The menses between 1930 and 1945 was a time of contrast and modification . The railroad manufacture , shrunken by economical crisis and competition from the automobile , developed unexampled ways , to lower costs and attract passengers . Meanwhile , diesel engine locomotivesbegan to replacesteam enginesas the nation make for war . Literally everything move by railing during the dispute , bequeath the railroads exhilarate but exhausted as they approached the postwar earned run average .
The railway system industry entered the thirties in a state of deep pessimism . While most business sector and political science leaders proclaimed that the interior economic system was in good condition , unemployment had risen from 1.5 million in late 1929 to an estimated 4 million by the fountain of 1930 .
railroad line had not come through the 1920s in very ripe circumstance . Nationalization during World War I forget the major railroads worn out , and reinvestment was hampered in the capital markets , which favored more moneymaking – and bad – outlets for investment . railway also suffered the effects of restrictive governmental regularization , public investment in competing expatriation system , and the departure of rider job to the automobile . The interior economical collapse that begin in 1929 only sharpen the quandary faced by railroads since 1920 .
Unemployment had risen to near 5 million by January of 1931 . TheDepressionreached a low point in mid-1932 , with unemployment digest at 12 million , the overall economy having constrict by 40 pct , and manufacture produce at half of 1929 horizontal surface . Railroad employment fall by 42 percent during the same full stop . Employees who were n’t furloughed had to bump fellow workers with lower seniority or accept demotion in orderliness to keep working . increase freightage tariffs were granted in 1931 to shore - up fall revenues . This shew to be a disaster , as shippers divert dealings to blue - monetary value hand truck . In January of 1932 , railroad management and labor agreed to a 10 percent reduction in wages for one class . The final income of railroads plummeted from $ 977 million in 1929 to a departure of $ 122 million in 1932 ; the industry would not be profitable again until 1937 .
Capital investment were foreshorten , and alimony was deferred to the great extent potential . Locomotive sales plummeted during the early 1930s , and most railroads had long " dead strain " of locomotives collecting debris in storage yards .
Unused engines and automobile marry up solid amounts of capital , had costs associated withbondinterest , and were n’t earning any money to give these cost . One third of the nation ’s railroad pass into bankruptcy during this stop , and the vicious realities of railroad economics spell the demise of many companies in the 1930s .
The " New Deal " of President Franklin Roosevelt seek to stabilize the economy in a number of way . The Reconstruction Finance Corporation had been engage during the Hoover administration to loan money to essential businesses , including banking concern and railroad line , but had accomplish small before 1934 . Despite Roosevelt ’s mental rejection about the economical welfare of federal public whole kit spending , his new Public Works Administration funded shoal , courthouses , hospital , highways , nosepiece and other fare improvements . Though thousand of miles of highways were establish , the largest railroad project of the geological era was the RFC / PWA - financed electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York City and Washington , D.C.
The Pennsylvania Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad began to try out with electrification in 1895 and by 1906 had wire its Long Island Railroad and West Jersey & Seashore Railroad subsidiaries . Electric office pulled as many as 1,000 string a day under the Hudson River to New York City ’s Pennsylvania Station , open in 1910 . Suburban lines around Philadelphia were electrify before World War I , and there was serious treatment about adopting galvanising power for mainline freight and passenger wagon train .
A number ofsteamrailroads tried galvanizing traction during this period . The technology was new and challenging , and electric locomotives promised operating advantages over steam locomotives . They were libertine , comfortable on track , cost only one - third as much to maintain , would last doubly as foresighted , could run in either direction , and never had to be move out from service for monthly boiler washables . Electricity also eliminated smoke and cinder , fuel andwaterstops , roundhouses , and lazy Susan .
The Baltimore & Ohio , New Haven , New York Central , Boston & Maine , Milwaukee , Great Northern , Virginian , and Norfolk & Western railroads all developed substantial mainline electrification projects , but the Pennsylvania ’s plan was to be the large of them all . In belated 1928 , the railroad announced its intent to electrify 1,300 nautical mile of trail over the 325 - mile route between New York City and Wilmington , Delaware . This challenging scheme was flourish a yr later with a design to lead the electrified soil past Washington , D.C. , to Potomac Yard north of Alexandria , Virginia .
The timing of this second announcement coincide with the start of theGreat Depression . There were serious concerns about the wisdom of attempting such a undertaking in the face of the internal economic collapse , but the Pennsylvania saw great next benefits from electrification and decided to keep on . The railroad line had sufficient capital resource to get work under manner and carry the project through 1931 , when financing for any railroad project – even the " Standard Railroad of the World " – dry up . A $ 27.5 million loan was received from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to continue the work . Another loanword , for $ 80 million , was provided by the Public Works Administration to finance the Washington , D.C. , section .
