page_title: High-speed rail in the United States
section_title: Faster inter-city trains: 1920–1941
hierarchical_section_title: High-speed rail in the United States / History / Faster inter-city trains: 1920–1941
caption_attribution_description: English: The Royal Blue train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Thomas Viaduct, south of Baltimore, Maryland, in a posed 1937 publicity photo. The locomotive is the B&amp;O's "President"-class Pacific 4-6-2, streamlined by Otto Kuhler that year. Uploaded by User:JGHowes
context_page_description: Plans for high-speed rail in the United States date back to the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965. Various state and federal proposals have followed. Despite being one of the world's first countries to get high-speed trains, it failed to spread. Definitions of what constitutes high-speed rail vary, including a range of speeds over 110 miles per hour and dedicated rail lines. Inter-city rail in the United States with top speeds of 90 miles per hour or more but below 125 mph is sometimes referred to as higher-speed rail.
  Amtrak's Acela Express, Silver Star, Northeast Regional, Keystone Service, Vermonter and certain MARC Penn Line express trains are the only high-speed services in the country.
  As of 2020, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is working on the California High-Speed Rail project and construction is under way on sections traversing the Central Valley. The Central Valley section is planned to open in 2029 and Phase I is planned for completion in 2031.
context_section_description: During the period from 1900 to 1941, most long-distance travel was by rail in the United States. Rail transportation was not high-speed by modern standards but inter-city travel often averaged speeds between 40 and 65 miles per hour (64 and 105 km/h). Most of the major railroads had faster than normal trains called "express" or "limited" on their mainline routes (e.g. the Empire State Express and the 20th Century Limited) between major towns and cities.
  The development of faster trains, however, faced indirect regulatory hurdles. After a 1921 crash at Porter, Indiana, in which a derail failed to stop one passenger train that had already passed through two red lights from crashing into another at a level junction, killing 37, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ordered almost a hundred railroads to install automatic train stops by the end of 1925. The railroads opposed the ICC vigorously, noting that stopping longer freights that way might lead to derailments. As a result, the requirement was revised to allow waivers for certain lines, and rarely enforced as the debate continued without any real resolution over the next two decades; in the meantime passenger fatalities began declining as the automobile emerged as a transportation option.
  During the 1930s railroads began to develop lightweight, diesel-powered streamlined trains which provided even faster running times than the previous express trains. Two early streamliners were the Union Pacific M-10000 (nicknamed Little Zip and The City of Salina) in revenue service between 1934 and 1941/42 and the Burlington Railroad's Zephyr. The design of the Zephyr incorporated a diesel-electric power system; the M-10000 used a spark-ignition engine running on "petroleum distillate", a fuel similar to kerosene. These trains were much lighter than the common engines and passenger cars of the day, as the "Zephyr" was constructed using stainless steel and the M-10000 chiefly of the aircraft alloy Duralumin.
  On May 26, 1934, the Zephyr made a record-breaking "Dawn to Dusk" run from Denver to Chicago. The train covered the distance in 13 hours, reaching a top speed of 112.5 mph (181.1 km/h) and running at an average speed of 77.6 mph (124.9 km/h). However the railroad was unable to capitalize on this since the Depression had cut into the demand for intercity rail travel.
  Many steam locomotives were streamlined during this time to attract passengers, and the first steam streamlined locomotive was the New York Central's Commodore Vanderbilt. Nonetheless, some of these steam locomotives became very fast: some were said to exceed 120 mph (190 km/h) on a regular basis. Examples include the New York Central's "Super Hudsons" as used on the Twentieth Century Limited; the Milwaukee Road's purpose-built Atlantics and Hudsons used in Hiawatha service; the Pennsylvania Railroad's duplex-drive 4-4-4-4 type T1 locomotives, and two Union Pacific engines, a 4-6-2 and a 4-8-2, used on the "Forty Niner" and other trains.
caption: Streamlined 4-6-2 "President"-class steam locomotive on B&O's New York–Washington, D.C. Royal Blue in 1937
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