The lightweight, streamlined passenger car was a product of the Great Depression. While the heavyweight steel cars built in the teens and 1920s were dependable and often luxurious, their dark colors and solid, battleship-like exteriors didlittle to lift the spirits at a time when the entire nation needed a pick-me-up. As noted railroad historian John H. White, Jr. put it in The American Railroad Passenger Car, "Some hope during these gloomy years was offered by a new designconcept called streamlining. It presented a sleek, modern image of speed and innovation. What had been an obscure technical term in aerodynamics was made into a household word through an astute publicity campaign mounted by severalrailroad traffic departments. It succeeded in creating a general interest in railroading practically unknown since the opening of the first transcontinental line. According to Railway Age, 'For the first time in many years, the words 'sold out' re-entered the ticket clerk's vocabulary.'"