For just over a hundred years, the George Pullman Company manufactured luxury railroad cars. Most famous for their sleeping cars, Pullman became a common noun to refer to them--but they also made club cars and dining cars. Before the invention of the automobile, from the end of the civil war until the 1960s, Pullman cars were synonymous with comfortable travelling. The image below is of a Pullman car on the Long Island Railroad. (That one was likely to be a club car or a dining car--the LIRR was hardly extensive enough for a need for sleeping cars.)
Until well into the 1960s, the annual Army-Navy game meant that railroads serving the east coast would put on a lot of Pullman cars, mostly club and dining cars, for those going to the game.
For those traveling from New York to Los Angeles, the Pullman cars were a
sine qua non. The Hollywood hopeful, or the veteran star would take the
Twentieth Century Limited on the New York Central line from Grand Central Station to the La Salle Street Station in Chicago. From Chicago, they would take The Chief, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad; after they brought in diesels in the 1930s, you rode
The Super Chief.
The competition--the Union Pacific Railroad--ran
The City of Los Angeles, and there was enough business to go around for both railroads.
