1 artifact found
The year is 1936. America is trapped in the grip of the Great Depression. The railroads, once the absolute monarchs of American infrastructure, are bleeding cash. Heavy, coal-fired steam locomotives pull massive steel cars across the continent. They are majestic, but they are economically unsustainable. The public is fleeing to the cheap flexibility of the automobile and the newly emerging interstate bus lines. Enter the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company. This artifact, an original advertisement from Fortune magazine in September 1936, documents a critical mutation in industrial design. It poses a radical economic challenge to the status quo: "WITH PROFIT... AT 2¢ A MILE?" It is not merely a sales pitch for a new train. It is an obituary for the Gilded Age of heavy rail, and a birth certificate for the modern era of lightweight, high-speed mass transit.
