Union Pacific M-10000 Streamliner: History, Consist & City of Salina

Last revised: August 19, 2026

On February 12, 1934, Union Pacific took delivery of a three-car aluminum train at the Pullman plant south of Chicago. The railroad called it simply The Streamliner. The shop number was M-10000. It was the first lightweight, internal-combustion streamliner handed over to an American railroad—about two months before the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy unveiled Budd’s stainless-steel Pioneer Zephyr (9900) in Philadelphia.

Union Pacific M-10000 at Chicago Union Station in 1934

A colorized image of Union Pacific's M-10000 on display at Chicago Union Station's Track 28 in 1934.

That “first” needs a footnote. M-10000 won the delivery race. The Zephyr won the better engine, the better metal, the Dawn-to-Dusk Dash, and—by a few weeks—the first regular-service assignment. M-10000 still matters. It taught the country the word streamliner, put Armour Yellow on a main-line train, proved an articulated aluminum set could tour 12,000-plus miles without a road failure, and launched the Union Pacific City fleet that followed. It was also a mechanical dead end: a spark-ignited distillate prime mover that was never going to match a true diesel, parked on a 187-mile Kansas secondary, and melted for aircraft aluminum in 1942.

At a Glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Union Pacific
Shop / set number	M-10000 (“1st Train” in UP streamliner numbering)
Public names	The Streamliner (1934–36); City of Salina (lettered from March 13, 1936); nicknames “Little Zip,” “Tin Worm”
Builder	Pullman-Standard (carbody); Electro-Motive Corporation (propulsion system); Winton Engine Corporation (prime mover); General Electric (generator, traction motors, controls)
Ordered	May 1933 — $230,997
Delivered	February 12, 1934 (trial runs Pullman–Michigan City, Ind., February 11)
Formation	3-car fully articulated set: power-baggage-RPO + 56-seat coach + 52-seat buffet-coach
Power	Winton 191-A spark-ignited distillate V-12, 600 hp; gasoline-electric (distillate-electric) drive
Regular service	Kansas City, Mo.–Salina, Kans., 187 miles; trains 99 / 100; January 31, 1935 – December 16, 1941
Fate	Sold for scrap February 13, 1942 (Aaron Ferer & Sons, Omaha); cut up April 1942 for wartime aluminum

Why Union Pacific Ordered a Tube of Aluminum

The Depression gutted passenger traffic. Heavyweight Pullmans and steam locomotives were expensive to run on thin branch and secondary schedules. Union Pacific’s own analysis in 1933 concluded that those trains were no longer paying their way, especially off the Overland Route spine. The railroad wanted something lighter, faster, cheaper to crew, and spectacular enough to put people back in the seats—or at least back on the platform staring.

Internal-combustion passenger cars were not new on the UP. E.H. Harriman had bought more than a hundred McKeen motor cars beginning in 1905: gasoline railcars with a knife-edge “wind-splitter” nose that looked, in hindsight, like a primitive streamliner. They were unreliable. The idea survived. Chairman W. Averell Harriman (E.H.’s son) and president Carl R. Gray pushed Pullman-Standard for a three-car articulated set with a carbody nobody had seen on a Class I main line.

A 1932 Pullman experiment pointed the way. Aviation designer William B. Stout had adapted airplane-fuselage thinking to the Railplane: tapered cross-section, tubular aluminum space frame, Duralumin skin. Union Pacific noticed. The M-10000’s shape was then refined in University of Michigan wind-tunnel tests. Trucks followed German passenger-bogie practice studied by UP chief engineer A.H. Fetters. Electro-Motive, still a systems house rather than a locomotive factory, specified the power plant and farmed out the hardware.

Design: Articulated, Aluminum, Turret Cab

The finished set was 204 feet 5 inches long, 9 feet 3 inches wide, and only about 12 feet high at the cab—low and narrow by heavyweight standards. Power car M-10000 measured 71 feet 9 inches; intermediate coach 10400 was 58 feet; tail buffet-coach 10401 was 71 feet. Shared Jacobs bogies between cars made the train one mechanical unit (AAR wheel arrangement B-(2+2)-2): a powered two-axle truck under the nose, two unpowered articulated trucks, and a trailing truck under the tail. You did not cut this train apart in a yard and fill it with extra coaches.

