[JeremyBarbosa]

>The City was among America’s premier trains, a luxury streamliner that could hit 110 miles per hour while white-jacketed waiters balanced trays of cocktails

I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later (aside from the life-threatening storms, of course). The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!

More on topic, I was surprised to read:

> When the steam generators’ water tanks ran dry, heat disappeared, too.

Weren't there surrounded by frozen water? Is there any reason snow couldn't be used in an emergency to heat the train?

[basementcat]

> I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later (aside from the life-threatening storms, of course). The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!

I don't think people ride the California Zephyr to get from Chicago to the Bay Area as quickly as possible. Most of us spent as much time as possible in the observation car marveling at the Rockies and Sierras.

[pessimizer]

> I don't think people ride the California Zephyr to get from Chicago to the Bay Area as quickly as possible.

Of course they don't. It's too slow. Our rail shouldn't be as bad as it is.

I love that trip, and I've taken it more than twice, oohing and ahhing all the way, but I do not need it to last as long as it does.

[colonelspace]

A few reasons that occur to me:

1. The volume of snow to be collected would have been significantly greater than the resulting water.

2. Heating snow at elevation requires more energy.

3. Perhaps getting snow into the steam generator wasn't so easy.

[glaucon]

> The volume of snow to be collected would have been significantly greater than the resulting water.

Yes, dependent on the nature of the snow but a broad idea is that if you want a litre of water, you need five litres of snow.

[dylan604]

> I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later

Show them the airplane that gets them to the same destination in a couple of hours vs days

[Retric]

It was January 13, 1952 they had airlines.

[worik]

> Weren't there surrounded by frozen water? Is there any reason snow couldn't be used in an emergency to heat the train?

I have tried this.

Snow is not very dense. A lot of snow makes a very small amount of water. Quite an astonishingly small amount of water

I expect the steam generators were quite thirsty, I do not know.

[deepsun]

There were special water filling stations on many stops.

That's why currently running steam engines are better off with diesel pushing them: https://youtu.be/12Zpb0Yh-sM

[Animats]

UP's Big Boy got some upgrades after a year or two of touring the UP system. It no longer needs a Diesel helper. Previously, the helper engine carried the modern Positive Train Control gear, and the steam engine cab had a display connected by a cable to the Diesel helper. Now, UP 4014 has its own PTC gear and antenna in the tender, so it's self-sufficient. UP runs that engine on heavily used main line track, so it needs to be fully connected to safety and dispatching systems.

This was mostly a power problem. UP 4014 had a small steam turbogenerator atop the boiler to power lights and such. Now it has three such generators, and there's enough electric power to run auxiliary equipment.

UP did a serious rebuild on the Big Boy, to original main-line standards. Many parts were fabricated from scratch. It's ready for regular use for decades. Most heritage railroads lack the resources for such major overhauls.

Here's the first test run with no Diesel, in May 2024.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJZ6NO5rhQ

[sonofhans]

Snow is dirty, and getting dirty water into a high pressure steam engine is an awful idea, even in the short term.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Why, where and how is snow dirty?

The much bigger issue that steam is massively less dense that liquid water: roughly a 1:10 ratio. Loading up 10x more snow than you need water is no small task.

[rsynnott]

> The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!

I mean, this is largely a product of the US's general disinterest in and underinvestment in passenger rail; with a modern high speed system it'd be about 10 hours.

10 hours is _probably_ too long to be particularly useful, mind you; people would just fly. The sweet spot for high-speed rail is more in the 5 hour and less range; at that point when you factor in the faffing around involved in getting to airports, going through security, the inevitable delays etc, the train is still faster.

The longest high-speed route in the world is about this length: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing–Kunming_high-speed_tra...

[chrisco255]

It's doubtful that you could build a high speed rail that could fly from Chicago through the Rockies to California in 10 hours. Even more doubtful that the cost benefit would be worth it considering you can fly from Chicago to the Bay Area in 3.5 hours. And you can't factor time spent getting to airport and not factor time to train station and time to stop at other major cities on the way (as trains are wont to do).

The Chinese route you mentioned does not need to go through one of the largest mountain ranges in the world. It's also at least 15-20% shorter than the distance from Chicago to SF, and experiences much less elevation change over the course of the journey. And the wiki article claims it "averages 10.5 to 13.5 hours", so there is a huge amount of variability in time to travel on that route.

[campl3r]

10 hours are perfect for a night train