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Cannonball Baker sets record in 1916 Cadillac - Original News accounts


m-mman

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Good read. 

Interestingly few pictures were published of the actual car or even new Cads in the advertisements. 

 

https://homesteadmuseum.blog/2021/05/15/games-people-play-from-point-a-to-point-b-the-original-cannonball-run-in-a-cadillac-eight-from-los-angeles-to-new-york-8-15-may-1916/ 

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2 hours ago, padgett said:

Isaac Bell beat a passenger train from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1906 with a Locomobile.

Outside of possibly some corridors in the northeast, I think passenger trains in that era probably only averaged 25 to 35 MPH. Their competition was horse drawn wagons and carriages that were far slower. Given a powerful enough car and a driver brave enough to push it on the roads of the day it doesn’t surprise me that a car could beat a train between LA and SF.

 

By the middle to late 1920s it was apparent that railroads had to improve to remain competitive so by the early 1930s you started seeing high speed and streamlined trains with much faster speeds. I believe that by the mid 1930s AT&SF was averaging nearly 60 MPH between Chicago and LA, a feat that would be very difficult on US66 going through small towns (and I am not even sure it was paved the whole way until the late 1930s).

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