thumb|right|upright=1.36|An Aerotrain operating in suburban service in April 1965 as [[Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad No. 2 at Chicago's Englewood Union Station.]]

The Aerotrain is a retired streamlined trainset that the General Motors (GM) Electro-Motive Division (EMD) introduced in 1955. GM originally designated the light-weight consist as Train-Y (Pullman-Standard's Train-X project was already underway) before the company adopted the Aerotrain marketing name. that the company built.

GM based the EMD LWT12's power components on those in the EMD SW1200 switcher. Like the SW1200, the LWT12 used the company's model EMD 567C 12-cylinder prime mover that could produce . The power car featured a cab that mimicked an aircraft's cockpit. The locomotive's overall design was similar to that of General Motors automobiles at the time. The finned back end of the train resembled the rear of a 1955 Chevrolet or Pontiac station wagon. Each car rode on two axles with an air suspension system that was intended to give a smooth ride, but had the opposite effect.

GM returned to a concept first used at the start of the streamliner era: semi-permanently coupled trains. The cars were long, half the length of standard designs and thus half their weight. To further reduce weight, the locomotives and cars were made of aluminum rather than steel. On January 5, 1956, one Aerotrain made a test run from Washington to Newark on the Pennsylvania Railroad while the other traveled in four hours from Chicago to Detroit on the New York Central Railroad. From July to October, the New York Central ran the train between Chicago and Cleveland while continuing the trial period, after which it returned the train to GM.

In December 1956, the Union Pacific Railroad began to operate the second train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas as the City of Las Vegas (No. 1001). The Pennsy continued to run between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh until June 1957, after which time the first trainset joined the second in the Union Pacific's City of Las Vegas service. Dissatisfied with both, the Union Pacific stopped operating the trainsets in September and October 1957. The two trainsets ended service in 1966, ten years after they first ran. Although the Rock Island scrapped or re-used most of the trainsets' equipment, both locomotives and two pairs of coaches remain on display in museums. The Rock Island later designated the power car as locomotive number 1.

The American Car and Foundry Company constructed the Jet Rocket coaches, most of which were similar, but not identical, to those of the Talgo II. In addition, the Jet Rocket's Talgo-like coaches had one axle, whereas the Aerotrain's coaches had two.

Originally intended to reach speeds of up to and to travel between New York City and Chicago in 10.5 hours, The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe needed a helper locomotive to enable the 1,200 horsepower LWT-12 power car to climb the Sorrento grade outside of San Diego when pulling the Aerotrain's ten coaches as a San Diegan. A Union Pacific LWT-12 later required the assistance of a 1,750 horsepower EMD GP9 switcher locomotive to transport the cars of the City of Las Vegas up Southern California's Cajon Pass. The National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, Missouri (near St. Louis) exhibits the Rock Island's similarly repainted Aerotrain locomotive number 3 and two coaches (parts of trainset number 1). The designs on the repainted locomotives do not resemble those that the power cars bore when last serving the Rock Island line.

Aerotrain legacy

Disneyland operated a scale version of the Aerotrain known as the Viewliner from 1957 to 1959. The Washington Park and Zoo Railway in Portland, Oregon, has operated a scale, diesel-powered replica of the Aerotrain (dubbed the Zooliner) to transport zoo visitors since 1958.

The Viewliner

On June 26, 1957, the narrow-gauge Santa Fe and Disneyland Viewliner (billed by Disneyland as "the fastest miniature train in the world") commenced operation. Two separate trains, designed and built as scale replicas of the futuristic Aerotrain, traveled a figure-eight track through parts of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland parallel to a portion of the Disneyland Railroad (DRR) main line. The Tomorrowland train featured cars that were named for the planets while the cars of the Fantasyland train were named after various Disney characters. On June 14, 2008, the zoo held a "50th Birthday" celebration for the locomotive. The Zooliner remains the primary train for the zoo. The train traveled between New York City's Grand Central Terminal and Boston's South Station from 1957 to 1958.

A nearly identical train having only one locomotive ran between Cleveland and Cincinnati as the New York Central Railroad's Ohio Xplorer from 1956 to 1957. Timetables show that the Ohio Xplorer ran in 1956 during a time that the railroad was running the second Aerotrain trainset (the Great Lakes Aerotrain) between Cleveland and Chicago. The two left Cleveland at 6:45 and 6:35 a.m. respectively and returned during the evening.

References

  • Bowser Manufacturing HO scale Aerotrain – includes a number of prototype photographs.
  • 10:39 minutes video showing internal and external views of two demonstration Aerotrains (Numbers 1000 and 1001) traveling at speeds of up to .