How Did PRR Choose Names?

VThokie Steam Fan posted:

How did the PRR choose names for their early passenger cars? I was browsing the new MTH catalog and the 64' Woodsided cars have names I would not expect from an American Railroad on them (Egypt, Ameer, Puducah, etc. ) I just always wondered if it was up to the upper bosses at the time, or was there a method? The U.S. Navy names ships based of the class of the ship: Battleships were States, Cruisers were Cities, etc. 

I suggest you contact the PRR Technical and Historical Society with your inquiry. 

I know that Pullman - who until I believe the 1920's only used names, not numbers, on their cars - at one time had a dedicated staff whose job was to scour dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. to make up lists of names of places, people, plants, and what-have-you to use as car names. Usually each type of car Pullman made and used would all have a similar name, so cars whose names all started with "Red" (Red Lake, Red River, Red Rose, Red Chief, etc.) would all be the same type of car.

I would suspect PRR had someone in the passenger car department doing something similar, though maybe only as part of their job.

You're assuming that the names on the cars are prototypical for PRR.  Since the cars themselves are not anything the PRR actually had, the car names might be made up by MTH as well.

There was a "New Egypt" on the PRR, I believe in New Jersey.  Paducah, Kentucky is on the old Illinois Central and was a big repair/rebuild shop for them.  Pennsy had nothing to do with that particular Paducah.  Note that on the PRR, only parlor cars and some sleepers had names.  Coaches had car numbers only.

I don't know about Puducah but as to Egypt and Ameer, I wonder if some of the Pennsy brass with influence at the time might have been Shriners with their use of middle eastern themes.  In the 20th century the RF&P hosted an Acca Shriners train to Atlantic City and a Shriner potentate high enough up in hierarchy of the railroad got the RF&P Northern steam locomotive that pulled the train decked out in a custom paint job so elaborate that one book referred to it as "a gaudy spectacle." 

IN the traditional Steam era - say after WWI until after WWII, Pennsy used/leased Pullman cars for first class service.   I don't know the exact relationship there, but Pullman company operated the cars.   And as mentioned above all Pullman owned cars were named, not numbered.     Pullman may have catered some to individual railroads and named cars after towns on line or some such.     

coaches, baggage cars, express cars, mail cars were all numbered and had no names.

I don't what they did around 1900 when wooden cars were still in service.     I do know they had a delux or first class train that had all the cars painted yellow for a time, but I don't know much more about it.    I am pretty sure it was around 1900 and was wooden cars.