Aluminum body-and-frame construction dropped the weight to roughly 94 short tons (about 85 metric tonnes)—on the order of one conventional heavyweight passenger car. Contemporary publicity sometimes rounded that figure; older summaries that put the set at 124 tons overstate it. The point stands either way: three cars, one car’s worth of mass.

The face was the turret cab. A bulbous nose carried a large, vertically divided parabolic air-intake grille. The engineer sat high, behind that intake, with a headlight and a vertical marker on the roof. EMC later borrowed the high, behind-the-nose cab idea for E-units and F-units, minus the giant front grille. The rear of 10401 was a tapered round-end with a small galley—it looked like an observation car from the platform, but there was no open lounge looking out the tail. Meals came to your seat.

Union Pacific M-10000 The Streamliner on display in Denver Colorado March 4 1934 Otto Perry photo

M-10000 on display in Denver, March 4, 1934, during the national exhibition tour. Otto Perry photo, colorized by Patty Allison.

Power: Why a Distillate Engine, Not a Diesel

EMC and Winton already knew diesel was the future. Union Pacific did not trust the diesels of 1933 to be ready for a high-speed passenger set, so the railroad specified a spark-ignited distillate engine instead of a true compression-ignition diesel. Distillate is a heavier petroleum fraction than gasoline; it still needs spark plugs. Winton delivered the 191-A, a 45-degree V-12 two-stroke rated 600 horsepower. It is unrelated to the later Winton 201-A diesels that powered the Zephyrs and early EMC units.

The 191-A drove a General Electric generator; two GE traction motors turned the leading truck. Air-brake compressor and control gear were GE as well. On a 94-ton train, 600 horsepower was enough for 90–110 mph in testing. A conventional steam passenger train of the same era needed several thousand horsepower to do the same work because it was hauling several times the weight. The bargain was mechanical: distillate engines were fussy, not built for a million main-line miles, and a poor bet the moment a reliable diesel existed.

That is the central engineering contrast with Burlington’s Zephyr. Budd used stainless shot-welding and a Winton diesel. Pullman used aluminum and a distillate spark engine. M-10000 looked as modern. It was not as durable.

Consist

Car	Role	Notes
M-10000	Power / baggage / RPO	600 hp Winton 191-A; turret cab; Railway Post Office and baggage (period figures cite about 25,000 lb of mail/baggage capacity)
10400	Coach	56 seats
10401	Buffet-coach (tail)	52 seats; compact galley; round-end; meals served at seats
Exhibition extra (1934 only): sleeper *Overland Trail* (8 sections, 1 compartment, 1 bedroom) inserted for the Century of Progress; later transferred to M-10001 / City of Portland. Four-car exhibition length: 268 feet 5 inches.

Total revenue seating in the three-car set: 108. Air conditioning, a still-novel amenity in 1934, was part of the sales pitch. The railroad’s slogan was “Tomorrow’s Train Today!”

Specifications

Specification	M-10000 trainset
Builder (carbody)	Pullman-Standard, Pullman, Ill.
Propulsion integrator	Electro-Motive Corporation
Prime mover	Winton 191-A, spark-ignited distillate V-12, 600 hp
Transmission	Electric (GE generator and two traction motors on leading truck)
Carbody	Aluminum / Duralumin, integrated body-and-frame
Articulation	Fully articulated; Jacobs bogies
Wheel arrangement	B-(2+2)-2
Length over set	204 ft 5 in (62.31 m)
Width	9 ft 3 in
Height (cab)	11 ft 11.5 in (coaches slightly lower)
Weight	~94 short tons (sources also cite ~85 tons; not 124)
Seats	108 (56 + 52)
Maximum recorded speed	110 mph on the 1934 exhibition tour
Regular-service route	187 miles, Kansas City Union Station–Salina, Kans.
Scheduled time (1938)	3 hours 30 minutes (No. 99 westbound)

Armour Yellow, Leaf Brown, and a Safety Argument

The first livery was dark canary / Armour Yellow sides with a Leaf Brown (sometimes described as golden brown) nose, roof, rear, and skirting, separated by red striping. Union Pacific later painted the nose yellow to match the rest of the early streamliner fleet; the combination evolved into today’s Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray.

