No. 10302 General Motors "Aerotrain"

Pennsylvania Railroad

          Postwar, by the mid-1950s, the new interstate highway system and improved air transport services were having a very negative impact on railroad ridership and revenues nationwide. The challenge was to develop new trains that would attract people back to the rails and at the same time reduce operating costs.

         Enter the "Super Lightweights" experimental trains of racy, low-slung design and lightweight construction pulled by matching locomotives that were compact and efficient.

         These new trains would require less capital investment and could be operated at substantially less cost than conventional passenger trains.

         The best known of the postwar experimental trains was the General Motors "Aerotrain." Its futuristic diesel locomotive, whose design bore the unmistakable stamp of Detroit automobile stylists, was designated as a model LWT 12 (lightweight, 1200 horsepower). The cars were also of General Motors parentage and were in fact modified intercity bus carbodies from GM's bus-body division, riding on two axles with four wheels, like a bus. Two 10-car non-articulated "Aerotrains" were built in 1956 and tested on (leased to) the New York Central, Union Pacific, and Pennsylvania railroads before being sold the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad (Rock Island) in 1958.

         The new trains were cramped and rough riding; passengers wound up shunning them, referring to them as "doomliners," and they were soon pulled from service.

         The two "Aerotrains" ended up in Rock Island's Chicago-based suburban services until 1965, when they were retired, donated to railway museums in 1966.

         Today (2008), the two "Aerotrains" can be seen at the St. Louis Museum of Transport and the National Railroad Museum at Green Bay, Wisconsin.

         It is interesting to note that the 1200 horsepower streamlined locomotives are actually dressed-up versions of GM Electro-Motive Division's switching engines! No. 10302 represents a semi-scale model of the General Motors'"Aerotrain" in "O" gauge by MTH with three cars as it would have been seen as leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1956-57. It was known as the "Pennsy Aerotrain" and ran between New York and Pittsburgh.