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Lost in the fog and out of
fuel, Charles Augustus Lindbergh parachuted from his plane, becoming
the first American pilot to have made four emergency jumps. The next day,
September 16, 1926, while waiting for a replacement plane, he went to the
movies in downtown Chicago to see What Price Glory. His reaction to
the flickering images on the big screen changed history and profoundly
affected America’s railroads.
It was the newsreel that
sparked his resolve, showing an early biplane that would be competing for
a $25,000 prize for the first nonstop airplane flight between New York and
France. The result of Lindbergh's movie going was not only his
spectacular landing in Paris on May 21, 1927, but yet another newsreel
that was to lead to a new record in railroading.
Pennsylvania Railroad
Memorandum,
Philadelphia, June 13, 1927, from D. M. Sheaffer,
Chief of
Passenger Transportation, to M. W.
Clement, Vice President, Operations:
A special train for the
International News Reel Corporation was operated from Washington, June
11, 1927, for the transportation of motion picture films of the
reception to Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh at Washington....
Extra 460 East, the Lindbergh Special, and Crew
Waiting
with a full head of steam on track eight at Washington’s Union Station,
PRR Atlantic No. 460 was coupled to B-60-B baggage car No. 7874 and P-70
passenger coach No. 3301. Extra 460 East was ready to go!
In the quest to be the
first to bring the historic film of the Lindbergh ceremonies to New York
City’s Broadway theaters, other newsreel companies had chartered planes to
fly film northward. But the International News Reel Corporation was
determined to transport its film by train, as it had successfully done
after President Coolidge’s inauguration two years earlier.
Aboard the passenger car
were officials of the three PRR divisions the train would cross. The
locomotive, built in 1914, was the line’s newest E6. It had been chosen
for the run at the direction of Pennsy General Manager E. W. Smith, who
had specified a recently overhauled locomotive that had been operated for
a week or two to get any kinks out of it. Number 460, having come out of
refurbishing at the Wilmington shops 10 days earlier, filled the bill.
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The couriers rushed into
the station, the heavy steel cans of film were hoisted into the baggage
car, and the race was on. As David P. Morgan later wrote, when
the Atlantic’s throttle was opened in response to the highball, “Two pairs
of 80-inch drivers bit gritty rail.” Smith had given the hand-picked crew
permission to run the train as fast as they wanted, placing full
confidence in their experience. Freight traffic on the main line, much of
it four-tracked, had been cleared, and the Lindbergh Special had
priority over all other passenger trains.
Able to make the entire
trip on one load of coal, No. 460 was to rely on its tender’s water scoop
to avoid any stops for water to feed the boiler. Alas, the first time the
scoop was lowered, it apparently was damaged by the force of hitting the
water in the track pan at such high speed, and an unscheduled three-minute
stop near Wilmington was needed to repair it and take on water the
conventional way, from a tank. Minutes earlier, one of the planes had
flown overhead, keeping pace with the speeding train for a while, then
mockingly wagging its wings and flying ahead.
Continued,
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Flying one of the planes
was famed stunt pilot “Casey” Jones. Upon reaching the film-developing
plant on Long Island, he spotted the flares that had been lit, circled
around, and parachuted the film onto a waiting canvas below. But had the
plane beat the train?
As Pennsy’s Lindbergh
Special sped north, it reached peak speeds of 115 miles per hour.
Atlantics were known as speedy locomotives, and one of the engineers later
said that the throttle had not been fully opened. Arriving at Manhattan
Transfer station in North Jersey, No. 460 detached, leaving the two cars
to be pulled by DD-1 electric locomotive No. 16 through the tunnel under
the Hudson River into Penn Station. There, the truth became evident when
the baggage-car doors were opened to reveal that the newsreel company had
set up a darkroom on board, staffed with technicians and editors, just as
it had done two years earlier.
The film crew agreed with
the enginemen that at its top speed, the train had ridden as smoothly as
at forty miles per hour, and a good thing it was. The films—developed,
edited, and copied on board—were on theater screens within fifteen
minutes, beating those that came by plane by a good hour, notwithstanding
the acrobatics of Casey Jones. Thus did No. 460 earn its reputation as the
locomotive that beat the plane, forever after being known as the
“Lindbergh Engine.”
The spirited locomotive had
in fact set a number of records, overall and on various stretches. The
entire trip of 224.6 miles to Penn Station at an average speed of
seventy-two miles per hour beat the previous record of the Coolidge
inauguration newsreel run by more than 32 minutes. The three-hour,
seven-minute run stood in contrast with the top passenger-train time on
that route of five hours. The Special’s average speed of 74 miles
per hour over the 216 miles of steam territory was the world’s record for
such a distance and set a record for the Washington-to-Manhattan Transfer
distance that was never beaten while steam ran on that busy corridor.
The story
of this accomplishment made the New York Times the next day but
was largely lost among the pages of other stories of the Washington
extravaganza. But the PRR did not limit its efforts to capitalize on
the exuberance over Lindbergh’s accomplishment. It renamed its best
trains between New York and Lindbergh’s adopted home town of St. Louis
(previously the St. Louisan westbound and the New Yorker
eastbound) The Spirit of St. Louis and named the train’s
observation car the Colonel Lindbergh.
Spirit of St. Louis, heading west.
The railroad had to settle
for Lindbergh’s mother christening the train, since Lindbergh himself was
overwhelmed with such requests. When the day came, however, the crowds
were so great that New York City officials assigned five hundred police
officers to get her to the train. Apparently overwhelmed, she sat
inside the observation car, her back to the crowd, and left it to a friend
to pull aside the green velvet covering the illuminated emblem at the rear
of the car. As the train slowly pulled away from the Pennsylvania Station
platform, Mrs. Lindbergh appeared in the door for a brief wave.
The railroads also asserted
their presence through a resolution of the Association of Railway
Executives, who were in conference at Atlantic City that May. The
association declared its acclaim for Lindbergh’s accomplishment and
offered him “such transportation facilities as may best suit your plans
and convenience when you return to
your home.” Arrangements were made with the Interstate Commerce Commission
whereby any railroad that Lindbergh chose to ride home on could charge him
a nominal tariff of one dollar, an offer similar to that made previously
to Queen Marie of Rumania.
Lindbergh, however, decided to fly ....
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