In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the second year of his first term. His New Deal was attacking the Great Depression on a number of fronts, but the economy was still in disarray. Because of unemployment, depressed wages and the virtual disappearance of travel for pleasure for the vast majority of Americans, rail passenger traffic had also dwindled.
A new train to fire the imagination
However, the railroad industry was about to have a new train to fire the imagination of the...