The Union Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....

's M-10000, delivered to the railroad on February 12, 1934, at a cost of $230,997, was the first internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...

, lightweight streamlined

Streamliner

A streamliner is a vehicle incorporating streamlining in a shape providing reduced air resistance. The term is applied to high-speed railway trainsets of the 1930s to 1950s, and to their successor "bullet trains". Less commonly, the term is applied to fully faired recumbent bicycles...

 express passenger train in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The carbodies and interior fittings were built by Pullman-Standard. The 600 hp V12 distillate

Fuel oil

Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...

 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

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

 Company.

Pullman engineer Martin P Blomberg helped style the exterior of not only the M-10000, but also the M-10001

M-10001

The Union Pacific Railroad's M-10001 was a record breaking diesel-electric streamliner train built in late 1934 by Pullman-Standard with an engine from General Motors Electro-Motive Corporation and General Electric generator, control equipment and traction motors...

. The US Patent and Trademark Office assigned , , and for the design. The M-10000 featured a turret cab, an inward-slanting Duralumin

Duralumin

Duralumin is the trade name of one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The main alloying constituents are copper, manganese, and magnesium. A commonly used modern equivalent of this alloy type is AA2024, which contains 4.4% copper, 1.5% magnesium, 0.6% manganese and 93.5%...

 body with a nose form of parabolic arches, and 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 204 ft (62.2 m) long, 85 short tons (77.1 t) train was fully articulated: trucks

Jacobs bogie

Jacobs bogies are a type of rail vehicle bogie commonly found on articulated railcars and tramway vehicles....

, 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

Diesel engine

A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...

 powered, but a reliable engine of sufficient power-to-weight ratio

Power-to-weight ratio

Power-to-weight ratio is a calculation commonly applied to engines and mobile power sources to enable the comparison of one unit or design to another. Power-to-weight ratio is a measurement of actual performance of any engine or power sources...

 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

Traction motor

Traction motor refers to an electric motor providing the primary rotational torque of a machine, usually for conversion into linear motion ....

 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 13000 miles (20,921.4 km) 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

Pioneer Zephyr

The Pioneer Zephyr is a diesel-powered railroad train formed of railroad cars permanently articulated together with Jacobs bogies, built by the Budd Company in 1934 for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad , commonly known as the Burlington...

. 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

Salina, Kansas

Salina is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 47,707. Located in one of the world's largest wheat-producing areas, Salina is a regional trade center for north-central Kansas...

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 2011, except that the brown portions were later painted in harbor mist gray.

External Links

• "The Iron Horse Goes Modern" Popular Mechanics, September 1933 -- detailed article on Union Pacific engineering research that lead to the M-1000
• "Tuning Up A Streamliner" Popular Mechanics, November 1935 pp. 718-719 improvements resulting in the M-1001