In 1937, as Union Pacific, Burlington, and other railroads were feverishly streamlining entire trains, Pullman delivered to Great Northern at least a dozen semi-streamlined coaches for the Empire Builder. These “luxury coaches,” as GN publicists called them, were a great improvement over their predecessors and offered a preview of the 1947 Empire Builder. This brochure about those coaches is from my own collection.

Click image to download a 1.6-MB PDF of this brochure.

Although the Empire Builder had not been fully re-equipped since its introduction in 1929, Pullman — which owned and operated the train’s sleeping cars — had upgraded or replaced them with air conditioned cars. The dining and lounge cars had been air conditioned by 1934, and the sleeping cars were probably air conditioned in 1935.

That left the coaches. Instead of adding air conditioning to the by-then ancient heavyweight coaches (which, unlike the sleeping cars, were owned by GN) used on the 1929 train, Great Northern bought new coaches with built-in air conditioning. Like a streamlined car, the roof lines were horizontal for the length of each car instead of turning down at the ends like a conventional heavyweight. But the bodies were riveted together instead of welded, which is why they are called semi-streamlined. Although this brochure doesn’t show the outside of the car, these rivets are plainly visible in this 1939 photo taken by Otto Perry.
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The photo also shows that the cars were lettered “Empire Builder” and presumably painted Pullman green to match the other cars in the train. After the introduction of the 1947 streamlined Empire Builder, the cars were repainted orange and green and lettered “Great Northern” for use on secondary trains such as the Oriental Limited. GN kept them in service at least through 1969.

Inside, the cars had large smoking lounges, with sinks and adjacent toilets, for men at one end and women at the other. In-between, Pullman squeezed in 58 seats, which may have provided more legroom than previous coaches but about 20 percent less than the 1947 48-seat coaches. The latter seats included leg rests but from the photos in this brochure it appears that the 1937 coaches did not.

GN numbered some of these cars 938 to 949, though there may have been more as I don’t know what cars 937 or 950 were. But twelve would have been enough for two cars per trainset, as six trains were required to operate the Empire Builder‘s 59-hour timetable.