Passenger Car, Lightweight, Osgood Bradley 8600

History: In order to attract customers back to the rails after the end of WWII, the New Haven decided to modernize the fleet with new lightweight passenger cars. In December 1945 a large order was placed with Pullman-Standard for a variety of car styles, including 103 coaches, 25 parlor cars, diners, grill diners, combination baggage buffet lounge/parlors, and two tavern lounge observation cars. These were produced in the old Osgood Bradley factory in Worcester, MA, so they bear more than a passing resemblance to the Osgood Bradley Lightweights delivered in the 1930s.

The New Haven’s stainless cars were not built entirely from stainless steel like the cars produced by Budd in Philadelphia. Instead, they were constructed from Cor-Ten steel and sheathed with stainless steel fluting panels. The New Haven touted the 8600s as “the newest of the new in coach equipment – gleaming stainless steel on the outside, the last word in attractive decoration and design on the inside.”

The 8600-series coaches were ubiquitous, used on trains system-wide from delivery until the Penn Central years. Penn Central later sold 74 of the 8600s to MBTA and they remained in service in the Boston area until 1988!

Railroad/Company: The Pullman Car Company, founded by George Pullman, manufactured railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Its workers initially lived in a planned worker community (or "company town") named Pullman, Chicago. Pullman developed the sleeping car, which carried his name into the 1980s. Pullman did not just manufacture the cars: he also operated them on most of the railroads in the United States, paying railroad companies to couple the cars to trains. The labor union associated with the company, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which was founded and organized by A. Philip Randolph, was one of the most powerful African-American political entities of the 20th century. The company also built thousands of streetcars and trolley buses for use in cities.