After months occupied in taking the evidence of travelers, expert mechanics, railroad officials, prominent citizens, and others, a final hearing was had. The judges, owing to the vast interests involved and the legal difficulties presented, took ample time for consideration, but finally adhered to their first conclusion. The main feature of the Pullman vestibule system was the Sessions patent, without which the vestibule system was worthless. The court declared this invention to be of the highest order of utility, not only as shown by the testimony in the ease and the adoption of the patent by the principal railroads of the country, but also by the acts of the Wagner Company in appropriating the device, and in the tenacity with which they clung to it in the courts under an immense bond for any damages to result, and so, in April, 1889, the United States Circuit Court delivered its opinion in favor of the Pullman Palace Car Company in its long and stubborn fight with the Wagner Palace Car Company.
Like most other industries, the Pullman Palace Car Company felt the effect of the financial depression immediately following 1873, but the reaction followed, and on the resumption of specie payments in 1879 dawned a new era in the Company's history and a rapid expansion of its business. To meet this expansion and to extend the business still farther along the line of general car building, it became necessary to enlarge the plant. The shops already established in St. Louis, Detroit, Elmira, and Wilmington were unable to provide the volume required by the increasing demand for the Company's output. It was evident that new shops must be built on a larger and more comprehensive scale than any that had gone before.
In 1879 the Chicago newspapers were alert to confirm the rumor that George M. Pullman was planning to locate his new shops at Chicago. The following year the rumor became fact and the question of the exact location became of paramount interest.
Chicago with its central position with reference to the railway systems of the continent, seemed the natural site, but there were weighty objections, touching both finance and the matter of labor, to be urged against building within the city limits proper. Sites were visited by representatives of the Company at Hinsdale, Illinois, and Wolf Lake, Indiana, but in April it was definitely announced that the works would be located on the Illinois Central Railroad on the shore of Lake Calumet. A Chicago newspaper commented on the decision of the Company as follows: