Technology
and the Streamlined American Passenger Train
– Presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Society for the History
of Technology, October 2006, in Las Vegas, NV
This
paper examines US passenger train technology – and its relationship
to industrial design and regulatory economics – as the driver behind
the major shifts in the public’s views of passenger train travel
from 1935 through the 1970 creation of Amtrak. Emerging technologies
in the 1930s allowed railroads to offer a new level of service on-board
passenger trains. However, the limitations of nascent devices and
unproven designs, combined with the lack of capital to replace trouble-prone
systems, created a high demand for maintenance that frustrated railroads’
attempts to reduce costs by altering servicing practices in the
1960s. Ultimately, increasing passenger complaints, rooted in a
desire to return to the good passenger service of the 1940s and
’50s, would become a major factor contributing to the 1970 creation
of Amtrak. In its first years of operation, Amtrak attempted to
reinvent the experience of passenger train travel by fundamentally
changing the technology used to power passenger cars. By the mid-1980s,
Amtrak had largely succeeded in its mission to improve the reliability
and modernity of passenger train service. However, the lack of sustained
support from the late 1980s through the present has recreated many
of the conditions that Amtrak was created to solve.
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