New Deal Accomplishment: Over 68,000 freight cars, passenger cars, and locomotives built or repaired


Above: The New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) provided financing for the building of at least 24,170 new freight cars and the repair of 40,877 existing freight cars. The freight car above is an X31 automobile box car, one of 7,000 freight cars PWA financed for the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1934. Sources: (1) Statistics from a PWA accounting report, highlighted in, "PWA Aided By Gain On Rails: Government Investment In Carrier Bonds Helped by Business Increase," Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, in The Oklahoma News (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), November 22, 1936, p. 4; (2) "New Car Contract Nears Completion; P.R.R. Files Report," Harrisburg Telegraph (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), December 12, 1934, p. 10. Photo from "Pennsylvania Builds New Automobile and Flat Cars," Railway Age, Vol. 96, No. 13 (March 31, 1934), p. 462. Unknown photographer, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: The PWA's financing of freight cars (as well as passenger cars and locomotives, see below), put 100,000 or more Americans back to work (see, e.g., "What The PWA Is Doing: PWA Aid For Railroads," The Brooklyn Citizen (Brooklyn, New York), July 23, 1934, p. 5). The men above, working at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad shop in Keyser, West Virginia, 1934-1935, were part of that 100,000. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A 1934 letter to the editor bemoans PWA stimulus money for the railroads. Besides the bad math (e.g., PWA loaned 200 million to the railroads, not 2 billion), the writer doesn't seem to understand the nature of stimulus spending - which is to create a jumpstart and foundation for bigger and better things (see next image and caption), not simply as a singular event. This same misinformed thinking is very prevalent today and greatly hinders progress, especially--but not exclusively--during downturns in the economy. The excerpt above is from The Ottawa Citizen (Canada), November 20, 1934. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: This article excerpt, from The Houston Chronicle, August 30, 1937, highlights how PWA money to the railroads (loaned mostly from 1933 to 1935) helped the railroad industry leave the Great Depression behind. An exciting new era of railroading was sparked by PWA / New Deal investment (also see The Comet streamliner photo and caption below ). Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: This article excerpt--from The Decatur Daily Review (Decatur, Illinois), February 5, 1934--highlights the nationwide economic effect of a PWA loan to the Pennsylvania Railroad (a loan that facilitated the purchase of new electric locomotives and the necessary rail infrastructure). Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: The PWA financed at least 195 new locomotives for various railroad companies, and another 1,928 were repaired (see source note, "statistics from...," in the first caption at the top of this blog post). The photo and caption above are from a larger story in The Binghamton Press (Binghamton, New York), November 8, 1934, p. 10. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: The PWA also funded several streamliner trains, such as The Comet, built for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company in 1935. Other PWA-funded streamliners included the Hiawatha, the Green Diamond, and the Flying Yankee. These fast and futuristic looking trains caused great excitement in America and drove ridership numbers up so high that some of the PWA-funded streamliners could not keep up with demand and had to be replaced within a few years (a "victim of their own success," as some articles and writers put it). It was a truly a golden era for trains, sparked by New Deal action. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: Passengers aboard the Green Diamond streamliner train (Illinois Central Railroad), ca. 1936. The PWA funded 303 new passenger cars and repairs to another 947 (see source note, "statistics from...," in the first caption at the top of this blog post). Image from an Illinois Central brochure, scanned from a personal copy and used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: The PWA helped usher in the Diesel era of trains (Diesel is more efficient than coal), with financing for the groundbreaking Locomotive No. 50 of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Unknown photographer, scanned from a private copy and used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: The PWA-funded GG1 electric locomotives of the Pennsylvania Railroad are legendary. As the Wikipedia page for them notes: "The class was known for its striking art deco shell, its ability to pull trains at up to 100 mph, and its long operating career of almost 50 years." Seen here is "Old Rivets," the first of the GG1 series. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The New Deal had many other railroad projects, for example, tunnels, bridges, track improvements, and grade crossing removal (grade crossings are intersections where vehicles and trains meet at the same level, making impact more likely). Here is a PWA-funded grade crossing elimination on Staten Island. It appears that a new bridge was installed, lifting the track up some, and that the road was lowered also (notice the cutaway ground on the far side of the bridge, and the workmen installing a new sidewalk). Photo from the National Archives.

Above: "Engine House and Bunkers," an oil painting by Austin Mecklem (1894-1951), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1934. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

A New Deal for Freight, a New Deal for Passengers

From the captions and sources above, we see that PWA financing bought 24,170 new freight cars and repaired another 40,877; bought 303 new passenger cars and repaired another 947; and bought 195 new locomotives and repaired another 1,928.

Adding this up, we get over 68,000 freight cars, passenger cars, and locomotives built or repaired.

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