"The wood used in the interior finish was cherry. Mr. Pullman was anxious to get hickory, to stand the hard usage which it was supposed the cars would receive. I worked part of the Summer of 1858, employing an assistant or two, and the cars went into service in the Fall of 1858. There were no blue prints or plans made for the remodelling of these first two sleeping-cars, and Mr. Pullman and I worked out the details and measurements as we came to them. The two cars cost Mr. Pullman not more than $2,000, or $1,000 each. They were upholstered in plush, lighted by oil lamps, heated with box stoves, and mounted on four-wheel trucks with iron wheels. The berth rate was fifty cents a night. There was no porter in those days; the brakeman made up the beds." Pullman built his first real sleeping-car in 1864. It was called the _Pioneer_ and he further designated it by the letter "A," not dreaming that there would ever be enough Pullman cars to exhaust the letters of the alphabet. The _Pioneer_ was built in a Chicago & Alton car shop, and it cost the almost fabulous, in those times, sum of $18,000. That was extravagant car-building in a year when the best of railroad coaches could be built at a cost not exceeding $4,500 each. But the _Pioneer_ was blazing a new path in luxury. From without, it was radiant in paints and varnishes, in gay stripings and letterings; it was a giant compared with its fellows, for it was a foot wider and two and a half feet higher than any car ever built before. It had the hinged berths that are to-day the distinctive feature of the American sleeping car, and the porter and the passengers no longer had to drag the bedding from closets at the far end of the car.