Report on Streamline Passenger Trains

Posted on by March 10, 2014
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A consulting firm named Coverdale and Colpitts (now part of URS) once did a variety of economic analyses for the rail industry. In 1935, the firm published a report on the Burlington Zephyrs, followed by reports in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1950 on “Streamline, Light-Weight, High-Speed Passenger Trains.”

Click to download a 6.1-MB PDF of the full 1938 report.

I found out about these reports when I saw the 1939 and 1950 reports for sale on ebay. No one else had bid on them, so I put in a bid . . . only to have someone snipe them away from me. I found the 1938 report on Bookfinder.com and bought it. It has a wealth of fascinating information on all of the trains I’ve discussed so far.

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The Daylights

Posted on by August 27, 2019
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On March 21, 1937, the Southern Pacific inaugurated the Daylight between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Like the Milwaukee Hiawatha, the SP elected to go with steam power, in this case a semi-streamlined 4-8-4 locomotive manufactured by Lima, the smallest of the nation’s three major steam locomotive makers. The cars were built by Pullman and included several articulated coaches, an articulated diner/lunch counter car, a parlor car, and a parlor-observation car, with a total capacity of 444 revenue passengers.

Click the image to see a larger version of this postcard. Click here to download a PDF of the front and back of this postcard.

At an average speed of 48 mph, the Daylight was not a speed demon like the Hiawathas. But it was probably competitive with California roads at the time.

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Aboard the Early City Trains

Posted on by March 27, 2018
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Like the overnight Chicago-Denver trains, the two-night Chicago-Pacific Coast City trains were timed to minimize the loss of business hours. This worked especially well westbound, the direction in which time zones work in the traveler’s favor. During the late 1930s, both the City of Portland and the City of Los Angeles left Chicago at 6:15 pm and arrived at their namesake cities at 8:00 am of the second day.


Click to download a 4.1-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet about the City of Los Angeles.

This brochure describes the amenities travelers could expect to find aboard the City of Los Angeles. The brochure is dated 1950, but it states, “on some units of the ‘City of Los Angeles’ there is an observation-lounge on the rear of the train.” This tells us that the the M-10002 was still likely to be working the Los Angeles route, as this train, unlike the later ones, did not have an observation-lounge.

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Competing with the Twin Zephyrs

Posted on by November 16, 2022
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The Burlington not only had to compete with the Union Pacific in the Chicago-Denver market, it had two other entrenched rivals in the Chicago-Twin Cities corridor. The routes of both of the other railroads, the Chicago & North Western and Milwaukee Road, were shorter than the Burlington’s and also served Milwaukee, while the largest city on the Burlington route was LaCrosse. While the Zephyr was still on display at the Chicago fair, the other two roads introduced 90-minute, non-step service on the 85 miles between Chicago and Milwaukee on July 15, 1934 using conventional steam locomotives and heavyweight cars.

Tests by the Burlington showed that Zephyr streamliners could cut the time required for a Chicago-to-Twin Cities trip from 10-1/2 to around six hours. Both the Milwaukee and the C&NW elected to compete with the Twin Zephyrs using equally fast trains powered by steam locomotives. Achieving that time reduction with steam locomotives, which require frequent replenishments of water and fuel, required careful planning and advance preparation.

The C&NW was the first to speed its Chicago-Twin Cities service, starting on January 2, 1935. Reflecting the fact that Chicago and the Twin Cities were about 400 miles apart and the accelerated trip would take about 400 minutes, the railroad called its new train the 400. This was also a cultural reference to the fabled 400 families that supposedly made up New York high society. In fact, the train initially required seven hours–420 minutes–to go the 409 miles between Chicago and St. Paul.

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Aboard the Denver Zephyr

Posted on by August 26, 2012
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The overnight Denver Zephyr left Chicago at 5:30 pm and arrived in Denver at 8:30 am, in time for a full business day. The City of Denver left Chicago at, perhaps, a slightly more convenient 6:20 pm but arrived in Denver at 9:20 am, causing business travelers to lose about an hour of the business day. The Zephyr served Lincoln, Nebraska, while the City served Cedar Rapids and Ames, Iowa.

On board the Zephyr, you might want to use a postcard to dash off a note to a friend. The postcards, naturally, advertised the train and were likely to mention the 1936 record run made from Chicago to Denver in 12 hours and 12 minutes for an average speed of 83.3 mph. Both the Zephyr and the City were scheduled to take exactly 16 hours westbound and 16 hours and 38 minutes eastbound (why does downhill take longer than uphill?), for an average speed of about 65 mph–the City was slightly faster because of a slightly longer route.

Click to download a PDF of the front and back of this postcard.

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1936 Denver Zephyrs

Posted on by August 4, 2012
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When, in June 1936, the Union Pacific put the M-10005 and M-10006 in daily service between Chicago and Denver, the Burlington’s own sleeping-car equipped Denver Zephyr was still five months away. To steal the Union Pacific’s thunder (and protect its mail contract), Burlington pulled the original Zephyr and the Mark Twain Zephyr from their assigned routes and used them as Advanced Denver Zephyrs, starting 18 days before the City of Denver entered service.

