Air-Resisting Trains

One day in 1865, Rev. Samuel Calthrop, a Roxbury, Mass, clergyman who found charm in other things besides divine philosophy, thought back to the time when he had trained Harvard's crew for its first race with Yale. Pondering on the smoothness with which the racing shell had slipped through the water, and knowing that railroad engines often use more power to overcome atmospheric resistance than to pull cars, Rev. Mr. Calthrop sat down with pencil & paper, sketched an "Air-Resisting Train" which anticipated by almost 70 years the modern streamliner.

Samuel Calthrop, born too early, reaped nothing but satisfaction from registering his train with the U. S. Patent Office. It was not until hard times sharpened their wits and aviation pointed the way that U. S. railroads took up streamlining. In 1934, with nearly one-third of the country's Class I roads in bankruptcy, with autos, busses, airlines fast sponging up passenger traffic, the railroads began to come out with so-called "neo-trains," fancy to look at, fancy in performance. First to enter scheduled service was Chicago, Burlington & Quincy's famed "articulated" streamliner, the Zephyr, on Nov. n, 1934.

Since then streamlining has become the bugaboo of U. S. industrial designing. Popularizers like Norman Bel Geddes have made citizens visually speed-conscious, so that now even a refrigerator must look as if it is getting somewhere in a hurry. Up to the end of 1937 a total of 54 streamlined trains had been put on scheduled runs by 17 lines. Last week the two major Eastern lines, New York Central and Pennsylvania, announced that on June 15 they would streamline their crack trains. The Central's Twentieth Century Limited and Pennsylvania's Broadway Limited will be the first streamliners to run out of Manhattan, will both average a mile a minute, will both reach Chicago in record schedule time of 16 hours. Neither line will use radically new engines, will simply put new harness on Iron Horses. The cars, however, will be a departure. Both trains will have "roomette" Pullman cars (TIME, Dec. 13), and will be the first all-room trains in the U. S.

Just as exterior streamlining has been made up of one part bunk to one part science, the interior "improvements" in these trains will cater largely to U. S. reverence for looks & luxury. Besides scientific lighting, air conditioning, electric signal systems, the Century and Broadway will have leather, cork, copper decorations, flossy bars, photomurals of skyscrapers, pink lights to transform dining cars into "night clubs." Passengers will call the porter not with bells, but with chimes.

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