No. 10150 Electro-Motive E-8 ABA Diesel Locomotive, heading up the "Pere Marquette" Streamlined Passenger Train

Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad

The Pere Marquette was a small Michigan-based railroad established in 1900 with the consolidation of three post-Civil War railroads: Flint & Pere Marquette; Detroit, Grand Rapids & Western; and Chicago & West Michigan. The Pere Marquette helped move traffic between New York and Chicago, and to service the needs of Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second largest city and for years the nation’s principal producer of furniture. Pere Marquette’s lines also stretched north to Petoskey and Bay View, Michigan, close to Lake Michigan lakeside resort areas.
 
In the 19th Century lumbering era, logs from Michigan’s rich upstate timberlands were floated down the Grand River for processing in the mills at Grand Rapids. It was from this background that the city’s furniture industry developed, which in turn meant substantial Pullman traffic bringing buyers to town.
 
With the logging boom pretty much over by 1900, tourism became important to the Pere Marquette.  The railroad continued successfully until its formal merger with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in 1947. 
 
The nation’s first all-new streamlined trains after World War II were the “Pere Marquettes,” introduced in 1946 by Pere Marquette Railway’s then managing partner, Chesapeake and Ohio.  These two sleek lightweight seven-car all-coach diesel-powered daylight streamliners made three round trips daily between Detroit, Lansing,  and Grand Rapids (153 miles, 2 hours and 45 minutes). Each trainset was powered by an Electro-Motive (General Motors) 2000 horsepower E-7 A locomotive. The new stainless steel cars were built by Pullman-Standard and included dining and lounge cars. Seats were all reserved. Service was extended to Chicago in 1948.
 
In 1948, the Chesapeake and Ohio began to receive new streamlined lightweight Budd-built cars (ordered for the ill-fated “Chessie” [See No. 10582], which never ran in revenue service) The 46 new cars included “family coaches” (with a children’s motion picture theater and playroom), tavern lounge cars, dome observation coaches and sleeping cars, and spacious twin-unit dining cars. These cars went into operation on several Chesapeake & Ohio trains, including the “Pere Marquettes,” after 1948/49 and included sleeping cars on the “Pere Marquettes” for the first time.
 
The “Pere Marquette” trains were upgraded in the early 1950s with new diesel locomotives by Electro-Motive, the E-8s. The 2250 horsepower per unit E-8s could pull passenger trains at speeds up to 100 mph. Service (along with C&O's "Michigan Resort Special") was extended to the Michigan resort cities of Traverse City, Charlevoix, and Petoskey, and also to Muskegon, Holland, Bangor, Benton Harbor, and St. Joseph.
 
Unfortunately, the drastic decline in passenger service during the 1960s (competition was the successful development of interstate highways and jet airliners) spelled the end of Chesapeake & Ohio’s “Pere Marquette” service (now reduced to one or two coaches Chicago-Grand Rapids) with the arrival of Amtrak in May, 1971. Amtrak continued the “Pere Marquette” name, however, and it operates today as a much less elegant coach train between Chicago and Grand Rapids, featuring a Café Car, offering sandwiches, snacks, and beverages.
 
No. 10150 represents an accurate scale model by MTH in “0” gauge of Chesapeake and Ohio’s Electro-Motive E-8 ABA diesel locomotive, heading up the colorful 7-car “Pere Marquette” lightweight streamlined passenger train (Nos. 10151 and 10152), as it would have been seen in the early 1950s before the addition of the “Chessie” equipment (no dome cars). To be correct, this model train should be displayed with the E-8 “A” unit only, as a 7-car train would not require the three-locomotive ABA combination.