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Superliner double-decker passenger car]] A passenger car is a piece of Railway Rolling Stock that is designed to carry passengers. Most often, the term ''passenger car'' is associated with equipment that resembles a Coach or Sleeping Car , but it can also encompass several other specialized types of equipment, including Baggage , Dining and Railway Post Office cars. HISTORY 19th century: First passenger cars and early development in North Freedom, WI .]] Since the advent of Railroads , people have traveled by Train . Naturally, the first passenger trains didn't travel very far, but they were able to haul many more passengers for a longer distance than any Wagon s pulled by Horse s. As railways were first constructed in England , so too were the first passenger cars. One of the early coach designs was the "Stanhope". It featured a roof and small holes in the floor for drainage when it rained, and had separate compartments for different classes of travel. The only problem with this design is that the passengers were expected to stand for their entire trip. The first passenger cars in the United States highly resembled Stagecoach es. They were short, often less than 10 Ft (3 M ) long and rode on a single pair of axles. British railways had a little bit of a head start on American railroads, with the first "bed-carriage" (an early Sleeping Car ) being built there as early as 1838 for use on the London And Birmingham Railway and the Grand Junction Railway . Britain's early sleepers, when made up for sleeping, extended the foot of the bed into a boot section at the end of the carriage. The cars were still too short to allow more than two or three beds to be positioned end to end. Britain's Royal Mail commissioned and built the first Travelling Post Office cars in the late 1840s as well. These cars resembled Coaches in their short wheelbase and exterior design, but were equipped with nets on the sides of the cars to catch mail bags while the train was in motion. American RPOs , first appearing in the 1860s , also featured equipment to catch mail bags at speed, but the American design more closely resembled a large hook that would catch the mailbag in its crook. When not in use, the hook would swivel down on the side of the car to prevent it from catching on any close clearances. on the Chicago And Alton Railroad circa 1900 .]] As locomotive technology progressed in the mid- 19th Century , trains grew in length and weight. Passenger cars, particularly in America, grew along with them, first getting longer with the addition of a second Truck (one at each end), and wider as their suspensions improved. Cars built for European use featured side door compartments, while American car design favored a single pair of doors at one end of the car in the car's vestibule; compartmentized cars on American railroads featured a long hallway with doors from the hall to the compartments. One possible reason for this difference in design principles between American and European carbuilding practice could be the average distance between stations on the two continents. As most European railroads connected towns and villages that were still very closely spaced, American railroads had to travel over much greater distances to reach their destinations. Building passenger cars with a long passageway through the length of the car allowed the passengers easy access to the restroom, among other things, on longer journeys. Dining cars first appeared in the late 1870s and into the 1880s . Until this time, the common practice was to stop for meals at restaurants along the way (which led to the rise of Fred Harvey 's chain of Harvey House restaurants in America). At first, the dining car was simply a place to serve meals that were picked up en route, but they soon evolved to include galleys in which the meals were prepared. 1900-1950: Lighter materials, new car types By the 1920s , passenger cars on the larger Standard Gauge railroads were normally between 60 ft (18.3 m) and 70 ft (21.3 m) long. The cars of this time were still quite ornate, many of them being built by experienced coach makers and skilled carpenters. 's '' Pioneer Zephyr ''. The carbody was made of Stainless Steel in 1934 ; it is seen here at Chicago's Museum Of Science And Industry in 2003 .]] With the 1930s came the widespread use of Stainless Steel for carbodies. The typical passenger car was now much lighter than its "heavyweight" wood cousins of old. The new "lightweight" and Streamlined cars carried passengers in speed and comfort to an extent that had not been experienced to date. Aluminum and Cor-Ten Steel were also used in lightweight car construction, but stainless steel was the preferred material for carbodies. It isn't the lightest of materials, nor is it the least expensive, but stainless steel cars could be, and often were, left unpainted except for the car's Reporting Mark s that were required by law. By the end of the 1930s, railroads and carbuilders were debuting carbody and interior styles that could only be dreamed of before. In 1937 , the Pullman Company delivered the first cars equipped with roomettes – that is, the car's interior was sectioned off into compartments, much like the coaches that were still in widespread use across Europe. Pullman's roomettes, however, were designed with the single traveler in mind. The roomette featured a large picture window, a privacy door, a single fold-away bed, a sink and small toilet. The roomette's floor space was barely larger than the space taken up by the bed, but it allowed the traveler to ride in luxury compared to the multilevel semiprivate berths of old. Now that passenger cars were lighter, they were able to carry heavier loads, but the size of the average passenger that rode in them didn't increase to match the cars' new capacities. The average passenger car couldn't get any wider or longer due to side clearances along the railroad lines, but they generally could get taller because they were still shorter than many freight cars and locomotives. So the railroads soon began building and buying Dome and Bilevel cars to carry more passengers. 1950-present: High-technology advancements operates with tilting Talgo permanently coupled trainsets]] Starting in the 1950s, the passenger travel market declined in North America, though there was growth in Commuter Rail . Private intercity passenger service in the U.S. ended with the creation of Amtrak in 1971. Amtrak took over equipment and stations from all the railroads in the U.S. with intercity service. The higher clearances in North America enabled a major advancement in passenger car design, bi-level (double-decker) commuter coaches that could hold more passengers. These cars started to become common in the United States in the 1960s, and were adopted by Amtrak for the Superliner design as well as by many other railroads and manufacturers. By the year 2000 double-deckers rivaled single level cars in use around the world. |
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