On February 2, 1939, shortly after Dieselizing the Orange Blossom Special, Seaboard inaugurated the Silver Meteor, a Budd-built coach train between New York and Florida pulled by an E-4 locomotive. Initially, Seaboard purchased a single, seven-car train set, allowing service … Continue reading
The last of Patrick McGinnis’ three trains was the Roger Williams, which entered service between Boston and Washington on April 28, 1957. Budd built the train by modifying its RDCs into a six-car train that had controls only in the … Continue reading
Patrick McGinnis’ second new train for the New Haven was built by Pullman in an obvious imitation of the 1949 ACF Talgo train. Pullman called its design “Train X” and like the 1949 train had just one axle, or two … Continue reading
On June 24, 1956, the Pennsylvania Railroad inaugurated the Keystone, a twice-daily Washington-New York train that used a new design of coaches built by Budd. The floors at the ends of the cars were of normal height so that doorways … Continue reading
In February, 1956, just a month after the Aerotrain made its first revenue run, the Rock Island Railroad placed the redundantly named Jet Rocket in service between Chicago and Peoria. The train consisted of cars built by ACF combined with … Continue reading
The year 1956 was the most momentous in the history of passenger trains since the original Zephyr and M-10000 were introduced in 1934. Not two, not three, but a total of five new kinds of trains were introduced to the … Continue reading
Budd took the rail industry by surprise when it introduced the Rail Diesel Car, or RDC, in 1949. Though not really streamlined, RDCs had fluted, stainless steel bodies and could carry up to 90 passengers–more than the Pioneer Zephyr or … Continue reading
Here are two different versions of the same brochure. The first, published when the train was inaugurated in 1951, advertises the Mid-Century Empire Builder. Perhaps because it was no longer mid-century by 1954, when the second brochure was printed, the … Continue reading
A number of other trains acquired dome cars after 1956, mainly by acquiring them when other railroads stopped running passenger trains or by shuffling around the equipment of existing trains. In the early 1960s, for example, the Norfolk & Western … Continue reading
Even though they were overnight trains, the vista-dome Denver Zephyr must have eaten into the ridership of Union Pacific’s City of Denver. UP responded by borrowing two super domes from its new partner, the Milwaukee Road. These super domes began … Continue reading
