During one of my recent and seemingly frequent trips to the St. Louis area, my child and I stopped by the St. Louis Museum of Transportation to while away some time. Coming here is always time well spent.
My previous article about having visited the museum was in March 2013 (here), and the intervening 15 months have seen abundant expansion of the museum as well as rotation of exhibits. Let’s start outside with the trains and work our way indoors to the cars.
This is one of the two remaining General Motors Aerotrains. Built in 1955, and powered by a 1,200 horsepower diesel engine, this train was found unsuitable for mainline service due to its rough ride. This locomotive would ultimately be used for passenger car service in the Chicago area until 1965. It was donated to the museum along with the two cars behind it.
My last post featured the Union Pacific Big Boy, as seen here. This is the most powerful steam powered locomotive built for use in North America. As you can tell, it was looking a might haggard, with the leafless trees not aiding in its appearance.
What a difference a year (or so) can make! This Big Boy was undergoing a cosmetic restoration allowing it to once again bask in its absolute grandeur.
This time the cab was open to the public, allowing one to better assess the full majesty of this locomotive. All the labels for the various valves and other controls is certainly intimidating!
The Big Boy has a 33 ton capacity for coal with a 25,000 gallon water tank underneath. The coal was augured from the tender, beneath the floor of the cab, and into…
A huge firebox. While the trash in this picture royally peeves me, it does help lend some context to the size and depth of the firebox. It is easy to understand how this machine could require 33 tons of bituminous coal.
Sitting next to the Big Boy is this Union Pacific snow blower.
For give perspective, I paid this fat guy $5 to stand in the picture; he is 5’11” (180 cm) tall. Being somewhat familiar with the capabilities of truck and tractor mounted snow blowers, I can only imagine the distances this machine can hurl snow.
The museum has been around since the 1950s and early on it positioned itself to be the recipient of many rare and highly desirable machines. This open engine is but one of them. Built by General Electric, this engine is a 2,800 horsepower V16 turbo diesel. For training purposes by Union Pacific, the engine cover was removed and strategic areas of the engine were cut away to allow visual inspection.
The camshaft has a diameter of about 6 inches and…
The piston has the diameter of a dinner plate. The stroke on this four-cycle engine was not disclosed.
Who knew that Plymouth built a locomotive? They did, but it was the Plymouth Locomotive Works of Plymouth, Ohio.
At 440 horsepower, that isn’t much more than some new 1/2 ton pickups. Torque and gearing is a much different story.
Perhaps due to the time of year, a refreshing number of cars and engines were open for public viewing. This milk car was one of them.
Comprised of two stainless steel tanks, there is only 2 inches of cork used as insulation around each tank. A test of this tank, or one similar, was the transport of pre-cooled milk from Wisconsin to Florida. During the 101 hour trip, the temperature of the milk rose by only one degree fahrenheit.
Several years ago, my family and I rode the Amtrak from Jefferson City to Kansas City, a distance of about 110 miles. It was a nice coach and was well insulated to keep noise out. I can’t help but wonder how this old passenger car compares in the noise department.
There were several cabooses open for inspection.
While they were all a little different in layout, the basic form was the same. It’s a shame cabooses have been deemed to be obsolete, but time does march on.
Some were decorated to reveal a year during its service life.
One significant difference since my last visit was the main entrance has been relocated into a new building. It’s a very good venue for showing some of the more prized possessions the museum owns, such as the oldest original passenger car still in existence in North America.
Built in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1834, this car was originally pulled by horses and was later upgraded for locomotive use. It was on display at the World’s Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair) in 1893 and it was also displayed at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.
Nearby was the car that started the entire museum. Built between 1870 and 1875, this 10 foot long car was originally mule powered and commuted between downtown St. Louis and Bellefontaine in north St. Louis County.
