short cutoff), so the railroad claimed a correspondingly lower tractive effort. During a test run between Chicago, Illinois and Crestline, Ohio in December 1940, the S1 managed to reach on level track with 1,350 tons of passenger stock behind her, which was equal to 24 postwar lightweight passenger cars. In this test run, the S1 also achieved an average speed of , which was 27% faster than the average schedule speed of the route. Some publications from Germany stated that the S1 was able to reach in other road tests during the late 1940s with a lighter load behind her, but PRR never claimed this record. On Apr 19, 1941, during an excursion run organized by the Detroit Railroad Club, the S1 reached on the route between Fort Wayne and Chicago. An article "Riding the Gargantua of the Rails" in the Dec 1941 Popular Mechanics Magazine cites a speed recorded by assistant road foreman Charlie Wappes of the Fort Wayne Division during the S1's test runs at with 12 heavyweight passenger cars in its back. There are other stories of the S1 reaching or exceeding . In the German trade press and literature from 1945, there was a report of a record run of the S1, citing railroad officials of Interstate Commerce Commission that a speed of was reached when the engine was trying to make up time for a delayed westbound train, the Trail Blazer. Its high-speed capability was such that many have claimed that the S1 exceeded on multiple occasions the record steam locomotive speed set in 1938 by the British LNER locomotive 4468 Mallard. The engine was claimed to have exceeded on the Fort Wayne-Chicago run, as it was reported that the PRR received a fine for the feat. The streamlining designer of the train Raymond Loewy himself wrote in 1979: "On a straight stretch of track without any curves for miles; I waited for the S1 to pass through at full speed. I stood on the platform and saw it coming from the distance at 120 miles per hour. It flashed by like a steel thunderbolt, the ground shaking under me, in a blast of air that almost sucked me into its whirlwind. Approximately a million pounds of locomotive were crashing through near me. I felt shaken and overwhelmed by an unforgettable feeling of power, by a sense of pride at the sight of what I