There had been rumors swirling about Butler’s Pullman-Standard plant for months. In December 1981, its entire 2,800-member work force was laid off. But Pullman-Standard had had layoffs before due to the cyclical nature of the railcar building business. Many thought the workers would be called back to the plant when orders picked up.

So, when Pullman-Standard’s J.S. Russner, vice president of labor relations of Pullman Transport, sent a mailgram to James Coyne, the district United Steelworkers director, saying he “regrets we must inform you of the company’s intent to permanently close the Butler Car Works 1 and 2 effective 10 a.m. Feb. 3, 1982” it hit like a bombshell.

It was an ignominious end to an 80-year-old company started in 1902 that counted “Diamond Jim” Brady as one of its founders and was bankrolled by a $3 million loan from Andrew Mellon.

According to the Butler County Historical society, Pullman-Standard started as the Standard Steel Car Co., formed by a partnership between John Hansen and Brady.

The duo planned to build a factory a half-mile long to produce every part of their rail freight cars — except the wheels — right in their own plant.

Hansen, the son of a butcher, earned an engineering degree from the Engineering School of Western University of Pennsylvania, later to become the University of Pittsburgh.

After working for the Pressed Steel Car Co. of Pittsburgh, Hansen partnered with James Buchanan “Diamond Jim” Brady, already a top railroad car salesman, to form the Standard Steel Car Co. with Hansen as president and Brady as vice president in charge of sales.

According the historical society, Hansen amassed a large parcel of land by buying sections of the old fairgrounds, a pickle factory, Stamm’s Brickyard, Duffy’s Meadow and the McGinley property.

While Hansen was acquiring land, Brady was lining up orders for railroad cars. He was so successful that by the time groundbreaking was held for the Butler factory, Brady had lined up orders for 6,000 railcars.

According to J. Campbell Brandon’s 1962 book “A Concise History of Butler County Pennsylvania,” Brady was famous for his love of the diamonds that gave him his nickname and the extravagant parties he threw at Delmonico’s in New York City.

But Brady was also a persuasive salesman, once spending three days in the outer office of Reading Railroad President George Bauer before Bauer deigned to meet him. Brady walked away with a $5 million order for steel freight cars for his fledgling company.

According to a Jan. 5, 1983, article in the Butler Eagle, 90 days after the Jan. 2, 1902, groundbreaking, the plant made its first freight car delivery.

According to the article, Andrew Mellon, the Pittsburgh industrialist and businessman, thought enough of the new company’s prospects to loan Standard $3 million early in its career.

To house the workers needed to fill the railcar orders, Brady and Hansen built 100 houses on land purchased from farmer John McElroy. Hansen named this new town Lyndora after his daughter, Lynda, and his wife, whose nickname was Dora.

The company later constructed 50 cooperative apartments adjacent to the factory. These apartments soon became known as “Red Row” because the builders used red boxcar paint on the clapboard houses. This area didn’t have the best reputation and Red Row was later razed to make room for a parking lot.

By 1907, the Standard Steel Car Co. was cranking out 27,411 steel railroad cars.

And it was spreading out into other areas of transport.

According to historical society records, by 1911, Standard ventured into the automobile business by creating a state-of-the-art car factory. The next year it introduced its luxury touring car: the Standard Eight, Monarch of the Mountains. The Standard Eight came in four models priced between $2,300 and $2,600, a very high price point at the time. Standard produced “The Eight” until 1921, when Standard sold the company to the American Bantam Car Co.

“Diamond Jim” died in 1917, and Hansen retired from the Standard Steel Car presidency in 1923, although he stayed on as board chairman until his death in December 1929.

That same month, Pullman Inc., the famed manufacturer of railroad sleeper cars, agreed to purchase Standard Steel Car Co.

Five years later, in the depths of the Great Depression, a formal merger created Pullman-Standard.

Throughout its history, Pullman-Standard produced passenger cars, box cars, hopper cars and subway cars. During World War One, Pullman-Standard produced 7,650 railroad cars to carry munitions, railroad gun cars, armored cars and anti-aircraft cars, as well as high-explosive artillery shells.

During the Second World War, the Butler plant produced 6,750,000 shells and rockets for the fight against the Axis powers.

Pullman-Standard continued after the war as one of the largest railcar producers in the world. In addition to making railcars for the world’s railroads, it also had a fleet of 16,000 railcars that it leased to railroads. At one time, Pullman-Standard was the largest consumer of Pittsburgh steel in the world.

Pullman-Standard continued to operate in Butler until it was purchased by Wheelabrator-Frye Inc. in 1980. In Jan. 21, 1981, Wheelabrator-Frye consolidated all its covered hopper car and gondola car production at the Butler plant.

