The Last Day of the Great Trains

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest, Cary Grant escapes from New York by train and meets Eva Marie Saint in an elegant dining car as the Hudson River rolls by in the background. The train was the 20th Century Limited, and when the film was made it was still the “Greatest Train in the World,” as the New York Central Railroad had long boasted. But eight years later, on this day in 1967, the 20th Century completed its final run. And that was the end of the line for regular luxury train travel in the United States.

Railroad executives had conceived the 20th Centuryduring the 1890s. It was the brainchild of George H. Daniels, the New York Central’s chief passenger agent. Fast limited-stop trains between New York and Chicago had been tried as early as 1875, but Daniels understood that combining speed with luxury would both attract customers and give the company cachet. He ordered a special train to carry New Yorkers to the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, making the 960-mile trip in an astounding 20 hours, at speeds sometimes approaching 100 miles an hour.

The train that would achieve that high velocity on a regular schedule made its initial run in June 1902. Some predicted disaster, but the 20th Century benefited from new heavier tracks, flattened grades, and redesigned cars. The barbed-wire millionaire John W. “Bet-a-Million” Gates traveled on its inaugural trip and suggested in the Windy City that the train was making New York a suburb of Chicago. Back in New York, according to legend, he averred that it had made Chicago a suburb of that city.

The train kept rigorously to its timetable, which at various times set the trip at 20, 18, or 16.5 hours. Daniels emphasized in his flurry of promotional literature that the steam locomotives didn’t even stop to take on water for their boilers. Instead they scooped it from long pans laid beneath the tracks.

Patrons left Chicago in the afternoon and arrived in New York the next morning, traveling what was called the water-level route, along the Great Lakes, down the Mohawk Valley to Albany, and south along the edge of the Hudson. They enjoyed luxury and service on a par with that of the finest ocean liners and hotels.

“No effort or expense has been spared,” gushed one of Daniels’s press releases. The cars were “finished in mahogany, Circassian walnut, satinwood and primavera.” Passengers ate in lavish dining cars; they relaxed in a library, a buffet-lounge, drawing rooms, and the famous observation car at the rear, with its open-air platform. They each had a room or roomette in one of the train’s Pullman cars.

The service was impeccable. A lady’s maid was available, as well as a valet to smooth a wrinkled suit and a secretary to take dictation. Electric lighting brightened the entire train. Telephones became available on board when the train was in stations as early as 1905. Attendants pinned a boutonniere on each gentleman as he entered the dining car for breakfast. In the barbershop, passengers confident of the smooth ride bared their necks to a straight razor while hurtling down the tracks at 80 miles an hour. When the train arrived at Grand Central Terminal, attendants literally rolled out a red carpet, and the patrons exited amid gaggles of celebrity watchers.

The curious might glimpse Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean disembarking with the Hope Diamond dangling from her neck. Or they might see William Jennings Bryan or Theodore Roosevelt, or J. P. Morgan, or actresses such as Lillian Russell and Gloria Swanson.

The idea was not just to make money—in later years the train ran at a loss—but to give the New York Central prestige. The firm felt the need to keep pace with the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran a similar luxury train to Chicago, the Broadway Limited, along a different route. To head off an all-out speed contest, the two companies agreed to keep to identical schedules.

During its heyday, the 20th Century Limited was a national institution. It inspired songs and poems and was featured in the radio drama Grand Central Station, which entertained listeners for a decade and a half. It served as the setting of the Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play Twentieth Century, which became a movie directed by Howard Hawks. It was said that some devotees took regular jaunts to nowhere on the line, riding from New York to Albany (where the train switched engines in its early days) and back just for the ambience.

The New York Central, like other railroads, invested heavily in equipment and facilities during the booming 1920s and entered the Depression carrying a heavy burden of debt. Even so, the 20th Century reached its epitome of rakish elegance in 1938, when it introduced streamlined engines styled by the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, and sleek Art Deco appointments inside the cars to match.

After World War II, America’s railroads were bedeviled with a host of problems. Citizens had fallen in love with the automobile, and the government was pouring public subsidies into a grand program of highway construction. At the same time, the Interstate Commerce Commission strictly regulated rail fares and limited the elimination of unprofitable lines. Labor costs rose. And air travel now set the standard for speed.

To save money, managers deferred maintenance. The 20th Century held to its high standards, but ordinary passengers on ordinary trains began to encounter dirty cars, peeling paint, and rough rides. In 1967 New York Central officials abruptly announced that the 20th Century Limited would cease to operate. With appropriate irony, the last train out of New York that December 2 was delayed by a derailment elsewhere on the track, and the following day it pulled into Chicago nine hours late.

The New York Central itself soon followed its flagship down the rabbit hole of history, merging with the Pennsylvania less than two months later. The resulting Penn Central lasted only a little more than two years before it declared bankruptcy. In 1971 the government created Amtrak (officially the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) to take over passenger service across the country.

Today, with gasoline prices soaring and congestion at airports delaying flights, some are taking a second look at rail’s potential for efficiency and convenience. Ticket revenue at Amtrak was up 11 percent in fiscal year 2006; this October Congress voted to increase its annual passenger rail subsidy from $1.2 billion to $1.9 billion. Though rolling stock as opulent as that of the 20th Century Limited will probably never return, one day rail may again be a popular and self-sustaining way to travel in America.