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Even though it never sold a single ticket to ride the train, General Motors advertised the Train of Tomorrow in numerous magazines. The above ad was on the back cover of the September, 1947, issue of Boys Life magazine. Slightly different ads appeared in other magazines. They all urged readers to watch their newspapers for when the Train of Tomorrow would be on display in their city.

General Motors also distributed this newsreel footage of the train. The advertising must have worked: nearly 6 million people walked through the train on the tour, which lasted nearly two-and-one-half years and only ended on October 30, 1949.

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Pullman naturally made sure its role in the train was made known by placing the above ad in various magazines. It is interesting to compare the artists’ conceptions of what a train would look like with reality. Note in the above graphic, for example, that the huge expanses of glass are separated by tiny posts.

Here is how General Motors’ artists conceived the same scene. Here the posts between the panes of glass are a little bit thicker but the glass is still very expansive. Note also that the ceilings seem very high.

Here is how it actually looked. The windows are still large, but the posts between them are much thicker than in any of the graphics. Also, the man at left looks almost certain to hit his head on the glass ceiling when he stands up to leave. (I flipped this photo so it would appear the same angle as the others; in fact, when facing the stairs, the tables on the right were for four and the tables on the left were for two.)

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When a fabulous new train was touring the country, everyone wanted to get into the act–even the company that made the overalls for the train crew.

Click image to download a PDF of this complete article about the Train of Tomorrow from the June 23, 1947 issue of Life magazine.

General Motors also enjoyed some free publicity in the form of articles in Life and other magazines. Unlike the ads, the article in Life featured real photographs populated by models. Particularly interesting is a photo of the rooms in the coach underneath the dome.

Click image for a larger view of this article from the August, 1947 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.

The one-page article in Popular Mechanics also featured several photographs. The photo at the top, however, is fake; at least, the background was added in after the photo of the train was taken, probably in Michigan or somewhere else in the mountainless Midwest.