"So much cultural meaning is packed into the figure of the Pullman porter -- racial pride and racial guilt, the faded glory of the American railroad, a level of customer service now extinct -- that it seems beyond mere mortals to inhabit the myth.

Three avatars of the age did just fine yesterday, nevertheless. They were the best-dressed gentlemen in Union Station: Not in the starched white jacket, bow tie, pressed trousers and blue caps of their old profession, but in sharp business suits, each man displaying -- and they did not plan this -- a colorful pocket handkerchief.

But then, of course. A Pullman veteran knows everything there is to know about self-presentation, about working a room, about coming out on top in the daily status wars -- maintaining one's self-respect without threatening the status of those who think they are superior.

"A certain profile of man was successful out there as a sleeping car porter," says E. Donald Hughes II, 53, who put himself through the University of Maryland making beds and shining shoes on the railroad. "We could think on our feet, and we could turn things around to our advantage very quickly and make you think that you were in control when in fact, you weren't in control."

Hughes rode the Acela Express from Baltimore yesterday with William H. Costen, 60, a former "chair car" attendant. Amtrak picked up the cost of the trip. The railroad hosted a midday reception at the station for the pair and for former dining-car cook Thomas E. Dunn, 81, who lives in Washington. The occasion coincided with a congressional resolution introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to honor A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

The three honorees were picked basically at random. The publicity firm producing the event found it easier said than done to stage a reunion of sleeping- and dining-car veterans. That world is receding fast. The Pullman porter era ended in the late '70s.

The passing of the porters reminds us how far we've come -- and how much we've lost.

People still bed down on trains, of course. Last year, 591,023 passengers traveled in Amtrak's sleeping cars. Tickets for sleepers still include dining car meals, served on linen tablecloths with linen napkins. But it's not the same.

Disposable utensils have replaced the fancy silverware, silver water pitchers, china plates. The sleeping car "attendants" (they're not porters anymore) don't shine shoes and don't offer quite the same level of personal service.

Hughes noticed the difference when he rode a sleeping car on Amtrak's Crescent to Atlanta last year. It was the same route he traveled as a porter on the old Southern Crescent from 1975 to '78. He thinks Amtrak does a good job. But that old Southern hospitality could not be replicated.

"I wanted to get in there!" he says. "I used to routinely walk through the car, making contact with passengers. That part was missing."

Also: How strange to see men -- and women -- of all races serving passengers. "It was a surreal experience," Hughes says.

After the Civil War, George Pullman capitalized on the appearance of freed former slaves in the labor market, hiring them to work in his hotels on wheels. A Pullman uniform became a status symbol across generations of African American families. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's father was a Pullman porter.

Randolph founded the porters union in 1925, but for 12 years the Pullman Co. bitterly resisted, labeling Randolph a communist in order to intimidate workers. Finally, in 1937, after New Deal-era labor reforms, Pullman relented, signed a contract, and the porters became the first black union to be recognized by a major American corporation.

Photos from the heyday of the Pullman era show smiling white-coated porters hovering around smiling white-skinned families. But beneath the surface lay a racial edge in these interactions.

"We were in that world of Negroes who are both servants and psychologists, aware that white people are so obsessed with their own importance that they will pay liberally, even dearly, for the impression of being catered to and entertained," Malcolm X, who as a young man sold sandwiches on the Yankee Clipper from Boston to New York, said in his autobiography.

That was during World War II, about when Dunn was a dining-car cook on the National Limited from New York to St. Louis. Dunn says he brushed off occasional racial episodes -- jeers from people off the train who saw him getting fresh air between cars -- and his memories are positive. "I was young and I loved the work and I loved the ride," he says. "I thought Union Station was the prettiest place I'd ever seen."

Costen's grandfather was a sleeping car porter, his father was a dining-car cook, and Costen put himself through college on the Union Pacific, tending to passengers' needs in coach. Then he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills. He looks back on the railroad as "the second-best work experience I ever had." First is his current job: hot-air balloon pilot near Hartford, Conn.

An information technology manager at the Library of Congress, who commutes on the MARC, Hughes was one of the last porters. His father, Edward, had been a porter, and one of his brothers, Gilbert, was a dining-car waiter. "A sleeping car porter filled a lot of roles," Hughes says. "You were a confidant, you were an entertainer, you were a teacher, you were a servant, and very often you were a babysitter."

The better you were at all those roles, the bigger the tip. His least favorite duty was making up the 22 beds in his car. Shining shoes was another hard duty. Passengers left their shoes in special boxes outside the roomettes. But there were ways for the porter to take control. A trick his father taught him was to notice when the shoes were new and didn't need shining. Just turn them around in the box!

The passenger would be none the wiser, and he'd still give a tip.

Up in the dining car, his brother had a trick pouring water from the silver pitchers as the train rocked back and forth. The water would appear to be pouring sideways -- and the tips would roll in.

The elder Hughes warned his sons that some customers would be difficult. "He said the prescription is to nice 'em to death," Hughes recalls. "Porters taught each other that. That you had to grit your teeth -- but you just continued to nice 'em to death."" (David Montgomery, The Washington Post, February 26, 2008)