AMERICA’S FAST TRAINS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19941, 27 October 1934, Page 13

AMERICA’S FAST TRAINS

NEW WORLD RECORD ESTABLISHED

LONG JOURNEY AT HIGH SPEED

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph —Copyright NEW YORK, October 25.

Tlie Union Pacific streamlined train to-day reached New York from Los Angeles, completing the run in 56hrs 56mins. The previous record, established in 1906, wus 71hrs 27mins.

The 376-foot train, powered by a 100 h.p. Deisel engine, covered 3259 miles from Los Angeles. At one period, between Chicago and New York, the train set a world's record speed of 120 miles an hour. "LUSTROUS WORM’’ AMERICAN WRITER DESCRIBES NEW TRAIN The stream-lined train, which has attracted a great deal of attention in the United States, was described by a writer in the "Saturday Evening Post” as "a prodigious, silvery, three-jointed worm with one stalk-eye, a hoofish nose, no visible means of locomotion, seeming to be speeding on its stomach or by its own roar.”

On a previous record-breaking trip it crossed a third of the American Continent, from Denver to Chicago, a distance of 1017 miles, in 785 minutes, without a stop. All along the route crowds lined both sides of the track to watch the train roar by. On foot and in motor-cars they gathered at every crossing; and not at the crossings only, but in the fields, on the hillside and hilltops, in trees and along the embankments, wherever the view was good. They were there at daylight in Eastern Colorado. They were there all day through Nebraska and lowa, They were there in the evening through Illinois, the numbers increasing with the density of population, until, on the last 200 miles, the crowds were enormous.

The train is a Diesel-engined,electri-cally driven, stream-lined train, fabricated of stainless steel no thicker than the hide of a bull, yet as strong as a bridge. “The topmost speed of the train was 112 i miles an hour,” the writer continues. “The average for the distance was 78 miles an hour. The fuel was the cheapest low-grade oil, a kind of petroleum sludge, and the amount consumed was less than two quarts a mile.

“These facts of speed, average time and fuel consumption are astonishing and break all records; nevertheless they are comparable. The incomparable fact is that, having run at that speed twice as far as a speed locomotive goes without resting, and ten times as far as a steam locomotive goes without stopping for coal and water, this lustrous worm was neither tired nor hot. There was nothing it needed but to have its fuel tank refilled.”