Perth Amboy evening news., 1922-12-08

When Pullman began to build his
own cars, letters of the alphabet
were used to distinguish the new
sleepers from the numbered day
coaches. But letters ran out too
quickly and numbers were unsatis-
factory, because of the need for
readily distinguishing the Pullman
cars. The only thing to do was to
name the ears and this was done,
Engines Formerly Christened
Using names for such a purpose
was not altogether an innovation.
Back in 1926 the first real passen-
| ger railway carriaeg had been given
the name Experiment. Early types
Of locomotives bore Individual
names, such as Novelty, Rocket and
Old Ironsides, and BY the time the
Pullman car was being developed,
engines were regularly named, most
frequently for prominent men.
The Pullman Company says: Car
A was really the first named car.
since it was called the Pioneer. 1t
was the. first car built from top to
| bottom BY George nj. Pullman and it
cost more than 10000. 1t was hur-
riedly completed in 1865, so that it
might form a part of the train that
bore the body of Abraham Lincoln
from Washington to Chicago and
thence to it's final resting-place at
Springfield. There can be no ques-
ton to the aptness of the name
J Pioneer, since this car led the march
of progress into the waste lands or
unimporved railroad travel"
After the Pioneer came the Allan
tic, Pacific, Aurora, City OF Chicago
and Omaha. The first hotel car, a
/ sleeper with a kitchen at one end
| and movable tables placed in the
sections, appeared III 1867, and took
as it's title, the President. Other
| hotel cars, named mostly for cities,
were added until the modern dining
car replaced them. The first of Mr..
Pullman's dining cars, bearing the
name Delmonico, was operated on
! the Chicago and Alton line in 1868.
The Mariana. the first parlor car
to be introduced to the United
States, appeared in 1875.
There were no presidents for
naming railway cars, and so the
! range of names at the command of
officials of the company was prac-
tlcally unlimited. Names given dogs
and other pets conform largely to
Fcustom. People and towns are
named along traditional lines. But
there was nobody to say what sort
of name was suitable for a railway
coach, and the company took advan-
tage of this to associate a wide
variety of names with its cars.
Some attempts were made to use
| classes of names for certain types
of cars. At first the parlor cars
were given feminine rames or those
of birds or flowers. But the COM
| pany found that railroads often
wanted cars named after towns
along their lines, and this made it
impossible for an exact system to
be followed. In the first all-Pull-
man train running between Chicago
and New York, the sleepers were
named after countries and the din
ing ears after celebrated French
! chefs-Savarin, Aberlin, Magdelin,
4 Valentin.
Thousands of Names Needed
Though the officials who name the
cars have all the fields of literature,
history, geography, botany and
biography to search for names,
christening new cars becomes a
problem. The company has 7,214
standard cars, which means the Sc
lection Of 1914 names. And re-
member, parents of families of ten
sometimes writes to the papers for
help in naming the new baby! \
The officials of the company are
: as cdrelul III tHtAI SeIecllOH Oh
names as any parent would be. The
names painted on the car sides go
up and down the country for the
public to see and remember. Per-
haps curiosity aroused by a name
may lead people to look it up in ref
erence books.
So when it was recently decided
to name some new Ears for Greek
and Roman heroes, an official is
said to have conducted elaborate re-
search to make certain that "the
behavior of the ladies and gentle
men so honored was everything that
it should be, irrespective of the Gus
toms of the age in which they
lived" Some of the ancients who
stood the test are Antiphon. Oldest
OF the famous ten Attic orators;
Oiogenes, of lantern and barrel
fame; Hesiod, a Greek poet, and
Hippocrates, father of medicine.
The company points out that Sc
quences have often developed in the
naming oil cars. A car named
Charles Dickens led to others being
called Pickwick, Dodson and Trot-
wood. A number of characters
from Kipling, Irving, Tennyson and
Scott have been immortalized on
caro-, and there are other familiar
SEQUENCES. There Is Dewey, and a