The World's Fastest Train
In the early 1930s, the US was in the depths of the Great Depression. Without the money to purchase new goods, freight trains were not hauling as much as they had in the previous decade. People who could not buy goods also could not afford to travel to the extent that they had before, so passenger revenues were also down. Even if they did have the money to travel, the equipment that railroads were using to carry passengers had not changed much since the middle of the 19th century. Railroads needed a way to re-energize the traveling public and offer a bit of hope for the days to come.One of the railroad presidents who faced this challenge was Ralph Budd, formerly of the Great Northern Railway and now president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (Burlington), who needed a new train to get the public interested in traveling again. Naming the train was a task that was very seriously taken by Budd. He wanted a name that started with the letter Z because this train was intended to be the "last word" in passenger service; Budd and his coworkers looked up the last words in their dictionaries, but neither zymurgy nor zyzzle conveyed the meanings that Budd was looking for. The name of the new train came from The Canterbury Tales, which Budd had been reading. The story begins with pilgrims setting out on a journey, inspired by the budding springtime and by Zephyrus, the gentle and nurturing west wind. Budd thought that would be an excellent name for a sleek new traveling machine—Zephyr.[6][7][8] In 1932 Ralph Budd met Edward G. Budd (no relation), an automotive steel pioneer who was founder and president of the Budd Company. Edward Budd was demonstrating his new carbody construction in a prototype rail motorcar built of stainless steel. Stainless steel provided many benefits over traditional wood and hardened steel for railroad carbodies; it was a lighter and stronger material, and its natural silver appearance and resistance to corrosion meant that it would not have to be painted to protect it from the weather. Since the carbody was much lighter than similar cars, it would be able to carry a higher revenue load for the same cost.[6] The problem with building stainless steel cars was that nobody could find an adequate way to hold the body together. On August 20, 1932, Earl J. Ragsdale, an engineer at the Budd Company, filed a patent application for a "Method and product of electric welding"; on January 16, 1934, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted US patent 1,944,106 to the Budd Company.[9] Shotwelding, as Ragsdale termed his method, involved automatic control of the timing of individual spot welds. In spot welding, the two pieces of metal that are to be joined are pressed together at the joint with an electrode on each side of the joint. A very high electric current is passed through the joint and fuses the two pieces of metal together.[10] If a manual spot weld, which was difficult to time, were held too long, heat would spread from the weld at a middling temperature that would weaken the stainless steel unacceptably; Ragsdale's precisely-timed welds solved the problem.Another factor in making the Zephyr lighter than conventional trains was that the individual carbodies in the train share their trucks with adjacent cars.[12] In this design by Budd engineer Walter B. Dean, the train was three articulated compartments. On conventional passenger cars, each carbody rode upon a pair of trucks (wheel/axle assembly), with one truck at each end. The articulation not only reduced the number of trucks under the train, but it also dispensed with the need for couplers between each of the carbodies, further reducing the train's weight.[13] It did, however, mean that train lengths could not be easily changed by switching out cars. The exterior design of the train was left to aeronautical engineer Albert Gardner Dean (Walter Dean's younger brother) who designed the sloping nose shape, with architect John Harbeson and industrial designer Paul Philippe Cret devising a way to strengthen and beautify the sides with the train's horizontal fluting.[14][15] On April 15, 1936, Col. Ragsdale, Walter Dean and Albert Dean, filed patent applications for a "Rail Car Front End Construction". On September 23, 1941 the USPTO granted US patents 2,256,493[16] and 2,256,494[17] to the Budd Company. The first Zephyr was completed by Budd Company on April 9, 1934, powered by an 8-cylinder, 600-horsepower (447 kW), 8-201-A model Winton engine. Like the diesel-electric locomotives that soon displaced the steam locomotive on American railroads, this engine powered an electrical generator; the electricity it generated was then fed to electric traction motors connected to the axles in the train's front truck.[2][5]
The train's engineer sat in a small compartment in the nose of the train, directly in front of the prime mover. Behind the engine in the first carbody was a 30 ft (9.1 m) long railway post office section. The second carbody consisted of a small baggage section and a short buffet and 20-passenger coach section. The third and final carbody in the train, as originally built, was configured as half coach (40-passenger seats) and half observation car (12 passenger seats). As built, the train had 72 seats and could carry 50,000 pounds (22.7 tonnes) of baggage and express freight. This train's official christening occurred on April 18, 1934, at the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broad Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[18] The Budd Company used the experience learned in building the Zephyr to build similar trains (such as the Flying Yankee) for other railroads, as well as a number of other Zephyrs for the Burlington.
On May 26, 1960, the 26th anniversary of the "Dawn-to-Dusk" dash, the original Pioneer Zephyr train (car numbers 9900, 505 and 570) was donated to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.[2][14] Car number 500, which operated with the train from 1938, went along with Mark Twain Zephyr trainset 9903 to a party in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, for static display in a town park, but plans for the train's display did not work out; car 500 and the Mark Twain Zephyr are currently stored in Chicago and plans are currently underway to display it in Fairfield, Iowa.[24] In Galesburg, Illinois, which is 162 rail miles from Chicago, the local high school named all its athletic teams the "Galesburg Silver Streaks" in honor of the train. The Chicago museum displayed the Pioneer Zephyr outside the museum, with no protection from the weather, until 1994. At that time, the steam locomotive that shared the display space with the Zephyr, Santa Fe #2903, was donated to the Illinois Railway Museum, while the Chicago museum prepared a new display location for the Zephyr.[25]
The Chicago museum dug a pit in front of the building and built a new display area for the Zephyr, where it could be displayed year-round. In 1998, after the train received a cosmetic restoration by Northern Rail Car, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the pit was finally ready to receive the train. The Pioneer Zephyr train is still on display at the museum just outside the main entrance from the underground parking area for the museum, where it is one of the more popular exhibits.[25] In addition to the Pioneer Zephyr, two other legacies remain. An operable Nebraska Zephyr train was donated to the large Illinois Railway Museum at Union, west of Chicago. There, powered by one of the large "E" series passenger diesels (an EMC E5) with the distinctive and durable stainless-steel fluting, it is still operated on short runs on the Museum's substantial trackage, providing train enthusiasts and tourists with an experience reminiscent of the heyday of the Burlington's Zephyr service.[26][27] The Silver Charger, power car of the General Pershing Zephyr, is on display at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, and the same train's "diner-parlour and observation car" is now the Silver Star Cafe in Port Hedland, Australia. Also utilizing the famous name, the Minnesota Zephyr was an elegant dining train located in the historic city of Stillwater, Minnesota, although it was not directly associated with the historic Burlington Zephyr fleet. Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown, Pennsylvania has a miniature replica train ride called Zephyr which was built in 1935 and helped the park survive the Great Depression.[28]
The above text is from from Wikipedia.com