The Green Diamond of the Illinois Central Railroad was a diesel streamliner (IC #121) built in 1936 by Pullman-Standard and powered by Electro-Motive Corporation. It was the last streamliner built with the power car articulated with the train; future streamliners featured a matched but separable locomotive. Its fixed five-car consist was also the end of an era; the popularity of the early streamliners was their undoing, because the trains could not be lengthened or shortened to handle varying loads. The train was painted in a two-tone green livery, "Cypress Green" on the nose and below the window sills with "Cedar Green" above, separated by an aluminum strip. Extensive aluminum trim was applied. The Green Diamond's nickname was the "Tobacco Worm," because of its green color and after the "Tin Worm" nickname of the Union Pacific's first streamliner, the M-10000.
The name was chosen because a green diamond was the Illinois Central's emblem, and because the Diamond Special was the oldest named passenger train on the Chicago, Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri, the route the new train would serve. The name was borne within a diamond on the power car sides. As Union Pacific and the Burlington had done with their early streamliners, the Illinois Central opened the train to the public in March, 1936 and made a publicity tour with it during April and May before it went into regular service on May 17, 1936.
Read more about Green Diamond: Equipment Used
Famous quotes containing the words green and/or diamond:
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and a sapphire bracelet lasts forever.”
—Anita Loos (1893–1981)