Olympian Hiawatha
The Olympian Hiawatha was the luxury train of the US railroad company Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ( Milwaukee Road for short ), which ran between 1947 and 1961 from Chicago to Seattle / Tacoma ( Washington state ) on the northwest coast of the Pacific . He was distinguished above all by his pulpit car designed by Brooks Stevens and the "Super Domes" observation car introduced in 1952 .
Appearance
In its very short period of use, the train had four different liveries. The first was probably the most complicated, the orange car bodies had brown ribbon windows with a narrow decorative strip in the passenger area. In the area of the ends of the car, the decorative strip swung from over to under the windows. This painting was very complex and was replaced after just one year. The roofs were gray, the car bodies orange, the ribbon windows all brown and also below the roof was a narrow strip with the gold-colored lettering "The Milwaukee Road". At the beginning of the fifties the scheme was simplified again, the roofs were now black, the upper narrow decorative stripe was removed and the lettering was now brown on an orange background. With the takeover of the through trains of the Union Pacific between Chicago and Omaha, Milwaukee introduced the yellow and gray color scheme of the UP and also applied this to the Hiawatha car. They carried this scheme until the end of passenger traffic.
The train was originally pulled by a triple unit of streamlined diesel locomotives from Fairbanks-Morse , the so-called Erie-built . However, these locomotives were dispatched to the Chicago area and the Twin Cities when there was a coal workers' strike there. They never returned. From then on, the trains were pulled by the standard passenger locomotives, on the electrified sections of the electric locomotives.
A special highlight of the train was the combined sleeping-salon-viewing-end car, called "Skytop": They were unique cars, the entire semicircular end of which was glazed and thus allowed a very good view of the landscape that the train passed through. Such cars had only been used on Milwaukee Road, no other railroad company in the USA. The partly oval windows or circular porthole windows of the doors and the chrome-plated emblem at the end of the train and the start of the train (the diesel locomotives) made the train an exceptional phenomenon.
In 1952, the “Milwaukee Road” introduced an innovation that had never been seen before on any railroad in the USA: a wagon with a transparent pulpit that extended the entire length of the car and thus served as a viewing car for 60 to 70 passengers . These cars, known as “Super Domes”, were six-axle and the heaviest streamliner cars ever built. There was also a cocktail lounge on the lower floor. The combined “Touralux” sleeper / seated carriages that were only reserved for women and children were also unique - also a special feature of the Olympian Hiawatha. This combined interior was not particularly successful, however; the Touralux wagons were quickly converted into either whole sleeping cars or seating cars.
The Olympian Hiawatha was an instant hit with the public and quickly became one of the most recognizable luxury long-distance passenger trains in the United States. Connoisseurs also call the train the most original streamliner train in the USA, because compared to other trains it had an unusual and exotic appearance.
commitment
The Olympian Hiawatha drove under this name for the first time on June 29, 1947 and was no longer continued in this form after 1961. Previously, the best train on Milwaukee Road was the Olympian, which consisted of heavy six-axle wagons and was pulled by steam locomotives. In 1947, the new streamlined cars, which had four axles and were air-conditioned, were procured. Until 1949, however, the Olympian Hiawatha still drove the old six-axle sleeping cars (with the exception of the Touralux sleeping cars), as Pullman , the manufacturer of the sleeping and viewing cars, was initially busy with other orders. In 1952, Milwaukee Road was the first railway company in North America to purchase so-called full dome cars, i.e. observation cars with a viewing platform extending over the entire length of the car. When these so-called Super Domes were delivered, the Olympian Hiawatha was complete. One of the six cars derailed on a test drive in Montana in 1953 and burned out due to contact with the overhead line. A new car was then built from parts of the old car.
From 1953 to around 1957 the train experienced its heyday. The train traveled through one of the most beautiful American landscapes: first from Chicago through the Mississippi River valley to St. Paul and then across the prairies of South Dakota , North Dakota and Montana. The most spectacular section began in western Montana: the crossing of the Rocky Mountains , a highlight of the trip that the Milwaukee Road considered so important that the timetable was designed so that this section of the journey was always covered by day, not at night.
After crossing several mountain ranges, the train finally reached Washington State via Idaho , where a passage through the semi-desert was followed by overcoming the densely wooded Cascade Mountains . After a long tunnel, the train finally reached the Pacific and ended its journey in Seattle. From there he backed up to Tacoma because there were no turning opportunities in Seattle. It was said that the Olympian Hiawatha served the most beautiful and varied route of all trains going to the northwest.
attitude
However, all of these reasons were ultimately not convincing. The Olympian Hiawatha was in strong competition with the "North Coast Limited" of the Northern Pacific Railway and the "Empire Builder" of the Great Northern Railway . Their trains offered at least as much comfort and luxury and were also faster on their way from Chicago to Seattle than the Olympian Hiawatha . They also had more observation cars than the Olympian Hiawatha , and the “Super Dome” full-roof observation car also had problems with the air conditioning, which made it unbearable to sit in the glazed observation pulpit, especially in the summer because of the heat. Last but not least, the "Milwaukee Road" found itself in greater financial difficulties than its rival railway lines "Northern Pacific" and "Great Northern". But the last push was given to the train by air and automobile traffic, which had increased so much in the USA since the late 1950s that the traditional long-distance transcontinental luxury trains suffered greatly and the number of passengers dropped drastically.
The train normally consisted of up to 15 cars, but in 1959 it had shrunk to just 9 passenger cars and no longer had a lookout car. The Olympian Hiawatha drove under this name for the last time on May 22, 1961. A day later, the "successor", train numbers 15 and 16, began operating between Minneapolis and Deer Lodge . This route was shortened in 1964 to Aberdeen (South Dakota) and completely discontinued in 1969.
After the discontinuation, most of the rolling stock was handed over to the City trains operated jointly by Milwaukee Road and the Union Pacific . The six Skytop pulpit cars and six of the Super Domes were used in these trains from then on. In 1964 they were sold to the Canadian National Railway , where they were mainly used between Montreal and Halifax , but also in the Super Continental from Toronto to Vancouver . The pulpit cars were decommissioned in September 1971 after their last missions on the Gaspé –Montreal and Jasper – Prince Rupert routes . For fire protection reasons (no door at the end of the car and only one entrance) they were no longer used in Canada; two copies were scrapped, the other four returned to the USA. The Super Domes came to Via Rail via the CN . Today they are used by tourist and excursion railways, provided they are still operational.
From 1971 to 1979 Amtrak operated the North Coast Hiawatha , a three-times-a-week long-distance train that used the tracks of the Milwaukee Road between Chicago and the Twin Cities and, to the west of it, the Northern Pacific Railway . The name was a mixture of the North Coast Limited of the Northern Pacific and the Olympian Hiawatha.
Due to a lack of maintenance and for business reasons, electrical operation was discontinued until 1974. Weakened by bankruptcy, Milwaukee Road closed its "Puget Sound Extension" in 1980, and with it most of the former railway line. Parts of the route have been converted into bicycle paths in the scenic sections . The “Route of the Hiawatha Trail” was created in the Bitterroot Mountains and the “ Iron Horse State Park ” at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State .
Train composition
Here is a typical train composition from 1953:
Erie FM 3-unit diesel locomotive and “ Little Joe ” electric locomotive (the electric locomotives were only used on the two electrified mountain routes) with 15 cars: 1. Post car # 1208; 2. luggage trolley # 1336; 3. luggage sleeper car # 1309 (for train crew); 4. seating car # 480; 5. seating car # 481; 6. seating car # 482; 7. “Tip Top Grill” snack bar lounge car # 164; 8. dining car # 122; 9. Toralux sleeping car "Mount St.Helens"; 10. Toralux “Mount Tacoma” sleeping car; 11. “Lake Coeur d'Alene” sleeping car; 12. Lake Pend Oreille sleeper car; 13. Yellowstone River double-decker sleeping car; 14. Full roof view car with cocktail lounge “Super Dome” # 53; 15. “Skytop” sleeping / salon / viewing end car “Gold Creek”.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b CMSP & P (Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul & Pacific) "Milwaukee Road" 'Super' domes. In: TrainWeb. Retrieved November 4, 2012 .
- ↑ Tom Murray: The Milwaukee Road . Voyageur Press, 2005, p. 86.
- ↑ Ex Milw skytop lounge and dome cars. In: Railroad.net. October 7, 2011, accessed on November 4, 2012 (English, contribution to discussion forum).