Product Description

Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company — Chicago IL (Pullman plant) and Hammond IN, formed 1934 from the merger of the Pullman Company’s car-building side with the Standard Steel Car Company — was through the 20th century the dominant U.S. builder of heavyweight and lightweight passenger railcars, streamliner equipment, and rapid-transit cars. Pullman-Standard built passenger equipment for every major U.S. Class I passenger railroad through Amtrak’s formation and rapid-transit cars for CTA, NYCTA, PATH, WMATA, MBTA, and other transit properties. Passenger-car production ended 1981; freight-car production continued after.

Passenger railcars required substantial interior insulation for thermal comfort, acoustic control, and fire safety, and — after the Cocoanut Grove and other mid-century fire disasters — passenger equipment specifications increasingly required fireproofing of interior structural members.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Pullman-Standard passenger equipment was specified through the asbestos era with:

  • Asbestos blanket, felt, and millboard insulation packed into sidewalls, roofs, and end bulkheads between the outer shell and interior finish paneling
  • Sprayed asbestos fireproofing on interior structural members (columns, roof carlines, floor stringers)
  • Asbestos-mastic floor underlayment beneath finished floor coverings
  • Asbestos-cloth and asbestos-tape insulation on HVAC air-conditioning ducting and hot-water heating lines
  • Asbestos-cement millboard at heater cabinets, kitchen bulkheads (in diners), and electrical cabinets
  • Asbestos gaskets at HVAC ducting, water piping, and steam-line connections

Passenger car repairmen, shop carpenters, and passenger-car cleaners were allegedly exposed to respirable asbestos fibers when cutting into sidewalls to run new wiring or plumbing, replacing worn interior paneling and floor coverings, and stripping HVAC ducting during air-conditioning overhauls. Rapid-transit shop workers rebuilding Pullman-Standard subway and rapid-transit cars had similar exposures.

Pullman-Standard has been named as a Manufacturer Defendant in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation.

Workers Exposed

  • Passenger car repairmen at Class I passenger-car shops (Amtrak Beech Grove, Bear DE; predecessor railroad shops at 16th Street Chicago, Sunnyside NY, etc.)
  • Passenger car cleaners entering cars for interior refurbishment
  • Railroad shop carpenters replacing interior paneling and floor coverings
  • Rapid-transit shop workers rebuilding Pullman-Standard subway and rapid-transit cars
  • HVAC mechanics overhauling passenger-car air-conditioning systems