Sitting directly between these two cars was this Cadillac Seville STS. Yes, it is barely into CC territory, but St. Louis is devoutly devoted to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team and this Cadillac was purchased new by Stan “The Man” Musial. You can’t fault a city for being proud of their team’s 11 World Series championships, even if the 2013 World Series was a scam!
Just up the hill from the new, main building is the automobile building. While I covered a fair number of them in my previous post, the exhibits change frequently. So let’s see what they have.
Chrysler built only 251 New Yorker wagons for 1951. Powered by a 331 cubic inch (5.4 liter) V8, this Chrysler doesn’t have a bad angle anywhere.
Please forgive the quality of these pictures. A poorly-lit building with a lot of backlight in spots is not conducive to taking top quality pictures, although I have adjusted them as best I can.
The front seat looks quite inviting and…
I love wood inside any vehicle.
At this time, the Chrysler Turbine is playing second fiddle by being parked next to a pedestrian ’57 Chevrolet Bel-Air–you will soon see why.
While I was able to capture some under hood pictures last time, I could have reached in and touched most of the things you see in this picture. Such close proximity simply couldn’t be ignored. As this car is operational, I get goosebumps thinking about how it was possibly started and moved to its current location. Whoever did that is one lucky person.
This 1937 Chevrolet was driven by its original owner until 1959. Seeing a Chevrolet of this vintage is a treat, but let’s back up two decades.
Seeing any 1917 Chevrolet is highly unusual. From what I have read, the wooden frame was the Achilles Heel on these; likely someone here can better elaborate on that.
For you truck fans, here is a 1912 Traffic truck, built in St. Louis. With 22 horsepower, it had a top speed of 12 miles per hour.
There was also this 1908 Gallowy, one of ten left in existence and the oldest known delivery truck ever used in St. Louis. It is powered by a 14 horsepower, 2 cylinder engine.
Last up on our tour, and the car that trumped the Chrysler Turbine, is this 1905 Fiat.
One of only twenty built, it is believed to be the first-ever foreign car in St. Louis. Purchased new by August Busch Sr. (think beer) at the recommendation of Kaiser Wilhelm II, this Fiat cost $17,000 when new. With a 60 horsepower four-cylinder engine, it had a top speed of 80 miles per hour. This was the third one built.
This museum is highly recommended and well worth driving far out of your way to visit.
The Aerotrain reminds me of a ’59 Impala!
Followed closely by a pair of Greyhound buses! Those Aerotrain coaches were, in fact, adaptations of bus body shells. They’d never meet the current federal crash test standards, which are very high for our US system of mixed passenger and freight traffic.
That oldest railroad car looks amazingly like a wagon, and even more so, a boat. Drop the weight of the undercarriage and you could probably paddle the last mile to your destination!
What a fantastic looking place. That snow blower is mind blowing.
Fabulous museum. In a year or so, I expect to be making some periodic visits to St. Louis, so I will have to look this place up.
Of course, I am in love with that 51 New Yorker wagon – don’t believe I have ever seen one up close before. That woodwork inside is indeed gorgeous.
I also love that Fiat – cars of the first decade or so of the auto industry are endlessly fascinating to me, as those early self-taught engineers worked their way through the problems of how to do all of the things that an auto needs to do.
Don’t be so hard on the fat guy in the picture – he looks like a pleasant enough fellow, and is probably just dreaming about how well that snowblower would work in his driveway. 🙂
You know, he was saying the same thing about the snow blower. It seems his driveway is rather long and he was tiring of using his 4×4 to pack down the snow this past winter, allowing his wife to leave the house.
Call me pedantic, but it’s not a “snowblower;” it’s a Rotary Snowplow. Much better than the older approach of putting a fixed blade in front of a brace of engines & ramming a snowdrift until it gave or the engine(s) derailed.
Some RRs like SP built snowsheds on mountain routes (like Donner Pass) to reduce the need for any snowplows. When they were made of wood, they were a maintenance headache & firetrap. Now they’re concrete.
