HSR and Streamliners: A contrast in design, purpose, and ethos

High Speed Rail, aka HSR. Japan has had it since 1964. France since 1981. Italy since 1978. China since 2007. The half-century old concepts and technology are being continually revised and updated in these venues.

Streamliners in North America had their beginnings with the Zephyr and M-10000 trains of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy and Union Pacific railroads respectively. This was in 1933 and 1934. They lasted until the start of Amtrak in 1971—less than 40 years. It can be successfully argued that nothing operated by Amtrak today, with the possible exception of Acela, constitutes a true Streamliner.

America is still waiting for true HSR. There are projects in California (the largest and most ambitious), Texas, and Illinois. There are proposals for HSR connections between major cities in states with sufficient population density. In my opinion, Americans will see nothing like Streamliners or HSR. Ever.

The future will be something different. By the time California, with an area only about twenty thousand square miles more than Japan, has HSR operating over half Japan’s route mileage, the latter’s system of Shinkansen trains will have reached the century mark. If California ever gets the first one going. By the time Amtrak (read: Congress) spends enough money to make the Northeast Corridor into true HSR, hyperloop may be the preferred public surface mode with rail relegated to freight-only status.

Streamliners, defined as lightweight, aerodynamically-styled, efficiently-powered passenger trains with exceptional amenities, were invented at the lowest depths of the Great Depression. American railroads recognized that pulling around heavyweight steel cars with decades-old, inefficient steam locomotives cost money they didn’t have. Designs were developed that would increase efficiency as well as inspire the public to spend money they didn’t necessarily have to spare to ride the trains.

In contrast, HSR has been designed primarily for speed; aerodynamic, yes, but borrowing heavily from aircraft construction not only in external respects but also in interior design and materials. While HSR gets people from one place to another in times more competitive with air travel, it does not necessarily do this in the most fuel-efficient manner. Aerodynamics or not, it stands to reason that hurtling an electric train along at 200 miles per hour, as contrasted with 70 or so for the average American long-distance train, is going to use up more power per passenger-mile or ton-mile.

I’ve touched on it, but let’s look deeper into purpose. HSR not only wants to reduce travel times, but offer a competitive edge against air and highway travel. How can it do that if it uses more fuel? Well, though it will use more (electricity or fuel) than a non-Acela Amtrak train, HSR won’t burn more per passenger than an airliner or private passenger auto, or even an intercity bus.

Although the purpose of the streamliner was also to make travel by train more competitive and to do so by making it more efficient, there was nothing like the present push for fuel-efficiency back then. While designers embraced the aerodynamic, coupled with the art deco, they didn’t change the train to emulate an airliner. The airliners of the time were small, but their seating capacity was generous, and they still had to be accessed in airports that were nowhere near the centers of towns. The streamliners provided “downtown to downtown” transportation, something desirable in their day. Current functioning HSR installations also do this, even in England and France where they mostly have to slow down and use lower-speed rights of way to get to the centers of cities.

Within the first few years of the 1950s, railroad management realized that they could not hold on to passengers solely on the basis of beautiful, quiet, end efficient trains. They began concerted efforts to turn the best of the long-distance streamliners—The California Zephy, The Golden State, The Empire Builder, and Union Pacific’s City Trains—into tourist destinations in their own rights. Advertising of the time touted the beautiful scenery available from special cars, and the scheduling of the train for the optimum daylight viewing time. It also proposed that dining, clubbing, and just relaxing on the train made a concerted whole of a superior form of vacation—one without a specific destination. Additionally, specific destinations were never discouraged, making taking the trip by train a twofer.

In contrast, HSR has never suggested that scenery is the sole reason to use it. With HSR, speed takes a backseat to luxury and leisure. In fact, in those parts of the world where HSR is functional, tourists are encouraged to use more conventional rail for sightseeing and access to vacation spots. HSR is there to get the passenger from one city to another, and to do it almost as fast as airlines and faster than driving.

While I doubt North America will ever see HSR in the configuration and with the utility that it has in other parts of the world, I think there is still a place for the luxury streamliner. Canada and VIA have tried this in various forms, including cruise trains, with limited success, in part because Canada’s lawmakers and legal requirements for continuation of passenger rail are even stingier than in the U.S. The appearance of more luxury additional cars, run by private operators, on certain Amtrak routes suggests that there is a market for it. Amtrak’s Auto Train is another tourist-oriented route that seems to work. Any or all of these configurations, properly priced for the market, and properly tricked out with the amenities that streamliners should have, could lead to new true streamliners in America’s future.

For my money, I’d rather see Congress fund the latter than throw it down the rathole that HSR is appearing to be. We’ll watch California, though, and see what happens.

©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)