Acknowledgements

THE PULLMAN PROJECT

Acknowledgements

No project of this size could have been undertaken without the support of many people. The financial and time commitments were daunting enough, but to have undertaken them without a great deal of enthusiastic encouragement by others would have been a fool's mission. Fortunately, that encouragement was immediately forthcoming, and it continues to grow as more people find the database useful. A heartfelt thanks to all who have used and commented on the database - it's a better resource because of your interest. As always, some individuals deserve special mention. If I have neglected to include you in the following list, my apologies - it is because of my advancing years, not my lack of appreciation!

My thanks to Jacob Klerman, Jeff Cauthen and to Fred Hill and Dr. David Allen of The Coach Yard, for backing up their enthusiasm for the project with their financial generosity. It is greatly appreciated.

To Dr. Denny Anspach for his encouragement, and for validating my efforts by arranging for the California State Railroad Museum library to obtain copies of the Newberry microfilms.

To the pioneers - Ralph Barger, Arthur Dubin, William Kratville and Robert Wayner - for showing the way. An extra thanks to Ralph and Bob for their friendship, and their willingness to answer my questions.

To the Newberry Library's Special Collections and Photoduplication staffs: Martha Briggs, JoEllen Dickie and their reference librarians, particularly Christine Colburn and Megan Vandehey, for their helpfulness on my many visits; and John Powell and John Montes for their valuable counsel and for doing all the microfilming. (John M. shot over 20,000 microfilm images for the project.)

To John Fiscella, a fellow Pullman data miner who caught many of my errors.

To Jack Wyatt, for revealing the existence of a most useful but uncatalogued air conditioning ledger at the Newberry.

To Ron Dettmer, for catching numerous typos in the database in the course of pursuing his own Pullman data project.

To Alex Schneider, for calling numerous typos and inconsistencies to my attention.

To Ted Shrady, who is building a database cataloging even more useful Pullman documentation at the Newberry.

To all the members of the Yahoo! Passenger Car group for their support and encouragement, but especially for asking intelligent and insightful questions. This spurred me to dig more deeply into the data than I had intended. I learned a great deal more because of this.

To my friend, the late Tom Hoff, for inspiring me with his modeling and enthusiasm for passenger cars, and for showing me the beauty and power of the data.

To my wife Gail, who still doesn't realize how big this project has become but supports me anyway.

And lastly, to all those anonymous Pullman clerks who dutifully kept the CCRs up to date for over half a century, little realizing that their work would prove to have enduring value many decades later.

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Tom Madden

pullmanboss (at) yahoo (dot) com