The Silver Streak is a 1934 film largely based on the Burington Zephyr popularly known as Pioneer Zephyr’s record-breaking ‘dawn-to-dusk’ run on May 26, 1934. The exterior sequences in the film were shot on the actual Zephyr trainset, while the interior scenes were done on a sound stage in Hollywood. The ‘Burlington Route’ nameplate on the train’s nose was replaced with ‘Silver Streak’ for the movie.
A tiny book called The Story of the Silver Streak, which was produced with black and white stills from the film was one of the film’s promotional materials. A model of the Pioneer Zephyr was released by Con-Cor International, Ltd. in 2006. The Silver Streak nameplates from the movie picture replaced the conventional Burlington Route nameplates on a limited number of these (350 HO scale and 250 N scale).
After the California-based Union Pacific Railroad declined to supply their high-speed passenger train, the M-10000, the Pioneer Zephyr was chosen. In 1934, when more than 1,000 cases of infantile paralysis were confirmed in Los Angeles alone, the narrative aspect of the epidemic took use of public anxiety about the disease.
The Zephyr was filmed on location for two days in September 1934 at the CB&Q yards in Galesburg, Illinois. For the film, the train was christened The Silver Streak, a moniker that CB&Q president Ralph Budd had rejected, and the local high school adopted it as the nickname for its athletic teams.
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