Train of Tomorrow

The Train of Tomorrow was an American demonstrator train built as a collaboration between General Motors (GM) and Pullman-Standard between 1945 and 1947. It was the first new train to consist entirely of dome cars, which were the brainchild of GM vice president and Electro-Motive Division (EMD) general manager Cyrus Osborn, who conceived the idea while riding in either an F-unit or a caboose in the Rocky Mountains in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado. After GM built a 45-foot (14 m) scale model of the train for $101,772 and displayed it to 350 officials from 55 different Class I railroads in 1945, the Train of Tomorrow was built by Pullman-Standard between October 1946 and May 1947.

The train consisted of four cars: a chair car (Star Dust), a dining car (Sky View), a sleeping car (Dream Cloud), and a lounge-observation car (Moon Glow), all featuring "Astra-Domes". It was pulled by a largely stock EMD E7A. Its dining car, Sky View, was the first dome diner to be built and the first diner of any kind with an all-electric kitchen. The train was constructed with low-alloy, high-tensile steel and Thermopane glass for its domes and windows. Although GM never publicly stated the total price of the Train of Tomorrow, contemporary sources estimated it at between $1 million and $1.5 million.

After being christened at a dedication ceremony in Chicago on May 28, 1947, the Train of Tomorrow embarked on a barnstorming tour of the United States and Canada that lasted for 28 months, covered 65,000 miles (105,000 km), and visited 181 cities and towns. During its tour, the train was ridden or toured by over 5.7 million people, and was seen by an estimated 20 million people. After its tour was completed on October 30, 1949, the train was sold to the Union Pacific for $500,000, and its four cars were put into service between Portland and Seattle on June 18, 1950. The cars were retired from service between 1961 and 1965, and all but one were eventually scrapped. Moon Glow sat in a scrap yard for almost two decades before being discovered by the National Railway Historical Society (NRHS), who purchased and transported it to the Ogden Union Station Museum, where it is undergoing restoration.

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