Fact1: engineer Tom Caldwell In face of presents design for revolutionary diesel-electric train seriously declining railroad passenger travel, Fact2: railroad 's conservative board of directors agrees with him rejecting Tom 's design, Fact3: Dexter 's Ruth convinces Ed Tyler to look into Tom 's design, Fact4: Tom and team prepare Silver Streak for well-publicized trial run with Dexter, Fact5: Dexter has left Chicago to travel by train to California
Output: In the face of seriously declining railroad passenger travel, engineer Tom Caldwell presents to the president of the CBD Railroad, B.J. Dexter, a design for a revolutionary dieselelectric train that will increase efficiency and lower costs. Dexter opposes change, however, and the railroads conservative board of directors agrees with him, rejecting Toms design. Tom quits in frustration. Sure that Toms theory is sound, Dexters daughter Ruth convinces Ed Tyler, a locomotive manufacturer, to look into Toms design. Tyler is impressed with the concept and initiates immediate construction of a prototype. Soon Tom and his team prepare the Silver Streak for a wellpublicized trial run with Dexter and Ruth aboard as passengers. The Silver Streak fails to attain even half of its projected speed of 100 miles per hour 160 kmh, however, and is even easily overtaken by a steampowered freight train. An angry Dexter tells Tyler that all the Silver Streak is good for is an exhibit at the Century of Progress Exposition to recover his advertising expenses. Tom is baffled by the failure since all the engine components worked perfectly during assembly but Dexter stubbornly insists that the concept will never work. Furious with Dexters attitude, Tom quarrels with Ruth. Her brother Allen, who supported Toms idea, tells his father that he is quitting the railroad to take a job as a civil engineer with the Six Companies, Inc. constructing the Boulder Dam. Tom and Bronte, the engines builder, discover that the electrical generator acquired for the Silver Streak has a manufacturing flaw. After correcting the flaw, the engine produces even greater power than he had earlier predicted. He tries to telephone Ruth with the good news to reconcile with her, but she has left Chicago to travel by train to California. Ruth discovers en route that infantile paralysis polio has broken out among the dams construction crew and detours to the site only to find that Allen has contracted the disease. When a doctor informs her that Allen will die within 24 hours unless he receives treatment from an iron lung respirator, Ruth telephones her father to have the machine shipped to the dam by airplane. Dexter is told that the iron lung is too heavy for any transport airplane to carry and cannot be disassembled. Tom and Tyler persuade Dexter to take a gamble on the Silver Streak as Allens only hope. With less than twenty hours of time to travel 2,000 miles 3,200 km, the Silver Streak is given a cleared track and takes a shipment of Drinker Respirators out of Chicago. Tom includes Bronte on his crew, unaware that he is a foreign spy wanted for murder. As radio broadcasts track the progress of the epic errand of mercy, the Silver Streak breaks records as it races south against time through the night. Nearing Boulder City, however, Bronte is revealed as a fugitive and sabotages the engine trying to stop the train, but instead causes it to speed out of control. Tom knocks the spy unconscious and regains control of the runaway train just before it arrives at the station.