(The following story by Warren Bluhm appeared on the Greed Bay Press Gazette website on August 3.)
ASHWAUBENON, Wisc. — A just-opened exhibit marks a change of direction for the National Railroad Museum, as it tells more about the people who worked on the historic trains that inhabit its grounds.
“Pullman Porters: From Service to Civil Rights” was built around the museum’s 1920s-era Pullman sleeper car, but the tour provides insight into the daily lives and history of the porters who served passengers on the sleepers for nearly 100 years.
Michael Telzrow, the museum’s executive director, said the exhibit grew out of a desire to broaden the audience of the 52-year-old museum along the banks of the Fox River. When he arrived two summers ago, Telzrow said, the museum was known mostly for its display of historic locomotives and cars, such as the train used by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower during World War II and the strikingly designed but ultimately impractical General Motors Aerotrain.
“There wasn’t much thought given to interpretation of our pieces,” Telzrow said. “It was generally, ‘This is a locomotive, this is the type, this is the wheel set — enjoy it for what it is.’
“One of the first things that struck me was there wasn’t a human story here — no discussion of who these people were that laid the track, built the trains, operated the trains,” Telzrow said. “We have lots of big locomotives, lots of interesting things, but what were they for? For someone like me who wasn’t a train enthusiast, they meant nothing.”
Those thoughts were on Telzrow’s mind when he had lunch in August 2006 with Andrew Kersten, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay who had just finished a book about civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, who helped organize the dramatic March on Washington in 1963.
Randolph had fought for a dozen years on behalf of the Pullman porters, who were predominantly black. He organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and strove for recognition of the union alongside the predominantly white unions representing engineers, firemen and conductors. Pullman finally recognized the union in 1935.
Kersten suggested that the history of the porters would make an interesting exhibit, and the museum collection happened to include a Pullman sleeper car in relatively sound condition.
“It was just such a compelling story, and we had the car,” Telzrow said. “That was 90 percent of it: If we didn’t have that Pullman sleeper, there’s no Pullman exhibit.”
Hotel on wheels
In the years after the Civil War, George Pullman conceived of building luxury railroad cars for overnight travel, and he hired newly freed slaves for his work force.
While the work conditions were harsh — porters typically worked 16-hour days at half the pay of white conductors, for example — porters made enough to settle and help form the foundation of an emerging black middle class, Telzrow said.
Pullman had meticulous work rules in line with his vision of a luxury experience, said Bob Lettenberger, the museum’s operations manager.
“Pullman’s idea was a hotel on wheels,” Lettenberger said. “Just as today in business travel you can be in Chicago in the morning and New York in the afternoon, the train was much that way on an overnight basis. So Pullman’s thought was if you were traveling and you could go to a first-class hotel in New York City, why shouldn’t you be able to do it on rails?”
A sense of history
De Pere businessman Steve Taylor played a key role in creating the educational aspects of the new exhibit. Taylor’s grandfather was a Pullman porter from 1942 to 1968, and his memories are preserved via computer animation. Balance Studio of Green Bay generated an avatar of Emmanuel Hurst, Taylor’s grandfather, that narrates four brief accounts of the porters’ lifestyle as visitors tour the car, using Hurst’s actual words.
Outside the sleeper are interactive stations that allow visitors to hear songs of the era (like “Pullman Porters Parade”) and oral histories by other former porters.
But walking through the narrow corridor and seeing the cramped upper and lower berths — as well as the tiny private compartments for travelers who paid more for the privilege — provides a feel for what passed for the luxury life in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Having the original car, you actually get to walk in the space they did,” Telzrow said. “You can see it’s a world removed from us.”
The restoration
The exterior of the Pullman car, named the Lake Mitchell, was in sound condition and the interior was “intact,” Telzrow said, making its restoration practical. The sleeper’s body was sent by flatcar in January to Avalon Rail of West Allis, where the original carpet, seat cushions and mattresses were removed and cleaned, then returned to the car after the interior was repainted.
Workers only had to remove two layers of paint, so matching the original light green color proved an easy task. After Avalon was finished, the museum’s shop force replaced the aging electrical wiring. They also cleaned, rewired and finished electrical fixtures inside the car.
The restoration was completed with touch-ups of the exterior paint and repainting of the trucks and undercarriage. The lettering was repainted by hand in 1930s-era metallic gold, and the 83-foot, 82-ton car was hand-waxed.