The yellow was not originally a brand exercise. The railroad wanted motorists and pedestrians to see a fast, quiet train that did not announce itself with a steam exhaust plume. High-speed lightweight equipment on grade crossings was a new liability. Bright yellow was the engineering answer. It became the most recognizable railroad paint scheme in the West by accident of safety.

Union Pacific M-10000 The Streamliner on display at the 1934 Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago Canary Yellow and Golden Brown livery

America’s first delivered streamliner: Union Pacific’s M-10000 at the 1934 Century of Progress in Chicago. Pullman-Standard aluminum carbody, Winton distillate power, and the yellow-and-brown paint that became the railroad’s signature. Photo colorized by Patty Allison.

Delivery and the National Tour (1934)

Pullman finished two trial runs to Michigan City, Indiana, on February 11. Harriman accepted the set the next day and, while he was at it, announced follow-on orders: one six-car train and two nine-car trains—the future long-distance City streamliners, still on paper. Railway Age devoted a twelve-page feature to the design in its February 3, 1934 issue, before the public had even walked through the cars.

Exhibition started immediately. Washington Union Station (President Roosevelt inspected the train), Baltimore, Pittsburgh via the B&O, Detroit, Chicago, then Omaha. From Omaha on March 2, 1934, M-10000 began a true national tour: 12,625 miles on 14 railroads, 65 cities in Thomas R. Lee’s accounting. President Gray later told an August 1934 audience the twelve-week tour had covered nearly 13,000 miles, 22 states, 68 scheduled exhibition stops, 1,195,609 people through the train, and perhaps ten million more watching it pass. No road failures. No accidents. The set was a rolling test bed as much as a billboard.

The stunt everyone still reprints happened at Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam) on March 9, 1934. During a Las Vegas layover, UP ran the train over the Six Companies government railroad to the dam face, posed it rolling through a 30-foot penstock pipe, and opened it at Boulder City. Denver saw it March 4. Portland, Spokane, Butte, and a string of Nebraska towns followed. The train was back in Omaha April 11. On April 19 it made a 445-mile Omaha–Gering Chamber of Commerce special—its first quasi-revenue move, still months from a timetable.

Do not confuse this tour with a Chicago–Los Angeles speed run. M-10000 never held a 24-hour transcontinental schedule. The headline 38-hour-50-minute Los Angeles–Chicago–New York dash belonged to the second set, M-10001, delivered in October 1934 and later assigned as the first City of Portland. Older versions of this page mixed those stories. The little three-car train was a showpiece and, later, a Kansas local. The sleeper-equipped M-10001 was the Overland Route experiment.

Century of Progress vs. the Zephyr

In May 1934 the train picked up sleeper Overland Trail at Pullman and went on display at Chicago’s Century of Progress. Period counts put more than 565,000 visitors through the cars at the fair (Lee notes the true number was probably higher). It was still the star until May 26, when Burlington’s Zephyr 9900 finished its Denver–Chicago Dawn-to-Dusk Dash in 13 hours 5 minutes and rolled into the same fair. Stainless steel and a diesel had the better second act. M-10000 left the fair July 12 for evaluation back at Pullman. The sleeper came off and later joined M-10001.

That pairing—yellow aluminum tube and stainless Zephyr—is the photograph that defines 1934 passenger rail. They later stood together at Kansas City Union Station in revenue years: two answers to the same problem, built months apart, one of which still exists.

Union Pacific M-10000 City of Salina and Chicago Burlington and Quincy Pioneer Zephyr side by side at Kansas City Union Station 1930s

M-10000, by then the City of Salina, and Burlington’s Pioneer Zephyr at Kansas City Union Station in the 1930s. Two 1934 streamliners, two builders, two fuels. Photo colorized by Patty Allison.

Regular Service: Trains 99 and 100

Union Pacific put M-10000 to work on the Kansas City–Topeka–Salina corridor rather than on the Overland. The assignment made sense for a 108-seat, three-car set and a fussy prime mover: 187 miles, a city pair that could fill a local, no mountain grades, and a place to hide if the engine misbehaved. Some sources date first regular trips to January 1, 1935; the date used in most roster lists, and on this site, is January 31, 1935. In the public timetable it was simply Nos. 99 (westbound) and 100 (eastbound). Newspapers and passengers called it The Streamliner. It was not lettered City of Salina until a March 13, 1936 instruction from W.M. Jeffers ordered the same style of name as the City of Portland.

