Transcontinental Dash

The Union Pacific’s streamline train M-10001 prepares to depart Los Angeles on its record-setting transcontinental run across the country to New York’s Grand Central Terminal on October 22, 1934. The lightweight aerodynamic train traveled the 2,298 miles in 56 hours and 55 minutes, slashing 14.5 hours off the old mark.

Officials thought the train could have arrived five hours faster if it hadn’t “loafed” on the run from Chicago to New York, when it only shaved 20 minutes from the regular time for the Twentieth Century Limited.

Either way, the train’s average speed was 60 mph, but over short stretches it attained a speed of 120 mph. As the train, caterpillar-like in its appearance, came into Grand Central, it was welcomed by a band that played and sang “California, Here I Come.”