Aerotrain Introductory Four Car Set

Union Pacific City of Las Vegas 

Special Introductory Price Includes Loco, 2 Coaches And Observation Car!

"This train will save an industry" declared a New York Central advertisement in 1956.

With passenger traffic declining in the mid-1950s due to the rapid expansion of the Interstate Highway system, railroads were looking for ways to attract more ridership.

Each of the two prototype AeroTrain consists was comprised of a locomotive, eight 40-seat coaches and a tail end observation car for a total of 10 units per train.

This set includes a locomotive, two coaches and an observation car – although you can recreate the original 10-car consist by combining this four-car introductory set with two add-on three-coach sets.

Built in 1955 and debuted the same year at "GM Powerama" which was held at Soldier's Field just south of Downtown Chicago, the two AeroTrain demonstrator sets logged over 600,000 miles traveling coast to coast and were open to the public for viewing in many major cities.

The locomotive used the drive train of the SW-1200 switcher (re-geared to reach a top speed of 102 MPH) and the car bodies were built using parts from an inter-city bus body that GM was building at the time.

In addition to the roads listed below that we can verify used the AeroTrain is regular service, we know it also ran on many other railroads such as the Southern Pacific, New Haven, Canadian National, and spent a couple of months in Mexico.

Today you can find elements of one Aerotrain at the Museum in St. Louis (cosmetically restored with a $10,000 donation from the NMRA), and parts of the other at the Museum in Green Bay.

Con-Cor will have an "add-on" DCC Sound Decoder ready for this model in March 2008 (with which you can make the center twin headlights flash when the horn is blown!)

Learn more.

• Highly detailed bodies, with separate add on parts where appropriate
• Diaphragms between cars
• Full interior details
• LED interior car lighting with circuit boards in each car
• Electrical pick-up and metal wheelsets on all cars
• Dual flywheel drive
• 5 pole skewed armature motor
• Functional reversing front headlights, and tail of observation back up lights.
• Flashing front headlights (in dcc mode) as prototype used for grade crossings
• Dual function circuit board and chips for analog (normal 12V DC) or basic DCC functions built in
• NMRA pin array mounted on circuit board for optional installation of sound DCC (user supplies sound decoder and speaker if desired)
• Loco cab interior
• Engineer and fireman figures included
• First-run special edition collector's box
• UP Aerotrains ran in 1957

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