Green Ball

Last week was one of high exuberance for everyone connected with Union Pacific Railroad--from Chairman William Averell Harriman and President Carl Raymond Gray down to Jose the trackwalker. The green ball, signal for clear right of way, was showing. The road was clicking away towards profit.

Click. Union Pacific's net operating income for April totaled $797,169, which was a quarter-million dollars more than April 1932, and $131,577 more than March this year.

Click. The company placed a $200,000 order with Pullman Co. and General Motors Corp. to build a streamlined, oil-or gasoline-motored train capable of traveling 110 m.p.h.

Click. The company had been offered the use of liquefied butanesb for running the new train. According to experience of the rival Southern Pacific which has been trying out liquid butane, the synthetic fuel cuts fuel costs two to three cents a mile, lubricating costs one to two cents a mile.

The new Union Pacific train will consist of three cars hinged together and seating 116 passengers. Four-wheel trucks will carry the entire train--one under the fore end, one under the rear end and one under each car joint. The whole will be thoroughly streamlined with windows flush and operating gadgets pocketed. Motive power will be electricity generated in the forward car by a gasoline (or butane) motor, otherwise by an oil-driven Diesel. Exulted Chairman Harriman last week: "The train is fully streamlined to a greater extent than has been attempted to date either in this or any foreign country." Although it should be able to make no m.p.h., Union Pacific will not permit it to exceed 90 m.p.h.. which is 10 to 20 m.p.h. faster than other U. S. expresses operate. The new train may make the long run between Omaha and Los Angeles in 30 hr. The steam journey now takes 48 hr. Speed, Union Pacific men hope, will provide effective competition against air travel. Cheap operating costs may beat bus transportation.

If the new train could get to the Chicago exposition before its end, she might well blow a salute to an old steam locomotive chuffing around the neighborhood. Old No. 999, the New York Central engine, which put thrills into the melodramas of the 1890's, in 1893 attained a record of 112 1/2 m.p.h. for 1 mi. at Cuttenden, near Buffalo, N. Y.sb Her engineer on that run, Charlie Hogan of Buffalo, was again at her old throttle last week

Other experiments with streamlined rail transportation deal with single, separately motored cars. Michigan Central has a gasoline-driven car which is virtually a flanged-wheel motor bus. It does 70 to 90 m.p.h. Philadelphia & Western is using 50 m.p.h. streamlined interurban coaches driven electrically from third rails. France has several gasoline-motored streamlined buses on rails. One, a Bugatti. can do 110 m.p.h., may go on a regular Paris-Deauville run this summer.

sbDeveloped by T. H. Kruttschnitt, son of the late able Railroader Julius Kruttschnitt. sbLater records: a Plant System train at 120 m.p.h. for 5 mi. between Fleming and Jacksonville, Fla. in 1901; a Philadelphia & Reading train at 115.2 m.p.h. for 4.8 mi. between Egg Harbor and Brigantine Junction, N. J., in 1904.

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