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Railroad Men Laughed At George Pullman's '$20,000 Palace Car' — Until Lincoln's Funeral Made Him Rich

George Pullman built his first sleeping car "Pioneer" in 1864, spending $20,000 when typical railroad cars cost $5,000, featuring luxurious fold-down berths, plush upholstery, and ornate woodwork that railroad executives dismissed as an absurd extravagance no passenger would pay premium fares for. The car was also one foot wider and two and a half feet taller than standard railcars, requiring modification of platforms and bridges, leading railroad companies to refuse to run it on their lines claiming the investment in track modifications would never be recouped. Pullman's Pioneer sat unused in a Chicago railyard while competitors mocked his financial miscalculation, until President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865 and Mary Todd Lincoln specifically requested the most luxurious railroad car available to transport her husband's body from Chicago to Springfield. Illinois railroad officials hastily modified platforms and raised bridges overnight to accommodate the Pioneer's dimensions for the funeral train, and newspapers across America published detailed descriptions of the magnificent car carrying the martyred president. Within months, railroad companies were begging Pullman for sleeper cars as wealthy passengers demanded the luxury they read about in funeral train coverage, and by 1867 Pullman was operating 48 sleeping cars on multiple railroads. He founded the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867, and by 1893 the company operated 2,135 railroad cars on 160,000 miles of track generating millions in revenue, while the "palace cars" that railroad men once called financial folly became synonymous with luxury rail travel for the next century.