But changing economic conditions, the rise of intermodal truck trailers that could be loaded onto flat cars, and even the U.S. grain embargo of Russia which depressed the need for covered hopper cars all spelled trouble for the Butler plant.

On April 1, 1981, the Steel Workers Union Local 1415 struck at the Butler plant when its contract expired. The strike was settled on April 19, but company said a drop in demand for railcars due to railroad mergers, better railcar management systems and a worsening economy made the Butler plant “no longer a viable manufacturing location in a competitive sense.”

On Jan. 28, 1982, Wheelebrator-Frye stopped an $11.4 million modernization of the plant’s paint shop, $600,000 short of completion. The final set of paychecks sent to workers contained their vacation pay.

Wheelabrator-Frye laid off 500 employees in late 1981, then closed the plant in February 1982 as Pullman-Standard exited the railcar business. Wheelebrator-Frye also closed its passenger car manufacturing operations in Chicago and Hammond, Ind.

After the announcement, there was confusion. According to a Feb. 10, 1982, Butler Eagle article, while the Pullman Transportation mailgram said the plant was permanently closed, Wheelabrator-Frye said the plant was closed only at present.

According to the Butler Eagle article, 1,500 Pullman-Standard employees jammed the Butler Vagabond Hall on Feb. 9 to get some clarification of the plant’s status.

United Steel Workers representative Frank Errera told the meeting, “You people deserve better than what you are getting. You’ve been good employees and you deserve an answer.”

Wheelabrator-Frye officials said their decision was made because of a poor sales outlook, excessive standards set by municipal purchasers of their equipment and restrictive labor contracts that have hurt the company's competitive position with foreign manufacturers.

That assessment was opposed by the United Steel Workers of America. According to the UPI archives, director Jack Parton of District 31 United Steel Workers of America sent a telegram to President Ronald Reagan and Illinois and Indiana legislators urging “an immediate government investigation into this destructive company action and federal help in reopening the plants.”

Parton said Wheelabrator-Frye “rejected all good faith efforts by United Steel Workers of America, including a guaranteed profits proposal, aimed at encouraging it to keep open and place bids on contracts available to produce subway cars and other trains.”

In a June 1982 interview with Forbes magazine, Jack Kruizenga, who was brought from Union Tank Car Co. to run the Butler location, said previous Pullman-Standard regimes had overspecialized and had been too generous with their union contracts. He criticized Pullman-Standard president James McDivitt, the former astronaut who ran the company in the late 1970s, with losing touch with his customers and losing market share to smaller competitors willing to make build-to-suit railcars for customers.

For there to be any chance of the Butler plant’s reopening, Kruizenga said Wheelabrator-Frye “must have competitive labor costs and contract conditions.” Kruizenga’s wish list also included “short production runs on a variety of cars as opposed to extended runs of boxcars and hoppers,” changes in labor costs and work rules, realistic fringe benefits, a favorable tax structure and “competitive state laws covering worker compensation and unemployment compensation.”

Perhaps Wheelabrator-Frye’s intentions in acquiring Pullman-Standard wasn’t railcar production at all. In 1944, Pullman-Standard acquired M.W. Kellogg Co. of Houston, an engineering and construction firm that specialized in designing and building plants to process oil and gas to make petrochemicals and fertilizers. It was renamed Pullman Kellogg.

In an Oct. 6, 1980, Newsweek article on Wheelabrator-Frye’s $600 million acquisition of Pullman-Standard, Wheelabrator-Frye’s president Michael Dingman said, “We think the whole company was a very attractive opportunity (but) we caught our fancy on Kellogg.” Pullman Kellogg was spun off and eventually became Kellogg Brown & Root in 1998.

In Butler, after the plant closure, various proposals for the plant and its land were made by county and state officials and lawmakers. None were successful.

A Feb. 4, 1982, Butler Eagle article said the plant closure was devastating to the tax revenues of the city and county and that the Butler Area School District alone was left with a $300,000 shortfall.

A June 20, 1982, Butler Eagle article, said the county had a 17.5% unemployment rate after the plant closed. And the former workers’ unemployment compensation would soon be running out.

Steel Workers representative Frank Errera was quoted as saying, “The majority have done nothing, there’s nothing out there to get. Unemployment compensation is ending.”

“They’re defaulting on housing and car payments. The local newspaper is filled with ads to sell cars,” he said.

Wheelabrator-Frye sold the Butler plant to Dallas-based Trinity Industries in 1984. In 2005 the plant had been completely demolished. In 2011, a jumbo grain car built by Pullman-Standard in June 1974 was restored and brought to Pullman Square, a shopping and retail district built on the site of the former plant in 1994, to serve as a monument to the workers of Standard Steel Car Company and Pullman-Standard, the last U.S.-owned manufacturer of railroad passenger cars.