A wind from the west called the Zephyr–the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad’s new, diesel-powered, stainless steel, 72-passenger train–created a national sensation when it blew into town on May 26, 1934.
The sleek silver streak had just flashed 1,015.4 miles, from Denver to Chicago, in 13 hours, 5 minutes. The previous record Denver-Chicago run had been 26 hours, 45 minutes.
Railroading would never be the same again. Overnight, the train was the last word in sophisticated travel.
Nor would making toast in the morning be the same, nor doing the family laundry nor cutting the lawn.
After seeing the Zephyr, Americans wanted all machines, no matter what their function, to look like they were built to break speed records–toasters, washing machines and lawn mowers included.
This summer, the very same, original three-car Zephyr train of that 1934 triumphant arrival will make a less dramatic entrance into the city aboard flatbed trucks.
The property of the Museum of Science and Industry since 1960, the train for the last three years has been undergoing restoration in Milwaukee.
In August, it will be lowered into the bowels of the museum’s $43.75 million, three-story underground parking garage now under construction.
In a 3-story atrium leading from the garage to the museum, the Zephyr, one of history’s most romantic and influential trains, will become a permanent indoor exhibit.
The record run from Denver was a publicity stunt to herald the opening day of the second year of the 1933-34 Century of Progress World’s Fair.
Designed by aeronautical engineers, the Zephyr is a tube of fluted, lightweight stainless steel. Its speed caught the public’s attention, but its “streamline” design and styling held it.
“Streamline” was a brand new word then, aeronautical jargon for a shape that cut down on wind resistance.
The Zephyr was not the first streamlined industrial product, but it was the most spectacular one.
More than anything else, it inspired a new motif in decorative arts and design called “moderne.” It made art deco, the spare decorative style then the rage, seem almost baroque.
The Zephyr quickly came to symbolize elegance, speed and efficiency. Industrial designers scrambled to satisfy public enthusiasm by streamlining every conceivable consumer product, whether it made any sense or not–from vacuum cleaners to teapots, tricycles and automobiles.
The Zephyr is not just a pretty face, however. It won the hearts of hard-nosed, nuts-and-bolts railroad money men because it saved on expenses and brought in a ton of new business.
The first long-haul locomotive powered by diesel, the train, made of new metal alloys and design structures, weighed just 197,000 pounds. That included its locomotive and baggage, mail, dining and passenger compartments.
A single passenger car in a conventional steam train weighed about the same as the entire Zephyr.
Being so light, the Zephyr merely sipped fuel. On its fully loaded run from Denver to Chicago, it burned only $16 of diesel–412 gallons at 4 cents a gallon.
That spelled doom for steam-powered railroading and weighty, smoke-belching, coal-burning locomotives. The Zephyr was the first of new, lighter trains that went on to save railroads uncounted millions of dollars in wear and tear on equipment, tracks and roadbeds.
Ralph Budd, the Burlington president whose vision built the first Zephyr, wanted a new train that would cut operating expenses and stimulate passenger business.
From 1920 to 1933, railroad passenger business fell from 47 billion passenger miles a year to 16 billion, most lost to private automobiles.
The first Zephyr was an experiment to see if it could restore profitability to a 250-mile route between Kansas City, Mo., and Lincoln, Neb.
After showing it off at the Century of Progress and extended dashes around the country, Burlington put the Zephyr to work late in 1934.
It was fast enough to leave Kansas City in the morning and return from Lincoln in the afternoon, replacing two, 1.6 million pound steam-powered trains.
After a few months, Budd ordered a fourth car added to the train to accommodate passenger demand. He soon ordered eight other Zephyr trains, most of them longer and more powerful than the original, to serve routes throughout the West and Midwest.
Passengers liked the Zephyr’s speed and were seduced by the comfort and elegance of the cars and service. Every car was imbued with sophisticated, ultra-modern ambience, air-conditioning, indirect lighting and first-class service.
Other railroads, seeing the Burlington raking in profits from the Zephyr, quickly built streamlined passenger trains. By 1939, 73 of them were zipping around the country.
In the late 1930s, David Grainger, a pupil at Hinsdale’s Garfield Elementary School, was smitten by the Zephyr.
At morning recess time, Grainger raced to the playground, his attention focused on the Burlington tracks two blocks down the hill along Garfield Street. If it was on time–and it usually was–one of Burlington’s Zephyr clones sped outward bound on its way to Denver.
Grainger grew up to take over the family business, W.W. Grainger, an international industrial supply company.
He also became a board member of the Museum of Science and Industry, which acquired the original Zephyr when it retired from service in 1960 after logging 3.2 million miles.
The train sat outdoors for 34 years behind the museum. When museum planners decided it was time to bring it indoors, Grainger liked the idea.
Stirred by his schoolboy memories, his family philanthropy, the Grainger Foundation, contributed more than half of the $5.25 million cost of restoring the train and installing it indoors.
“This was something (the foundation) wanted to get behind,” Grainger, now retired, said recently while visiting the train being restored at Northern Railcar Corp. in Milwaukee.
The train’s stainless steel frame and fluted cladding remained in excellent condition. But much of the rest of the Zephyr’s splendor had fallen into irreversible disrepair.
What was left of the interior walls, ceilings, flooring, restrooms, seats and upholstery had to be ripped out. Restorers have tracked down existing replacement items where they could and have had built exact replicas of original items that no longer exist.
When it is installed at the museum, guides dressed in uniforms of various crew members from the original Zephyr will conduct tours.
The tour will go through the engineer’s cab and restored mail car. In the baggage compartment, a talking, animatronic burro, Zeph, representing a burro that rode on the Denver-Chicago run as mascot, will describe that record-breaking journey.
As visitors walk through the galley and dining compartment, the train will gently rock with a sense of motion.
In the restored compartments, period-piece mannequins and animatronic figures will talk about the train and their lives.
In the stylish observation compartment at the end of the train, scenes of rural Iowa will shoot by the windows. As the Zephyr ends its journey in Chicago, visitors will see and hear the hullabaloo of the World’s Fair outside.
Museum officials predict the Zephyr will become one of the museum’s great, permanent attractions, like the coal mine and the U-505 submarine.
“It’s still a sight to behold,” Grainger said of the train. “It just seemed like the right project for us, to restore it so new generations can appreciate the train and the story behind it.”
