Powering the Special & Broadway

Posted on by October 20, 2022
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In 1905, the Pennsylvania Railroad used 4-4-2 Atlantic-type locomotives to power the 18-hour Pennsylvania Special. With 80″ driving wheels and about 21,000 pounds of tractive effort, these locomotives weren’t as powerful as the newer 4-6-2 locomotives, but the Special didn’t need that much power because it was typically a four- or five-car train.


Pennsylvania scrapped locomotive 7002 in 1935, so it repainted locomotive 8063 to look like it and put it on display at the 1949 Chicago Railroad Fair. Click image to download an 885-KB PDF of this postcard.

On its first day as an 18-hour train, the westbound Special was being pulled by 4-4-2 locomotive no. 7002. The train was late to Crestline, Ohio, and the engineer was told to do whatever he could to make up time. In the three miles between Lima and Elida, Ohio, he supposedly drove the train at an average speed of 127.1 miles per hour, turning a potential public relations disaster into a public relations boon. Continue reading →

The First All-Steel Passenger Train

Posted on by November 28, 2022
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My recent post about all-steel passenger cars raises the question: what was the first all-steel intercity train? The first all-steel train of any kind was undoubtedly an IRT subway train. The first all-steel intercity train was also clearly a Pennsylvania Railroad train, but which one? This question isn’t answered by the Railway Ages of the day, nor did the Pennsylvania mention its first all-steel train in the Official Guides.


The all-steel Pennsylvania Special in 1908. Click image for a larger view.

William Kratville, who wrote numerous books about (mostly Union Pacific) trains appears to definitively answer this question in his book, Steam, Steel and Limiteds: On page 11 of the 1962 edition of that book, he writes, “The Pennsylvania was first upon the scene with the all steel Pennsylvania Limited.” Continue reading →

The Commodore Vanderbilt

Posted on by October 9, 2022
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In 1934, even before the introduction of the Burlington Zephyr and Union Pacific’s M-10000, New York Central decided to jump on the streamlining bandwagon by putting a shroud on one of its Hudson locomotives. Carl Kantola, a civil engineer who worked for the New York Central, told the story of this locomotive in an 1981 article in the New York Central System Historical Society’s magazine.


Click image to download a 1.4-MB PDF of this brochure from the David Rumsey map collection.

According to Kantola, he drew a sketch of the shroud early in 1934 and showed it to Paul Kiefer, the railroad’s motive power engineer who designed the Hudsons in 1926. Kiefer liked the idea and persuaded the company president to support it. The shrouding was applied to locomotive 5344, which had just been completed in New York Central’s own shops. It was the first steam locomotive to be streamlined in the United States. Continue reading →

The First 20th Century Limited

Posted on by November 3, 2022
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The end of the World’s Columbian Exposition also saw the end of the Exposition Flyer‘s 20-hour schedule. Initially, New York-Chicago passengers had to be content with journeys of at least 26 hours. In September 1894, the Central speeded up its New York and Chicago Limited to a 24-hour schedule, still four hours more than the Expo.

The first run of the 20th Century Limited in 1902. Photo by Arthur P. Yates.

George Daniels returned to the 20-hour timetable when he introduced the 20th Century Limited in 1902. This train proved to be his crowning achievement, as he became known as the “Father of the Century.” Having already conceived of the Red Cap porter, Daniels introduced red carpet service by rolling out red carpets for passengers to walk on before boarding the Century. Continue reading →

The 100-Mile-Per-Hour Locomotive

Posted on by November 23, 2022
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The 20-hour Exposition Flyer gave the Central a public relations boost over the Pennsy, but George Daniels’ real publicity coup in 1893 was to persuade the New York Central to build a high-performance version of its standard passenger locomotive, in the same way that auto makers today make a few high-performance cars to help publicize their regular automobiles. At the time, the Central and its subsidiaries were buying 4-4-0 locomotives from Schenectady (a predecessor of Alco) that typically had 18″x24″ pistons, 180 pounds of boiler pressure, and 69″ to 78″ driving wheels.


This photo makes locomotive 999 look a little stubby, but that’s because its boiler and driving wheels were so much larger than normal. Its wheel base, including tender, was actually longer than a typical New York Central 4-4-0 of the time.

To increase power, the high-performance locomotive, which Daniels dubbed the 999, would have 19″x24″ pistons and 190 pounds of boiler pressure, each change making the locomotive about 5.6 percent (for a combined 11.4 percent) more powerful than the railroads’ standard 4-4-0. This extra power was needed because, to reach high speeds, the 999 would sport driving wheels that were 86-1/2″ in diameter. While a few British locomotives had 90″ drivers, the 999’s drivers were quite likely the tallest ever used in America. The large drivers reduced its tractive effort to about 15,400 pounds compared with around 17,000 for a more typical NYC 4-4-0 of the time. Continue reading →

The Exposition Flyer of 1893

Posted on by October 14, 2022
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The World’s Columbian Exposition promised to bring millions of people into Chicago in the summer of 1893, and the nation’s railroads were eager to capture as many of those travelers as possible. No railroad did a better job than the New York Central thanks to its general passenger agent at the time, George Henry Daniels, who has become known as a “prophet” in the advertising industry for the many ways in which he promoted the railroad’s business.

