Ralph Budd

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Ralph Budd (1879 – 1962) was an American railroad executive. At the age of 40, in 1919, he became the youngest railroad president in America when he became president of the Great Northern Railway (GN). Under his tenure at GN, the railroad built the Cascade Tunnel in Washington, a project that cost US$25 million and eliminated the railroad's need for six other, shorter, tunnels on the route over the Rocky Mountains. The Cascade Tunnel was the longest railroad tunnel built in America up to that time.

On January 1, 1932 he left the GN to become president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CBQ). While leading the CBQ, he met Edward G. Budd (no relation), who had formed the Budd Company in 1912, and had recently begun to apply his automobile body construction knowledge to build railroad passenger equipment in a new venture using stainless steel.

The Budd Company built the Pioneer Zephyr for CBQ, and the train's "dawn-to-dusk" run from Denver, Colorado, to Chicago, Illinois, on May 26, 1934, in an unprecedented 13 hours and five minutes, helped usher in the railroad streamliner era. Both Ralph and Edward Budd, among other notable men including H. L. Hamilton, president of the Winton Motor Company which built the motor for the train, were passengers aboard the record-setting run; the train's speed averaged 77.1 miles per hour (124.1 km/h), reaching a top speed of 112.5 miles per hour (181 km/h). The name of the new train came from The Canterbury Tales, which Ralph Budd had been reading. The story begins with pilgrims setting out on a journey, inspired by the budding springtime and by Zephyrus, the gentle and nurturing west wind. Ralph Budd thought that would be an excellent name for a sleek new traveling machine: "Zephyr." [1]

Ralph Budd retired from the CBQ on August 31, 1949.

[edit] Other uses of the name Ralph Budd

The name Ralph Budd was also applied to a commercial steamship that plied the Great Lakes in the 1920s and 1930s. On May 15, 1929, the boat ran aground in Eagle Harbor, Michigan, during a fierce winter storm; the crew escaped via lifeboats and the boat was eventually repaired and returned to service.