Rather than buy E units from General Motors or similar PAs from Alco, the Milwaukee elected to pull the Olympian Hiawatha with locomotives made by Fairbanks-Morse, a newcomer to the locomotive business. Fairbanks-Morse dated back to the early nineteenth century, … Continue reading
Passengers in the observation lounge car were invited to send letters using stationery decorated with this colorful letterhead. Click to download a PDF showing the entire first page of this four-page stationery. (The other three pages are blank.) In addition … Continue reading
The first overnight streamliner after the war was the Great Northern Empire Builder, which started service on February 7, 1947. The train’s bright orange and green colors have come to be known as the Empire Builder color scheme, yet it … Continue reading
The first railroad to introduce a new streamliner after the war was the Pere Marquette, a Michigan railroad affiliated with the Chesapeake & Ohio. Starting in 1946, the Pere Marquettes–the only streamliner I know named after the railroad that owned … Continue reading
Out of the 120,000 or so steam locomotives built and used in the United States, only about 220 were streamlined–or, as the Chicago & North Western called it, steamlined–for passenger service. Railroads went to the trouble to streamline steam locomotives … Continue reading
In hindsight, Budd-built stainless steel cars hauled by General Motors Diesel engines–such as the Burlington Zephyrs or Santa Fe Super Chief–seem to be the epitome of streamlined trains. But in the mid-1930s, Budd and General Motors were both upstarts in … Continue reading
Four railroads competed for business in the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor: the Illinois Central; Alton; Chicago & Eastern Illinois; and Wabash. At least two of them acquired streamliners before the war. I’ve already mentioned the Illinois Central Green Diamond, which was … Continue reading
The 1938 Report on Streamline Trains discusses several streamlined trains that I haven’t mentioned in previous posts, and while I don’t have a lot of memorabilia for these trains they are worth presenting for the sake of completeness. The first … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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, … Continue reading