The real Denver Zephyrs, Zephyrs 9906 and 9907, began working in November. Though their numbers were higher than the 1936 Twin Cities Zephyrs (9904 and 9905), the streamlined Denver Zephyrs actually entered service first. The Denver Zephyrs were also much longer trains, with ten (and later twelve) cars pulled by two locomotives.

Poster advertising the Denver Zephyr emphasizes the mirror-like finish of stainless steel. Actually, the woman’s face would be highly distorted in the curved front of the locomotive. Click to download a 4.7-MB version of this poster.

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Second- and Third-Generation City Trains

Posted on by September 6, 2013
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Experience with the City of Portland and City of Los Angeles had proven to the Union Pacific that its first-generation streamliners were too small for anything but local service. So it cancelled its planned fourth train, the M-10003, and ordered four longer trains with more powerful, redesigned locomotives. Though these were far from motorcars, it initially retained the M-1000x numbering system.

Beginning on June 14, 1936, the M-10004 became the first City of San Francisco, running over the Chicago & North Western from Chicago to Omaha and the Southern Pacific from Ogden to Oakland. Its “automobile-style” locomotive featured shields from all three railroads and was detachable from the rest of the train. The locomotive was in two units, each one with a General Motors 1,200-HP V-16 Diesel.

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The Santa Fe Redefines Streamliners

Posted on by June 9, 2023
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While the Union Pacific and Burlington were certainly pioneers in the streamliner movement, other railroads introduced their own versions of streamlined trains. Some, such as Boston & Maine’s/Maine Central’s Flying Yankee, were imitations of the Zephyrs.

Others, such as Illinois Central’s Green Diamond, were imitations of the M-10000 series.

It took the Santa Fe Railway, direct competitor to the Union Pacific on the Chicago-Los Angeles route, to present the real future of streamliners. On May 12, 1936–one day before the Union Pacific began its 39-3/4-hour City of Los Angeles service using the M-10002–the Santa Fe initiated its own 39-3/4-hour train called the Super Chief. The train wasn’t streamlined at all; instead, Santa Fe demonstrated that what made streamlined trains fast was the use of Diesels instead of steam locomotives that had to make frequent and time-consuming stops for water.

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The 1935 City of Portland/1936 City of Los Angeles

Posted on by September 6, 2013
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The Union Pacific was so confident about the success of the M-10000 that it ordered three more similar, but longer, trains even before the M-10000 was completed. Though the power cars of these trains were outwardly identical to the M-10000, with “turrent-style” cabs, the M-10001 was initially equipped with a 900-HP Diesel instead of the M-10000’s 600-HP distillate engine.

After receiving the M-10001 in the fall of 1934, the Union Pacific sent it from Los Angeles to New York in under 57 hours, a record that stands today. The train’s average speed over this route, however, was just 57 mph, compared with the Zephyr’s 77-mph run from Denver to Chicago and later the Denver Zephyr’s 83-mph run from Chicago to Denver (which, Ralph Budd pointed out, was uphill).

So before putting the M-10001 in revenue service, Union Pacific replaced its 900-HP engine with a massive, V-16, 1,200-HP Diesel. It then put the train to work as the City of Portland, running between Chicago and Omaha on the Chicago & North Western and from Omaha to Portland on the Union Pacific, taking 39-3/4 hours each way. Considering that previous trains took between 54 and 72 hours, this was an incredible schedule. A Chicagoan going to Seattle would have to change trains in Portland and would still arrive in Seattle nearly 20 hours sooner than if they took the Empire Builder, North Coast Limited, or Olympian.

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The 1936 Twin Cities Zephyrs

Posted on by August 2, 2012
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In November, 1934, after the end of the Chicago fair, the Burlington put its original Zephyr (number 9900) to work between Kansas City and Lincoln, Nebraska via Omaha–something of a spit-in-the-eye to the Union Pacific, which was headquartered in Omaha. After testing the original Zephyr, the Burlington had quickly ordered several more stainless-steel trains. The first two (9901 and 9902), nearly identical to the original, became the Twin Cities Zephyrs, which started running between Chicago and Minneapolis in April, 1935. A similar Mark Twain Zephyr (9903) began operating between St. Louis and Burlington, Iowa in October, 1935.

The little Zephyrs proved far more popular than the railroad anticipated, with every seat booked and sometimes (according to reports) people standing in the aisles (or, more likely, occupying supposedly non-revenue seats in the rear lounges). So the Burlington ordered five more shovel-nosed trains that were far larger than the little three-car prototype. On December 18, 1936, two seven-car trains plus locomotives started service as the new Twin Cities Zephyrs, bumping the previous ones to service as the Ft. Worth-to-Houston Sam Houston Zephyr and the St. Louis-to-Kansas City Ozark State Zephyr.

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