M-10000

The Union Pacific Railroad's M-10000, delivered to the railroad on February 12 1934, at a cost of $230,997, was the first internal combustion engine, lightweight streamlined express passenger train in the United States. The carbodies and interior fittings were built by Pullman-Standard. The convert|600|hp|abbr=on V12 distillate engine was from General Motors' Cleveland subsidiary, the Winton Engine Company -- not, as is usually reported, the Electro-Motive Corporation, which merely supervised installation of the engine into the Pullman-built body. This engine design was not related to the later 201 or 201A Winton diesels. As for EMC, being primarily a marketing organization at this time, it did not manufacture any component parts of the M-10000. The air brake compressor, main generator, traction motors and control equipment were manufactured by the General Electric Company. The role of General Electric in pioneering essential electrical technologies which enabled the rise of the diesel-electric locomotive is greatly underrated in the literature; conversely, the role of Electro-Motive is very much over-rated.

Famed Pullman engineer Martin P Blomberg helped style the exterior of not only the M-10000, but also the M-10001. The US Patent and Trademark Office assigned US Patent|D100000, which just happen by chance with the extra "0", be the same as the road number. Also see US Patent|D100001 and US Patent|D100002 for other design patents. M-10000 featured a turret cab, an inward-slanting Duralumin (a German-developed aluminium alloy pirated by Alcoa during the First World War) body with a nose form of parabolic arches, with a large nose air intake. The train was painted in Armour Yellow with Leaf Brown roof and undersides; later, the area around the front air intake was also painted yellow. Dividing lines of red were painted to separate the colors.

The ft to m|204|abbr=yes long, 85 ton train was fully articulated: trucks, strongly influenced by German passenger bogie design as investigated by Union Pacific chief engineer A.H. Fetters, were shared between adjacent cars. There were three cars; a driving, power and baggage car at the front, and two passenger cars. The sleeping car "Overland Trail" was constructed for M-10000 and included in the consist in May 1934, but it was never used in regular service with that train; instead, because of M-10000's assignment to a day train the sleeper was mated with the next Streamliner, M-10001. Subsequent streamliners would be diesel powered, but a reliable engine of sufficient power-to-weight ratio was not available for the M-10000 and it was delivered instead with a spark-ignition Winton 191-A distillate engine. The first truck carried one General Electric traction motor per axle and was the only one powered.

The M-10000 was as much a publicity tool as a practical train; during 1934 it made a convert|13000|mi|km|sing=on exhibition tour across the United States, visiting Washington, DC, for inspection by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Everywhere it went it attracted crowds and much press attention, eventually hosting almost 1,000,000 visitors. M-10000 succeeded in its aim of helping reinvent and modernise the passenger train in the popular imagination of Depression-era America, yet in contemporary popular memory it has long since been eclipsed by the later Pioneer Zephyr. Many other Streamliners inspired by the M-10000 were rapidly developed, and within 15 years most major American railroads had a "streamlined" train of some form or other.

The M-10000 was eventually named "City of Salina" for the Kansas City-Salina route it served, but it was also nicknamed the "Tin Worm" or "Little Zip". Since it was built of Duralumin (aircraft aluminium), the M-10000 was scrapped in early 1942 to contribute its materials to the war effort, among other reasons. The paint scheme devised for the M-10000 is still in use as of 2008, except that the brown portions were later painted in harbor mist gray.

ee also

*Land speed record for railed vehicles
*Pioneer Zephyr

References