The First Hundred Years

Into the depot at Aurora, Ill. last week glided a diesel locomotive with two spanking new streamlined, bubble-domed coaches. Out of one stepped Ralph Budd, 69, the highballing president of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, who had done more than any other railroader to make such dream trains a reality.

Ralph Budd had come to Aurora, the "Q's" birthplace, to celebrate the road's first 100 years. He donned a claw hammer coat and stovepipe hat, glued on a black mustache, and helped re-enact the granting of the Q's 1849 charter for...

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