Passage by comfortless steamship and Ellis Island anxieties behind them, many immigrants to the United States faced further extended travel. Vast distances between cities and relatively low train speeds meant that several days and nights had often to be spent in railroad cars. Conditions c.1870 were far from luxurious – picture 1. Seats were slatted, not upholstered; those lucky enough to secure one of the precarious-looking bunks needed considerable agility to reach it. Nevertheless, it represented a great improvement on facilities available only ten years earlier.
Picture 1: US Immigrant coach.
(Click image to enlarge)
Established citizens with solid bank accounts fared much better. About 1857, George Pullman had introduced Parlour cars offering many of the comforts of home. Picture 2 shows the interior of such a car on a Sunday morning. The occupants are singing hymns to the accompaniment of what is clearly an organ – it has two manuals and draw-stops. Other details are less clear: surely for economy of space, it must have been a reed organ? Beside, a peripatetic pipe instrument would have presented many tuning and maintenance problems.
The original caption describes the player as “an elderly German”. Was he was a volunteer – perhaps from the immigrant section of the train? He might have left a lifetime of playing an instrument by Arp Schnitger or by Silbermann to join younger members of his family who had established themselves in the New World. Let us hope that he made his crossing of the Atlantic on a ship of the Hamburg-Amerika line. This company treated its steerage-class passengers better than most; in a few years they could well be first-class travellers, revisiting their homeland.
Picture 2: US Pullman Car with organ – interior
(Click image to enlarge)
Which hymns are those well-dressed passengers of 1870 singing? Certainly not those of Moody and Sankey, whose collaboration would not begin for another year. Perhaps they are Scottish metrical psalms, which by then had been popular with many denominations for over two-hundred years. Or they could be Catherine Winkworth’s translations of Lutheran chorales. These had been published over the previous twelve years and a large number remain in use to-day. If this were the case, the organist may have been inspired to improvise a prelude on one of the melodies.
Picture 3 is a digital realisation by Lubbert Schenk (click on the image to enlarge for best view) of one of the most luxurious types of US Pullman vehicle. This Palace car has private luggage compartment, kitchen and balcony and could be hired by a family for its exclusive use on a journey; it illustrates the American custom of naming Pullman cars after distinguished citizens: Commander Robert E Peary (1856-1920) led several explorations in Arctic regions. By contrast, European Pullman vehicles bore classical names – like Niobe, Sappho and Minerva.
Picture 4 is one of Currier and Ives’ prints of American life in the nineteenth century, with the conductor on the balcony of a rather more mundane type of car passing through a station yard.
The exterior design was characteristic - dome-ended clerestory roof, open balconies and large windows above match boarded sides. It is one familiar to many older New Zealanders. Rakes of stock of this kind, painted red, formed the Southerner express between Picton and Invercargill until the end of steam in the 1970s. Even later, similar coaches were still in use on Wellington suburban services..
These were rather Spartan in their accommodation and certainly none contained an organ. This was a pity. A trainload of singing kiwis making its way along the Hutt Valley would have inspired great deeds and stirring verse.
POSTSCRIPT: Lubbert
Schenk has designed a page for people to make a papermodel
of the Pullman car he drew for "Singing In The Train."
