Today on Toys & Stuff, we present an Alco Locomotive Works ad from the January 1937 issue of 'Railway Age' magazine featuring the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha locomotive. The Hiawatha was a famous named passenger train running on the 'Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific' railroad and named after Longfellow's poem, 'The Song of Hiawatha'. It began service in 1935 running between Chicago and the Twin Cities (MInneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota) and were designed to compete with the 'Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy's' Twin Cities Zephyr and 'Chicago and Northwestern Railways' Twin Cities 400 trains. The Hiawatha's were designed by famous industrial designer Otto Kuhler as light weight, streamlined consists pulled by special, new-built 4-4-2 Atlantic-type steam locomotives. Although diesel engines were already appearing - as in the Zephyr - steam was still king in 1935, and the Hiawatha's were not at all old fashioned. The four engines originally built for Hiawatha service were oil-fired for less servicing en-route, had stream-lined cladding to reduce air flow over the boiler, and were some of the fastest steam engines built, regularly reaching speeds in excess of 100mph (160km/h). The five car consist was also new-built of light-weight stainless steel and also featured a stream-lined design.
The ad presented here was originally a two-page ad. As a result of the printing process, there was a gap of about 1/4" (1cm) in the middle of the picture. I had to join the two scans and Photoshop in the missing. Bettina & Fritz Berg :)
