pullman paint schemes. The Sleeping Car packs all this and more into 88 attractive pages (including index, forward, tables) and will be useful to historians and modelers alike."

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Evolution of Pullmans

This is a great book to have if you are interested in the history of Pullman cars. While mainly dealing with Pullmans, it also touches on the other makers of sleepers as well. It explains how they started and the different styles and how they changed and evolved through the years. The book does not go into detail regarding the mechanical aspects of sleepers but does explain the different materials used to make them. The pictures were very good though I would have liked to have seen more of the interiors of the cars. The interior diagrams were also interesting (I wish there were more of them) although too small to view without a magnifying glass. Overall, an excellent book for your railroad reference library.

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sleeping