Union Pacific M-10000

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I was looking at the history of fast trains in the world and happened to stumble across the Union Pacific M-10000. I'm pretty sure I've seen it somewhere already (in photographs online, of course), but this is the first time I've actually read about it in any sort of detail (which is not all that detailed, really). Anyway, I thought it'd be something to write about here, given that it was the first articulated American Streamliner and all. The M-10000 probably wasn't talked about as much as the more famous Zephyrs, but it wouldn't be right to shrug off her importance. It was the M-10000 that gave inspirations to all the subsequent Streamliners that popped out across railroads of all shapes and sizes.

The M-10000 was delivered in February of 1934. At the time, it was deemed that no reliable diesel engine would satisfy the power-to-weight ratio required by the M-10000 and therefore a Winton distillate engine was used. The very front truck of the train was powered by two traction motors. Instead of steel, this articulated trainset utilised a car body made of Duralumin, an early age-hardenable aircraft aluminium alloy. The styling of the train was helped by Martin Blomberg, the Blomberg who designed EMD's 4 axle trucks still widely used today. The entire trainset had 3 cars including the power/driving/baggage car. It was only 204 ft. long  and weighed 85 tons.

The Tin Worm, one of her nicknames, isn't really unjustified
During the year of her introduction, the M-10000 made a 13 000 mile nationwide tour and was even inspected in Washington by FDR. The rest of the info I read about is linked here on Wikipedia, where the pictures in this post come from. A fan tribute video on YouTube is embedded here below.

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