12/27/2025
Did you know one of Pullman’s greatest rail innovations was made of paper?
Beginning in the 1860s, inventor R. N. Allen developed a revolutionary passenger car wheel with a core built from hundreds of compressed sheets of strawboard. By 1880, the Allen Paper Car Wheel Company had taken ownership of all paper-wheel interests in the U.S., and production at the Pullman works soon reached nearly 12,000 wheels a year.
Inside Pullman’s massive wheel shops, the process was remarkable: sheets of paper were pasted, stacked, pressed under 2,000 lbs per square inch, dried for weeks, pressed again, then seasoned into a circular block as hard as oak. That block was bolted between two steel plates, fitted into a tapered steel tire under more than 100 tons of pressure, and secured to an iron hub to form a wheel nearly as solid as one cast in a single piece.
So why paper? Because it made the smoothest ride in American rail. The compressed paper core absorbed vibration like ivory, stayed stable in heat or cold, and dramatically reduced wear on axles and running gear. Cast-iron wheels could crack like a bell — but paper wheels often ran 500,000 to 800,000 miles, and the cores could be reused again and again. More than 150,000 were placed into service, especially under Pullman sleeping cars and high-class private coaches.
Quiet, durable, and unexpectedly tough — the Allen Paper Wheel helped define the comfort of the Pullman experience. A surprising innovation, built from something simple, and carried across a continent.
