The Pioneer Zephyr is a diesel-powered trainset built by the Budd Company in 1934 for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (CB&Q), commonly known as the Burlington Route. The trainset was the second internal-combustion–powered streamliner built for mainline service in the United States (after the Union Pacific Railroad's M-10000), the first such train powered by a diesel engine, and the first to enter revenue service.
The trainset consists of one power/storage car, one baggage/RPO/buffet/coach car, and one coach/observation car. The cars are made of stainless steel, permanently articulated together with Jacobs bogies. The construction incorporated recent advances such as shotwelding (a specialized type of spot welding) to join the stainless steel, and unibody construction and articulation to reduce weight. It was the first of nine similarly built trainsets made for Burlington and its technologies were pivotal in the subsequent dieselization of passenger rail service.
Its operating economy, speed, and public appeal demonstrated the potential for diesel-electric-powered trains to revitalize and restore profitability to passenger rail service that had suffered a catastrophic loss of business with the Great Depression. Originally named the Burlington Zephyr during its demonstration period, it became the Pioneer Zephyr as Burlington expanded its fleet of Zephyr trainsets.
On May 26, 1934, it set a speed record for travel between Denver and Chicago when it made a 1,015.4-mile (1,633 km) non-stop "Dawn-to-Dusk" dash in 13 hours 5 minutes at an average speed of almost 78 mph (124 km/h).. For one section of the run, it reached a speed of 112.5 mph (181 km/h). The historic dash inspired a film ("The Silver Streak") and the train's nickname, "The Silver Streak".
The train entered regular revenue service on November 11, between Kansas City, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; and Lincoln, Nebraska. It operated this and other routes until its retirement in 1960, when it was donated to Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry, where it remains on public display. The train is generally regarded as the first successful streamliner on American railroads.
Concept and construction
In the early 1930s, the Great Depression caused a catastrophic loss of business for American railroads. Passenger service had been losing ridership to automobile travel since the mid-1920s, making faster, more efficient service imperative for railroads to compete. Railroads needed to lower operating costs of passenger service and boost ridership with a more modern image for the traveling public, to restore profitability to passenger service.
One of the railroad presidents who faced this challenge was Ralph Budd, president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (the Burlington Route). In 1932, Budd met Edward G. Budd (no relation), an automotive steel pioneer who was founder and president of the Budd Company and demonstrating his new Budd-Michelin rubber-tired rail cars built of stainless steel. Pneumatic-wheeled railcars never found popularity for actual service in the US — they tended to derail — but they demonstrated the successful construction of lightweight stainless steel unibody railcars. Some power-trailer car sets in that series articulated with Jacobs bogies shared between cars embodied the basic elements of car construction that would be used to build a lightweight streamliner train.
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.
In developing the Budd-Michelin railcars, the Budd Company used the formed steel technology in which they were industry pioneers and solved the most difficult problem in using stainless steel for railcar construction: developing a welding technique that would not compromise the strength and corrosion resistance of the stainless steel. 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 & Trademark Office (USPTO) granted US patent 1,944,106 to the Budd Company. 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 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. If a spot weld is heated too long, heat will spread from the weld at a middling temperature that weakens the stainless steel and compromises its corrosion-resistant properties unacceptably; Ragsdale's precisely-timed welds solved the problem.
The articulated design of some Budd-Michelin cars, with trucks shared between adjacent cars, presented another opportunity for weight saving with the new train. On conventional passenger cars, each carbody rode upon a pair of trucks (pivot-mounted 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. The concept was used by Budd engineer Walter B. Dean to build a train consisting of three semi-permanently attached cars. However, this also meant that individual cars could not be removed from or added to the trainset easily, either to adjust to demand or to make repairs to an individual car without sidelining the entire train.
Budd was familiar with the development of stationary diesel engines, and believed their superior reliability and fuel economy could be an asset for train transport as well. He brought his idea to the Winton Engine Company (a General Motors subsidiary), and together they designed and produced a new 660 horsepower (490 kW) engine small enough to fit inside a train, solving the question of propulsion.
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 architects Paul Philippe Cret and John Harbeson, devising a way to strengthen and beautify the sides with the train's horizontal fluting. On April 15, 1936, Colonel 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 and 2,256,494 to the Budd Company. The streamlining extended to the undercarriage as well to reduce drag.
Budd took the task of naming the train very seriously. 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. While the word "zephyr" had seen previous use, Budd found his inspiration in The Canterbury Tales, which he 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.
The first Zephyr (9900) was completed by the Budd Company on April 9, 1934.
The first car, which measured , contained the cab, engine compartment and a mail storage area. The train's engineer sat in a small compartment in the nose of the train, directly in front of the prime mover. The main generator was mounted to the prime mover and sat between the engineer's and fireman's seats in the front of the power car. Behind the engine in the power car was a storage-mail compartment. The second car, measuring long, was a combination express, checked baggage and railway post office section, followed by a short buffet and 20-passenger coach section. The third and final car in the train, measuring long 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.All specs from After a series of demonstration runs, the trainset was named the Burlington Zephyr on April 18, 1934, at the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broad Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As the first of several Zephyr trainsets built for Burlington, the original trainset was renamed the Pioneer Zephyr once additional named trainsets entered service.
Promotion: "Dawn-to-Dusk" dash
After its naming in Philadelphia, the train was taken on a three-week promotional tour of cities in the Northeast and Midwest. The train was open for viewing in several cities, with 24,000 people viewing it in Philadelphia, 50,000 in Rochester, New York, and more than 109,000 viewing it in New York City. In early May 1934, the train was driven back westward over the Pennsylvania Railroad's mainline to Chicago, and some parallel routes, exceeding several times. At its stop in Dayton, Ohio, another 20,000 people viewed the train, and a "never-ending procession of visitors" viewed it on its stop in Indianapolis. It was then driven toward Denver for its last display in preparation for its next big promotion. It made additional promotional stops in other cities along the route, including Lincoln, Nebraska, where 21,000 people viewed the train. The tour stopped in 46 cities and had almost 485,000 people view the train at its many stops.
The train made a "Dawn-to-Dusk" dash from Denver to Chicago on May 26, 1934, in a publicity stunt timed to coincide with the opening day of the second year of the Century of Progress world's fair in Chicago. The railroad spared no expense in planning the operations. All other trains along the Zephyr's route were diverted to sidings and the turnouts were spiked into the proper alignment for the Zephyr's run. Track and maintenance of way workers checked every spike and bolt along the train's route to ensure that there would not be any problems, and temporary speed signs were installed along the route to warn the Zephyr's crew of curves that would be dangerous at high speeds. On the day of the dash, every road grade crossing was staffed by a flagger to stop automobile traffic ahead of the train and to ensure that the crossing was clear. Stations along the route were protected by local police officers and members of the American Legion and the Boy Scouts of America.
The train left Denver at 07:04 Central Daylight Time and at 20:09, 13 hours 5 minutes later, broke through the tape at the designated finish line at Halsted Street station, 1.8 miles west of Chicago Union Station. The train's average speed from start to finish was 77 mph (124 km/h); and had reached a speed of 112.5 mph (181 km/h). The non-stop 1,015-mile (1,633 km) trip exceeded the railroad's expectations in being 1 hour 55 minutes faster than was scheduled. The Burlington's contemporary passenger trains plied the same distance in around 25 hours.