Brother Webster Wagner, Hamilton Lodge 79, New York, was the inventor of railroad sleeping cars. He founded the Wagner Palace-car Company, which supplied sleeping and parlor cars to all lines of the Vanderbilt system in the eastern US. Also a member of the New York state legislature, he continued to serve as his company's president until January 13, 1882, when, in an ironic tragedy, he was killed in a railroad disaster while sleeping in one of the cars he had invented.
Brother George Pullman of Renovation Lodge 97 in Albion, NY, perfected, but did not invent the railroad sleeping car, as some believe. Brother Pullman began working on his famous coaches in 1859, a year after Brother Wagner's cars first went into service.
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