The Limited Run of the Arizona Limited
By Steve Renzi
t’s early morning, December 17, 1940, and a crowd of 1,500 people has gathered at the Downtown Railroad Depot. They’re waiting for the “Arizona Limited,” the Southern Pacific Railroad’s new “streamliner”, a passenger train, on its maiden trip from Chicago.
The train is scheduled to stop in Tucson for only seven minutes, but this is still a big event for this small town. And Tucson, in 1940, is still a small town. The metro population is about 40,000. There are more dirt roads than paved ones. There are only two banks. Downtown’s tallest building, the Pioneer Hotel, is just twelve stories high.
Tucson, and the rest of the nation, is preoccupied with the wars in Europe and Asia. They seem to be edging closer and closer towards us. Economically, we are finally climbing out of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed to 133 points.
Change comes slowly, in this small desert town. Now, this is about to change. The approaching streamliner is a harbinger of things to come.
The “Arizona Limited,” is being touted as a first-class luxury, “tourist train.” More Americans have money to spend on travel to faraway places, like the American Southwest - “land of the sun.” The train will only operate during the winter tourist season, from December to April, and is an attempt to capture a larger share of the tourism market, promoted by local civic groups, such as the Sunshine Climate Club.
For Tucson, streamliners are an exciting introduction into the Modern Age. For the railroad industry, they are a desperate gamble to save a dying relic - the passenger train.
During the Depression, along with a depressed economy, railroads also faced increasing competition from buses, air travel, and especially, the automobile. In 1919, Americans owned 3.5 million cars. A decade later, we owned 29 million. Americans love their cars, and even during the Depression, we weren’t about to give them up.
As Will Rogers said: “We are the only nation on earth, going to the poorhouse, in an automobile.
At 8:44 a.m., the train arrives. Right on schedule. It has reduced travel time between Chicago to Tucson by over ten hours. The front locomotive is of a futuristic, art deco, streamline design. It pulls behind it spacious Pullman sleeper cars, a lounge car, and an observation car, encased in stainless steel, a new lightweight material. On board is a train stewardess, who is also a registered nurse, to assist mothers traveling with children.
A band from the Santa Rita Hotel begins playing. Local Jaycees fire pistols loaded with blanks into the air. Harry Drachman is in the house. He was there when the very first train arrived, sixty years earlier. The mayor of Tucson, Harry O. Jaastad, says a few words. The governor of Arizona, R.T. Jones, and his wife disembark from the train, shake a few hands, and then quickly get back on. Exactly seven minutes later, the train departs.
Streamliner trains were the epitome of industrial design as an art form. Streamlining, with its wind-resistant curves, flowing horizontal lines, rounded contours and lightweight materials, symbolized speed, science, technology and most of all — modernity.
It was breaking away from the Depression past, to a new future governed by science and technology. In the 1930’s, everything was streamlined: toasters, irons, buildings, vacuum cleaners, cigarette packaging, automobiles and trains.
The first streamliner trains, the Union Pacific’s M-10000 and the Burlington Zephyr, were introduced in 1934, during the Chicago World’s Fair. They were a sensation. After the fair was over, the streamliners went on a cross-country tour. Onlookers, by the tens of thousands, watched as the trains whizzed by, attaining the unbelievable speed of 100 miles per hour.
Other railroad companies joined the streamliner craze. The Southern Pacific Railroad streamlined fourteen locomotives. It was an expensive gamble that didn’t pay off. Although the number of passenger train travelers did increase, it never matched the volume attained during the 1920’s.
Then, the United States entered the Second World War. Luxury train travel ended soon after. The “Arizona Limited,” was discontinued in April, 1942, its run lasting only two years. Almost all passenger trains were pressed into service as troop and equipment carriers during the war.
After the war, our government transportation policy, unlike Europe and Japan, has been to neglect the railway system and instead invest heavily in highway and road construction and air travel infrastructure. Most of the old streamliners were scrapped and destroyed. Very few were saved. They have been called, “America’s lost trains.”