Scheduled running time was 3 hours 30 minutes Kansas City to Salina. That is an average of about 53 mph including station work—not a record dash, but a different world from a steam local on the same line. Crews and fans called the set Little Zip. Less affectionately, the Tin Worm.

At a Glance — City of Salina assignment

Item	Detail
Route	Kansas City, Mo.–Topeka–Salina, Kans.
Distance	187 miles
Travel time	3 hours 30 minutes (1938 public timetable)
Train numbers	99 westbound / 100 eastbound
End terminals	Kansas City Union Station; Salina, Kans., depot
Service dates	January 31, 1935 – December 16, 1941

Union Pacific City of Salina public timetable circa 1940 trains 99 and 100 Kansas City to Salina

City of Salina public timetable, circa 1940. American-Rails.com collection.

Public timetable (June 1938)

Read down / leave (No. 99)	Milepost	Location	Read up / arrive (No. 100)
5:00 p.m. (Dp)	0.0	Kansas City, Mo. (CT)	10:30 a.m. (Ar)
5:05 p.m.	2	Kansas City, Kans.	F 10:22 a.m.
5:42 p.m.	40	Lawrence, Kans.	9:46 a.m.
6:12 p.m. (Ar)	68	Topeka, Kans.	9:18 a.m. (Dp)
6:12 p.m. (Dp)	68	Topeka, Kans.	9:18 a.m. (Ar)
F 6:34 p.m.	92	St. Marys, Kans.	8:51 a.m.
7:02 p.m.	119	Manhattan, Kans.	8:22 a.m.
F 7:21 p.m.	136	Fort Riley, Kans.	—
7:30 p.m.	140	Junction City, Kans.	7:55 a.m.
F 7:45 p.m.	152	Chapman, Kans.	7:38 a.m.
7:58 p.m.	164	Abilene, Kans.	7:27 a.m.
F 8:09 p.m.	172	Solomon, Kans.	7:16 a.m.
8:30 p.m. (Ar)	187	Salina, Kans. (CT)	7:00 a.m. (Dp)

F = flag stop. Fort Riley is shown westbound only on this card. Confirm any given year against the public timetable in force; this table follows the June 1938 listing long carried on this page.

The 1935 Broken Axle

On August 16, 1935, M-10000 suffered a low-speed single-axle derailment at Kansas City Union Station. UP pulled the entire set until October 6—51 days—while the broken axle was investigated. The fix was larger axles throughout the train. Deliveries of the 3rd and 4th streamliner sets were held so they could receive the same axles before they left Pullman. A steam-powered consist of standard cars protected 99/100 in the meantime. Articulation was efficient until one truck problem parked three cars at once.

Retirement, Scrap, and a Museum That Did Not Happen

By late 1941 the 191-A had roughly 899,000 miles of revenue service on it (some secondary accounts round near a million). Replacing the engine was judged not worth the money on a 108-seat Kansas local while the railroad was already running diesel City trains to the coast. M-10000 came off the timetable December 16, 1941.

A national museum asked for Little Zip. Jeffers said no. He was in a wartime federal post; the set was a pile of aircraft-grade aluminum. Union Pacific sold the three cars to Aaron Ferer & Sons of Omaha on February 13, 1942. Cutting started in April. The Associated Press put the yield at about 100,000 pounds (50 tons) of aluminum for the government. The Zephyr 9900, built of stainless, is still in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. M-10000 is ingots.

What It Left Behind

Five diesel-powered UP streamliners ordered in 1934–36 grew out of this design: M-10001 (City of Portland) and the later M-10002 through M-10006 sets that became the early City of Los Angeles, City of San Francisco, and City of Denver equipment. The yellow-and-brown experiment became Armour Yellow. The turret cab, cleaned up, is in every EMD E and F you have ever seen. The word streamliner escaped Union Pacific advertising and became the generic name for the entire 1934–1950s passenger aesthetic.

M-10000 was not the best of those trains. It was the first one Americans stood in line to walk through. That was enough to reorder how passenger cars were imagined, even if the distillate engine and the aluminum body were evolutionary sidings. For the named-train story of 99 and 100 after the lettering change, see the companion City of Salina page. For the railroad that ordered it, see Union Pacific.