The great project was complete by 1940 , give the Pennsylvania Railroad the big – and the last - electrify common – carrier mainline railroad in the country . The result was a 20 percent addition in operating efficiency , which would pay substantial dividends during World War II , when dealings on the electrified lines reached an all - time eminent .
The Effects of Depression on the Railroads
The Pennsylvania Railroad ’s electrification was one of the few sincerely bright spots on the railroad landscape during the Depression . A more general tendency was for railway system to cut Robert William Service on lightly used lines and abandon path that had no hope of convalescence . Inroads from machine and trucks made the post bad , but a number of little lines , though uneconomical to operate , were able to cling on because they represented the only reliable means of pass isolated parts of the West . Other little railroads made ending meet with federalmailcontract subsidies .
The Depression magnify the effects of rivalry from other modes of locomotion . For the first 50 years of its existence , thesteamrailroad savour an unchallenged location as the primary form of public transit . Two alternate propulsion technologies became commercially viable during the 1890s , shaking and then toppling the steam railroads ' preeminent spatial relation . The first of these was ontogenesis ofelectricstreet and interurban railroads ; the 2d was the rise of the auto .
HenryForddid not invent the machine or the assembly line , but he had a Populist sentence that private car were a popular force , and he acquire ways to make and sell them in the million . In what has been discover as perchance the most expensive litigation in American account , he defend an eight - class battle with the licensee of George Selden , who had been issued a patent of invention on the auto in 1895 . The 1911 determination confirmed that literally anybody , Ford included , had the rightfulness to build automobiles .
Ford ’s Model T cost more than $ 900 when it was introduce in 1908 , dropping to $ 345 by 1916 and $ 280 in 1927 , when production block off after more than 15 million auto had been produce . Not only had Ford made the automobile a mass commodity , he and others created a new economy base on the installment financing of newly forge consumer products . The manufacture of automobiles travel by all other industry by 1926 and was line by Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors as " . . . the sterling revolution in Department of Transportation since the railway . " Indeed , it was . By 1930 , one in every five Americans have an machine , and the consequences to the railroad industry would be fundamental .
Railroads vs. Automobiles
The new automobile culture increased the politics ’s persona in public works evolution . There were only 161,000 statute mile of surfaced roads in the Carry Amelia Moore Nation in 1905 . The aggregate jumped to 521,000 mil in 1925 and 1,721,000 naut mi in 1945 . Nearly all of this investment was made by the government .
This governmental involvement reflected a switch in public attitude toward transport . Prior to the rise of the machine , it was taken for deed over that public transportation would be provided by private company , and most specifically by the railroads . This was an obligation assumed by the railway in their capacity as a " natural monopoly . " Railroads could grow and expand as economic need dictate , and investor would seize the risks and the benefits . The role of government was to insure that the public ’s interests were served , and the railroads were expected to accept this rule in substitution for business opportunities .
railway line had long been viewed – with varying arcdegree of truth – as being abusive in the exercise of their power and gradually come in under oppressive regulation by commonwealth and federal authorities . Grangers , Progressives , and any number of other " meliorist " took reward of the railroad track industry as a convenient political prey .
The car arrived as a practical consumer item at the same moment the state and its political leadership were looking for an alternative to the railway system . The Good Roads movement channeled government monies into main road building on a bigger scale than ever before . More route lead to a tumid market for cars , which increased political pressure to construct even more and beneficial road , and so it proceed until a new public whole shebang philosophy became established .
The job of the government careen from regulation to the actual provision of services - specifically , the building and maintenance of roads . Indeed , the societal philosophical system of conveyance itself moved from public expatriation being something useable to anyone who could afford it to that of a personal right that should be provided to all by the government .
TheGreat Depressioncreated an environment in which extra type of transportation began to receive lasting government support . airline , lighter operators , and even pipeline were subsidise by federal investment , leave the railroads in the unequalled and awkward position of being subjected to greater regulation than any competing transportation mode , but without any resulting benefits . This , in essence , is " the railroad line problem " that began to take strain during the late nineteenth century and remain with us even today .
Streamliners During the Depression
During the 1920s , some railroad designer became witting of the developing public interest group in the automobile and the newcomer commercial air travel industry . They seek to make the American railroad track more contemporary , looking to modern , design - inspired trains in Europe as examples . Otto Kuhler took it upon himself to modernise thesteamlocomotive , and he published drawings in 1928 that lead in his appointment as an industrial couturier for the AmericanLocomotiveCompany .
