I previously presented the 1938 Report on Streamline, Light-Weight, High-Speed Passenger Trains by Coverdale and Colpitts. This is the 1939 update of that report. The updates includes detailed financial information about most of the streamlined trains that began operating in 1938 or before. The exceptions are the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, and Reading trains, because those railroads did not keep (or make available) separate operating data by train.
Click image to download a 31.3-MB PDF of this 88-page report. Click here to download an OCRed version of the report.
In the year that had passed since the 1938 report, four new streamlined or semi-streamlined trains had been added to American rails: The Burlington-Rock Island Texas Rocket, Baltimore & Ohio’s Columbian and Capitol Limited, and Seaboard’s Silver Meteor. Rock Island’s Chicago-Denver Rocky Mountain Rocket would commence service on November 12, 1939; Atlantic Coast Line’s Champion, and Florida East Coast’s Henry M. Flagler would begin operating in December, 1939; while Missouri Pacific’s St. Louis-Kansas City Eagle would enter service on January 1, 1940 and. New York Central had added streamlined passenger cars to its New York-St. Louis Southwestern Limited, and Burlington’s General Pershing Zephyr had replaced the Ozark State Zephyr in St. Louis-Kansas City service. This brought the total of streamlined trains from 41 to 49.