Pullman's Progress

Many a person living along the New York Central's right-of-way between New York and Chicago received a surprise last week as the Twentieth Century Limited rushed by. Coupled on at the rear were two slate-gray, streamlined cars, one of them relatively normal in appearance, the other definitely strange, with little square windows on two levels like the gunports of a frigate. One car was named Progress, the other Advance.

Progress and Advance are what U. S. railroads are now going in for heavily to resell the public train travel. The Century's two new cars marked Pullman Co.'s boldest innovation in design since the Pintsch gas era. An articulated unit made of alloy steel and aluminum, Advance & Progress together weigh no more than one standard Pullman.

Progress is mostly a modern observation lounge, has one compartment, three double rooms, all on one level. Advance, however, is a "duplex" car with two levels. It has 16 rooms, nine on the floor level, seven more reached individually by three steps from the corridor at the side. Each has a transverse sofa which converts into a bed. Six of the downstairs rooms have partitions which slide back, converting them into three double rooms. With airconditioning, indirect lighting, individual toilets, folding armrests, folding tables, the new cars are the most comfortable Pullman has yet produced.

Though streamlined, the new cars are so designed that they can be used along with old-style cars. As more of the new type roll onto the rails, railroads will be able gradually to build up complete streamlined trains. To demonstrate this idea. Pullman will send its new unit all over the U. S. attached for a week at a time to crack non-streamline trains, of which the Century was first.

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