Among other things, George H. Daniels, shown here in around 1890, was one of the first to publish travel brochures, similar to those presented here, to encourage people to ride trains on their vacations. Click image for a larger view.

In 1881, the Pennsylvania Railroad had stolen a march on the New York Central when it introduced the world’s first “limited” train, the New York and Chicago Limited. When most trains took more than 36 hours to get between New York and Chicago, and the fastest took more than 30, James Wood, Pennsylvania’s passenger traffic manager, conceived of a train that would take under 26 hours, carry nothing but Pullmans, and charge an extra fare for the privilege of saving several hours. The New York Central and its subsidiary, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, responded with a train unoriginally called the Limited Express (and later even more unoriginally called the New York and Chicago Limited) that wasn’t able to go quite as fast as Pennsylvania’s train. Continue reading →

The Super Power Revolution

Posted on by November 23, 2022
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In 1901, the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) was created by merging eight locomotive manufacturers to better compete with Baldwin, the nation’s largest locomotive maker. The next year, ALCO delivered to the Missouri Pacific the first 4-6-2 built for an American railroad. Baldwin had already built some 4-6-2s for New Zealand railways the year before, and while most sources say this wheel arrangement was named “Pacific” after the Missouri Pacific, the Smithsonian’s William Withuhn says it was “in recognition of the New Zealand connection.”


In 1902, Alco made nine 4-6-2 locomotives for the Missouri Pacific, the first ever built for an American railroad, and this is the last of the nine. It had 69″ drivers and produced 25,623 pounds of tractive effort. Click image for a larger view. Photo from the Missouri State Archives.

The MP locomotive built by Alco produced more than 25,000 pounds of tractive effort, more than any American and all but a few Atlantics built up to that time. In addition to a larger firebox carried by the two-wheel trailing truck, the Pacific locomotive was aided by the longer boiler atop the six driving wheels. A longer boiler meant more evaporative heating area, allowing the locomotive to sustain more steam production. Continue reading →

Before the Super Power Revolution

Posted on by November 23, 2022
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Before 1900, the average passenger train in America consisted of four wooden cars weighing a total of about 160 tons. By 1930, the average passenger train had eight steel cars weighing a total of 450 tons. The all-steel revolution clearly demanded much more powerful locomotives than were available in 1900.

Built in 1875, Virginia & Truckee’s Inyo is a typical example of a 4-4-0 locomotive. Click any image on this page for a larger view. Photo by Sam Schrantz.

For most of the 19th century, the locomotives most commonly used to haul passenger trains in the United States had four leading wheels, four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels, making them a 4-4-0. This wheel configuration was so common in the United States that it became known as American type. One of the first 4-4-0s was built for the Beaver Meadow Railroad, a coal-hauling line in Pennsylvania that eventually became part of the Lehigh Valley. Continue reading →

The All-Steel Revolution

Posted on by October 25, 2022
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In 1900, every streetcar, rapid transit car, and intercity rail passenger car in America was made primarily out of wood. The wheels, trucks, and couplers were metal, of course, but the frame, body, roof, floor, and other components were wood. In 1904, Railway Age magazine asked railroad executives around the country if they thought the underframes of passenger cars should be made out of steel and received almost universal negative responses. Steel wouldn’t protect passengers from accidents, the officials argued; instead, it would only add weight and cost without adding any benefits.

In 1907, Pullman displayed its first all-steel sleeping car at the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia. The Pennsylvania Railroad soon asked Pullman to make 500 sleeping cars for use on PRR trains. Click image for a larger view of this photo from Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation.

What changed the industry’s collective mind was not the derailments or collisions but the threat of fire, and in particular fire in tunnels. In 1904, New York City was building the nation’s first subway; the Pennsylvania Railroad was building tunnels under the Hudson River to bring its trains into Penn Station; and Pennsylvania subsidiary Long Island Railroad was building tunnels under the East River to bring its commuter trains into Manhattan. Continue reading →

Consolidation and Competition

Posted on by November 15, 2022
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Over the past seven weeks, I’ve presented nearly 50 timetables from the Rumsey map collection ranging from 1872 to 1907. Among other things, these timetables showed the evolution of train names, from no names to type names such as “accommodation” and “express,” to destination-oriented names such as “Chicago Express” and “Pacific Express,” and finally to evocative names such as Golden Gate Special and Sunset Limited.

Click image to download a 7.8-MB PDF of this booklet.

The use of these evocative names greatly increased in the 20th century, when a major revolution in passenger railroading took place. Streamliner Memories has previously looked at the new technologies that allowed the streamliner revolution in the 1930s: air conditioning, Diesel locomotion, and lighter weight metals such as aluminum, Corten steel, and stainless steel. Continue reading →