20th Century Limited - History

History

Inaugurated on June 17, 1902 by patent medicine salesman turned passenger agent George Henry Daniels, the train offered a barbershop and secretarial services. The train arrived in Chicago at Union Station three minutes ahead of schedule. At that time, the trip took twenty hours, cutting four hours off the time previously required. The New York Times report laid great stress on the routine nature of the trip, with no special procedures being followed and no extra efforts being made to break records. It stated that there "...was no excitement along the way," and quoted a railroad official's claim "...it is a perfectly practical run and will be continued," and engineer William Gates maintaining "This schedule can be made without any difficulty. I can do it every time, barring accidents."

The schedule dropped to 18 hours in June 1905, the same month that the train wrecked (June 21, 1905) on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern R.R. line at Mentor, Ohio. After more changes it reverted to 20 hours in 1912 and was unchanged until 1932. In 1935 it dropped to 16 hours 30 min each way, and to 16 hours flat on June 15, 1938, when lightweight cars took over.

In its heyday, regular passengers included Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Lillian Russell, "Diamond Jim" Brady, the elder J. P. Morgan, Enrico Caruso, and Nellie Melba.

In the 1920s the New York to Chicago fare was $32.70 plus the extra fare of $9.60, plus the Pullman charge (e.g. $9 for a lower berth), for a total charge of $51.30, equal to $680 today. For that one received a bed closed off from the aisle by curtains; a compartment to oneself would have cost much more. In 1928, the peak year, the train earned revenue of $10 million and was believed to be the most profitable train in the world.

In 1938 industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss was commissioned by the New York Central to design streamlined train sets in Art Deco style, with the locomotive and passenger cars rendered in blues and grays (the colors of the New York Central). The streamlined sets were inaugurated on June 15, 1938. His design was probably the most famous American passenger train of all time. As were many similar long haul express passenger trains through the mid-1960s, the "20th Century Ltd" carried an East Division (E.D.) Railway Post Office (R.P.O.) car operated by the Railway Mail Service (RMS) of the United States Post Office Department which was staffed by USPOD clerks as a "fast mail" on each of its daily runs. The mails received by, postmarked, processed, sorted, and dispatched from the "20th Cemtury Ltd's" RPOs were either canceled or backstamped (as appropriate) during the trip by hand applied circular date stamps (CDS) reading "N.Y. & CHI. R.P.O. E.D. 20TH CEN.LTD." and the train's number: "25" (NY-CHI) or "26" (CH-NY).

After the Second World War a new diesel-electric powered trainset was commissioned. Inaugurated by General Dwight D. Eisenhower in September, 1948, it was this set featured in postwar films such as North by Northwest and The Band Wagon.

For much of its history before 1957 the all-Pullman train made station stops only at Grand Central Terminal and Croton-Harmon for New York–area passengers and LaSalle Street Station and Englewood for Chicago-area passengers. These traveled in as many as seven sections, of which the first was named The Advance 20th Century Limited. If trains ran on schedule they would pass halfway not far west of Buffalo Central Terminal. Trains left Grand Central on the New York and Harlem Railroad tracks, then took the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad to reach the New York Central's main Water Level Route. It passed north along the Hudson River and west to Buffalo, then southwest and west on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway along the south shore of Lake Erie, and north into Chicago, merging with the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad at Englewood. In case of track closures, alternate routes such as the New York and Harlem Railroad from New York to Chatham, NY and Boston & Albany Railroad from there to Albany, NY, or New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railroad between Schenectady and Buffalo, could be used.

The 20th Century Limited was featured prominently in Alfred Hitchcock's celebrated North by Northwest. The interior of "car #10006" as seen in the film was however a set built by MGM Studios.

By the late 1950s the train was in decline. On December 2, 1967, at 6:00 P.M., the half-full train left Grand Central Terminal track 34 for the last time. As always, carnations were given to men and perfume and flowers to women boarding the train. The next day, it straggled into LaSalle Street Station in Chicago 9 hours 50 minutes late due to a freight derailment near Conneaut, Ohio, necessitating a detour over the Nickel Plate (New York, Chicago and St. Louis) Railroad.

Today Amtrak operates the Lake Shore Limited between New York's Penn Station and Union Station in Chicago. Otherwise it follows a route similar to the 20th Century's, except at Whiting, Indiana (near Chicago), where it switches to the former Pennsylvania Railroad's Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway.