After the last post about convention trains, my friend Marilyn Haas, Delta Gamma Fraternity Archivist, sent me this information about Delta Gamma’s special trains:
“The ‘Delta Gamma Convention Special’ first started in 1881. The private car of Mr. J.B. Mulliken of Detroit, whose daughter Fannie, along with Mollie Laughead and Carrie Hawk, of Eta-Buchtel (Akron) chapter, were escorted to the first Delta Gamma convention by Mr. Mulliken himself. This railroad car picked the girls up at the Akron Depot on the evening of May 22. Thirty-two friends stood to bid the girls farewell as they boarded the train. After transferring the car to another train in Chattanooga, the group arrived in Oxford, Mississippi, on May 24. The Convention Special grew into several railroad cars over the years but from 1881 forward Delta Gammas boarded special railroad cars to take them to conventions until 1956. The last trip was to the 37th Convention in Quebec City, Quebec. It was a 25 hour run from Chicago to Quebec with stops in Detroit and Toronto, and another in Montreal where arrivals from New York and the South converged with the special.”
Delta Gamma Convention Special.
The announcement that appeared in The Anchora in preparation for Delta Gamma’s 1915 Convention in Berkeley, California, is pictured below. The train was to be “Personally Conducted on the entire trip from Chicago by a Passenger Department Representative. It will be elegantly equipped and one of the handsomest trains ever assembled. The equipment will include a dynamo baggage car (from which the train will be brilliantly lighted), standard drawing room and compartment, steel sleeping cars, observation library car, and dining car, serving meals a la carte.”
The Travel Arrangements section offers a little more insight into what the trip was like, “Suit cases and small hand bags will be taken into the cars; trunks will be carried on a special baggage car, provided for them, and will be accessible at all times throughout the trip.”
Mail and telegrams were to be sent in care of Delta Gamma Fraternity’s Special Train “as per schedule.” The schedule of where the train was to be from July 27 when the train left Chicago until August 2 when it arrived in Berkeley. It followed the same route that the Pi Phi Special took earlier that summer (See the link below for the previous post about Convention trains).
The Delta Gamma and Pi Beta Phi Conventions also coincided with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. A day trip to the exposition was included in the convention schedules of both organizations. I’m sure many of the delegates tacked on visits to the exposition at the end of the convention. The cards of introduction issued to the travelers on the Delta Gamma Special were to “assure special attention and assistance in getting desirable return reservations.”
This announcement of Delta Gamma’s Special Train to the 1915 Convention in Berkeley appeared in The Anchora.
To read more about special convention trains see:
