No. 10062 Alco Class J-I 4-6-4"Hudson" Type Steam Locomotive, heading up the "Empire State Express" Heavyweight Passenger Train

 New York Central Railroad

In the late 1920s, the New York Central System needed a new steam locomotive to power its longer and heavier elegant first class  passenger trains at faster speeds.  The result was the handsome Alco-built 4-6-4 “Hudson”-type, and it proved to be extremely successful, heading up such famous trains as the “20th Century Limited” (see No. 10073) and “Empire State Express.”  It went into service in 1927.  This locomotive could pull heavy thirteen to fifteen car trains at high rates of speed. See No. 10073 for more information on the “Hudson”-type locomotive.
 
In the mid-1930's, some of these locomotives were covered with streamlined shrouding conceived by noted industrial designers, such as Karl Kantola and Henry Dreyfuss (see Nos. 10065 and 10156).
 
These dependable locomotives remained in service until the early 1950s, when they were replaced by more efficient diesel locomotives.
 
No. 10062 represents a semi-scale model of New York Central’s pre-streamlined Alco J-I “Hudson” in “O” gauge by MTH, complemented by its 1930s vintage string of six heavyweight passenger cars, Nos. 10063 and 10064, the “Empire State Express,” as it would have been seen on its daylight run between New York and Buffalo in the late 1920s and 1930s.
 
The “Empire State Express” was New York Central’s most famous early train, with service starting in 1891 and becoming known as “America’s Finest Day Train.”
 
It operated on the 435-mile New York-Buffalo route, via Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester, the trip taking a little over eight hours (see No. 10730). For a later (early 1930s) version of the steam-powered “Empire State Express,” see this history. For a later (1940s) streamlined “Empire State,” also headed by steam, see No. 10451..  Post-World War II, the “Empire State” was handled by diesel power (see No. 10163) (1950s).
 
With the advent of the interstate highway system and jet airliner travel in the 1960s, passenger services by rail were in a steep downward spiral nationwide, and the “Empire State Express” was no exception. The train made its last run as a luxury liner in 1967, then becoming a ghost of its former self as the “Empire Service,” as New York Central merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 to form the ill-fated Penn Central Railroad, which lasted until Amtrak’s takeover of the nation’s passenger services in 1971. The nondescript coach train “Empire Service” served inelegantly on the Penn Central and continues to operate on Amtrak (New York-Buffalo) today with somewhat improved conveniences, such as Business Class accommodations with outlets for laptop computers, and the Café Car, featuring sandwiches, snacks, and beverages. There can be no comparison, however, with this pedestrian train and the elegant “Empire State Express,” which left a great legacy of over 75 years of dependable, luxurious service on the New York Central Railroad 1891-1967.