1. Ralph Budd was an American railroad executive who was the president of the Great Northern Railway from 1919 up until 1932, when he served as president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad until his retirement in 1949.
16 Facts About Ralph Budd
1. 2.
One of six children of John and Mary Budd, Ralph was born on a farm near Waterloo, Iowa, on August 20,1879.
3.
In 1902 Budd joined the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad for the construction of its St Louis-Kansas City line.
4.
Ralph Budd followed Stevens to Panama, working on the engineering of the Panama Railway.
5.
Ralph Budd followed Stevens again in 1910, this time to Oregon.
6.
At the age of 40, in 1919, Ralph Budd became the youngest railroad president in America when he became president of the Great Northern Railway.
7.
At one of the lowest points in the Great Depression, January 1,1932, Ralph Budd left the Great Northern to become president of the Burlington.
8.
The Ralph Budd Company built the Pioneer Zephyr for Burlington, and the train's "dawn-to-dusk" run from Denver, Colorado, to Chicago, Illinois, on May 26,1934, in an unprecedented thirteen hours and five minutes, helped usher in the railroad streamliner era.
9.
The name of the new train came from The Canterbury Tales, which Ralph Budd had been reading.
10.
Ralph Budd worked to complete the Dotsero Cut-Off, which opened in 1934, and led to fourfold increase of Burlington business through Denver.
11.
In 1939, Budd was awarded the George R Henderson Medal.
12.
Men like Fred Gurley, John Farrington, Fred Whitman, Harry Murphy, and [Alfred] E Perlman, all of whom went on to head great railways, served varying terms on the Burlington while Budd was at its head.
13.
Ralph Budd arranged the donation of the Burlington's corporate records to the Newberry Library.
14.
Ralph Budd retired to Santa Barbara, California, in 1954, and died on February 2,1962.
15.
The name Ralph Budd was applied to a commercial steamship that plied the Great Lakes in the 1920s and 1930s.
16.
Ralph Budd was 1935 Commencement speaker at Rice University and donated his honorarium to Rice for the benefit of students as Ralph Budd Thesis award.