Pennsy Streamliners: The Blue Ribbon Fleet 4

Pennsy Streamliners: The Blue Ribbon Fleet
By Joe Welsh

hardcover 160 pages

This book traces the rise and ultimate fall of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s lightweight streamlined passenger cars, the Fleet of Modernism. Designed by Richard Loewy, the cars exemplified the modern spirit and were the most beautiful and luxurious passenger cars of their time. How they came to be, how they influenced American design, and how they were ultimately abandoned is the subject of this fascinating book. Includes many ads for the Pennsy’s various named trains.

Scarcely 50 years ago, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest and most important rail passenger carrier in the nation. Its fleet of more than 700 trains, including its premier east-west Blue Ribbon Fleet, carried presidents and movie stars, the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy, across the countryside at high speed and in style.

But those days of glamor and grace were short-lived. Railroad historian Joe Welsh invites us to look over the shoulder of the Pennsy president as he plans strategy against the New York Central; he takes us alongside the drafting table of Raymond Loewy, designer of the Fleet of Modernism; and he lets us listen in on the boardroom debates that ultimitely seal the fate of the Blue Ribbon Fleet.

Employee interviews, Pennsy documents, rare color and black-and-white photos, and period advertising all give the reader a sense of what it was like to ride the Pennsylvania Railroad when America traveled by train.