By the early thirties , a challenger was under style among the railroads and carbuilders to discover the best – and most marketable – way to compound the technical innovations of streamlining , internal combustion power , and lightweight mental synthesis . Over the next few year , a series of streamlined and air - conditioned motor trains were develop to test and demonstrate these concept .
First of the new " streamliners " was the Union Pacific ’s Pullman - built M-10000 , denote in 1933 . Made altogether of aluminum admixture , its three articulated automobile weigh less than a single conventionalsleepingcar and could admit 110 rider . Powered by distillate – a modest - ground level petroleum fuel – the geartrain was inaugurated in February 1934 as a harbinger of thing to come .
The Budd Company of Philadelphia produced the Zephyr for the Chicago , Burlington & Quincy two months later on . The Zephyr ’s locomotive was fueled with diesel oil , which proved to be much superior to distillate and established the pattern for subsequent diesel - electric locomotives . Pullman work up another motor gearing in 1936 for the Illinois Central ’s St. Louis -Chicago GreenDiamond , and others for Union Pacific , while Budd began producing streamliners for the Burlington line .
The Union Pacific baptize its wagon train the Cities , while the Burlington had various kind of Zephyrs , caravan like the City of Portland and the Twin Zephyrs influenced public attitudes about passenger change of location , creating a demand for even more well-fixed and flexible streamline table service .
Although run into in appearance , enunciate motor train had serious limitations . The motorcar were for good coupled together , make it extremely unmanageable to align electrical capacity so as to meet demand . If the exponent car needed fix , the total train was out of avail , and the big length of some train taxed grand and concluding facilities . The solution was to hold the materials and construction techniques used in the motor train to individual locomotive - hauled cars .
Pullman built a couplet of atomic number 13 observation cars in 1933 , and the Milwaukee Road start to build up lightweight coaches the next year . Budd turned by from articulated motor trains in 1936 and commence to produce individual motorcar to its distinctive flute stainless - steel intention . Aluminum and lightweight high - tensile - strength steel alloys allowed the fresh car to weigh as small as 37 tons – although 50 stacks was more customary – compared with 85 tons or more for conventional , or " heavyweight , " car . The new cars could be draw out by conventional locomotives and offer greater adaptability than the motor train , while effecting a considerable weight savings over schematic equipment .
Integral to the lightweight car concept was mechanical melody conditioning and line circulation . No more would the comforter of rider be pendant on out-of-door gentle wind temperature , and cinders were permanently relegate from clothes and bedding .
Railroads that were reluctant to invest in motor trains saw potential in the new lightweight cars , and it was n’t long before they set out to plan fresh , eminent - capacity streamline trains . Many of these would be pulled by diesel - electric locomotives , marking a most concluded interruption with the custom of heavyweight machine being pulled by steam locomotives .
Pullman - Standard , Budd , and American Car & Foundry were the main commercial builders of fresh cars . Seeking less costly alternatives , some railroad line rebuilt older cars in the streamline way or constructed their own lightweight equipment . The , Milwaukee Road build distinctive lightweight cars in the Milwaukee Shops and in May 1935 inaugurate the Hiawatha , the first steam - power streamliner , which it preferred to call a " speed - liner . " Not to be scoop , the Baltimore & Ohio " streamstyled " heavyweight cars for its 1938 Capitol Limited .
New cars and streamlined diesel motor - galvanic locomotives transformed the rider train and established new criterion for passenger comfort and amenities . The outstanding names of the early streamline geological era still resonate : the Coast Daylight , the Rocky Mountain Rocket , the City of San Francisco and City of Los Angeles , the Hiawatha , the 400 , and heaps more . First - course of instruction " name " trains captured the public imagination .
The Twentieth Century Limited
New York Central billed The Twentieth Century Limited , operating between New York and Chicago , as " the most famous train in the world , " and indeed it was . The New York Evening World effused that the train was " so glorious that it should never be printed save in majuscule letters . " Re - equipped as an all - bedroom streamliner in mid-1938 , the train was a picture of stately nuance in shades of silver gray and grey as it sped on its 16 - hour runnel . Industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss desegregate every item of the string , from the locomotor ( whose bullet - maneuver nozzle was split by a scimitar - shaped flange ) to the china in the dining elevator car .
Chicago , the Atchison , Topeka & Santa Fe Railway ’s Super Chief combined stainlesssteeland elegance in America ’s first all - Pullman diesel motor - power streamliner . Making the trip to Los Angeles in 39 1/2 time of day twice a workweek , the Super Chief was the flagship of the Santa Fe and a favorite of the Hollywood crowd and their publicists . Like other first - course of instruction , extra - fare trains , the Super Chief mull the growing importance of blueprint and flair to the traveling populace . Just getting there was n’t effective enough any more ; one had to get there in elan .
Few could afford a ticket on one of the Modern first - class streamliners , and passenger car caravan armed service carry on to gnaw at under pressure from buses and car . Thousands of dispossessed rode the caravan nevertheless , hopping cargo as economical tramp . Though illegal and dangerous , the exercise was often ignored by sympathetic railroaders , and at other times brutally suppressed by railway line constabulary and local sheriff .
Those among the needy whose pride , deference for the natural law , or practicality prevented them from catch a freightage train swarmed onto the highways in old cars and truck , look for for a better life . It may be argue that the railway line ' emphasis on swiftness , consolation , and luxury for the fortunate few alienate a substantial segment of the grocery store and drove less wealthy traveller permanently into the polish of the automobile .
Streamline Diesel Engines
As important as lightweight machine to the creation of the mod streamline wagon train was the introduction of a successfuldiesel locomotivefor mainline use . Gasoline , naphtha , and distillate engines had been tried in motorcars and small engine with limited achiever . Most had mechanically skillful drivetrains – much like a truck – which were n’t well suitable to railroad overhaul . The General Electric Company spring up an electric transmission system that had the locomotive push back a generator . The resultingelectricitycould be well assure and used to power motors on the axles , like those match to electric streetcars . This arrangement was applied to gun - electrical motorcar and , afterwards , to modest locomotive engine .
GE built three unsuccessful diesel - electric locomotives in 1918 , and in 1925 began to furnish electrical equipment for Alco diesel - galvanic switchers . These were somewhat successful and pointed the way to the production of several hundred diesel - electric switchers prior to 1940 . Developing a diesel powerplant capable of surviving the rigors of mainline service was another matter , and it was here that the nouveau-riche maker Electro - Motive Corporation had the edge .
EMC had been purchased by General Motors in 1930 , as was the Winton Engine Co. Winton perfected a practical two - cycle diesel locomotive engine spark enough for service on a route locomotive by 1932 , and these companies experimented with way of matching diesel engines and electric transmission for mainline intent . EMC furnished the propulsion equipment for the Zephyr and most other motor trains of the epoch . This experience allowed EMC to grow a design for full - size of it passenger locomotives , which were placed into product in 1937 , The E - serial publication passenger engine dominated the market and pulled most of the pre - war diesel motor streamliners .
EMC had also begin the industry of switching locomotive in 1936 , and had a road consignment locomotive , the FT , in production by 1939 . diesel engine product exceededsteamlocomotive yield for the first time in 1938 .
In January of 1941 , with the technologies of EMC and Winton developed to the point that their product were proving to be of hearty commercial-grade time value , the two subsidiary were consolidated and merged into the General Motors Corporation as the Electro - Motive Division . EMD ’s FT freight locomotives were the only diesel motor - galvanising loading engine allowed to be commercially invent during World War II under War Production Board limitation . This helped prove market note and have in mind that the competitors – all of them established steam locomotor manufacturers – were building an disused merchandise .
Depression Era Railroad Timeline
1930 :
The Santa Fe Railway suffers the bad traffic losses in its story as the Midwest is transformed by drouth into a " Dust Bowl . "
1931 :
In May , B&O ’s Columbian , the first completely tune - qualify rider train , is put into service between New York and Washington .
1932 :
Depression - epoch hardship causes industriousness leaders to grim railroad wages by 10 pct for one year . Despite that conceding , the net income of railroads plummets to a loss of $ 122 million .
1933 :
Roosevelt is usher in : He promises quick recuperation as the United States get in " The 100 day . "
1934 :
Union Pacific ’s M-10000 streamliner does a coast - to - seacoast run in 57 hours .
1935 :
The Railroad Retirement Act of 1934 is adjudge unconstitutional .
The streamlined Challenger , run between Omaha and Los Angeles , introduces such luxuries as atmosphere - conditioning , free pillow , and attendants prepare as nurse .
1936 :
Santa Fe ’s Super Chief , America ’s first all - Pullmandiesel - powered streamliner , begins twice - a - week service between Chicago and Los Angeles . Running meter is less than 40 hours .
1939 :
In September , a warfare emergency is hold in the United States.