Some years ago I owned a 1951 T&C NYer wagon. That is the one collector car that I still regret selling. Currently I do own a 1955 T&CNYer Deluxe wagon with some Hollywood history but still favor the ’51.
A photo of our 1951 T&C NYer wagon.
Further review of this 1951 wagon in the museum I believe to be a Saratoga and not a NYer. The front trim (parking lights) are the Windsor-Saratoga type. If this is correct the wheel base is shorter with the length of the front fenders making the difference between of 125.5″ vs 131.5″. In reviewing the photos again I do believe it to be the shorter version but the V on the hood would indicate it is a Saratoga.
A friend found a front shot of this wagon which told the tale. The body from the cowl back is the same on all examples and the Tolex interior was used in all. 1967 Saratoga wagons were built in 1951-52 and only 251 of the NYer in 1951 only.
For those who still love steam, we were in Durango, CO driving from Phoenix to Denver June 2 and stopped about 10 miles north of town to catch the train on the way to Silverton, CO. We then drove on to Silverton where we caught the train upon arrival and I spoke to the engineer and fireman (yes he shovel’s the coal by hand!). Very Cool.
The Silverton-Durango is a fab ride.
Awesome pictures! Thanks for posting. I’d like to one day visit St. Louis. 🙂
I grew up in St Louis and went here often. Last time I was there (2008) they had on display the truck from the “Convoy” movie. Really great place to go. I do miss it now that I live in Arizona.
I’m a St. Louis native, too, and there isn’t much about it that I miss, other than watching the local baseball team and visiting this museum.
I dont miss that City at all!! Just some of the attractions. The science center in St Louis is awesome.
I have referred to the museum many times in my posts, and my most recent visit was two years ago. It was either in 2nd or 3rd grade my parents took me for the first time, and averaged once a year from then on – a tradition we kept with our kids as they grew up. Additionally, our kids were raised on trains in the 80’s – including an Amtrak trip every 6 months or so.
Fortunately, the museum has been able to place a lot of their exhibits under cover. My personal favorite is the 4-4-0 “Daniel Nason” – the cutest locomotive there. Compare the backhead of that with the Big Boy, and the Big Boy is the cab equal to the cockpit of a 747!
Great place to go and I highly recommend a visit to everyone.
A funny account about the Aerotrain: When Rock Island operated one, there was a video camera mounted in the nose and the monitor was on the wall in the lounge. I read that watching daring grade crossings by cars, school buses and trucks and the train being at speed would put your heart in your mouth! Probably sold lots of extra drinks!
How I love the Chrysler turbine car! It has to be one of my top favorite cars ever. The sleek beautiful and modern look to it. How sad that Chrysler destroyed all the test vehicles like GM destroyed the GM EV1’s. *sigh*
One of the oldest and most comprehensive car shows in the St. Louis area is presented by the Horseless Carriage Club each Easter Sunday at the parking lot of the Muny Opera and the Turbine Car is not only shown but is started every hour on the hour. I know the curator and the car is in driving condition. I think there are something like seven remaining, with two that operate. This is one example and I believe Jay Leno owns the other. Apparently Chrysler kept researching turbine power until the late 70s when financial problems prompted a complete cancellation.
The St. Louis Museum of Transportation is awesome. I am about 2.5 hours from St. Louis and it is the closest “big city” to where we live. We usually make the trip over and spend the weekend several times a year for shopping, dining and just hanging out. The last time I was able to talk management into going out to the SLMT was 2009 or so. I can see that I will need to lobby for a return trip. I wonder how often the Big Boy had to be restocked with its 33 tons of coal and 25,000 gallons of water.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be in that part of the country, but if so that museum is a must see. The interior of the 51 New Yorker wagon is great. I didn’t know there were any Chrysler Turbine cars that are still operational, what a find. The GM train makes me think of the Buses that have the top half of a car welded to them. I had no idea cork is such a good insulator, I wonder why it’s not used in RV’s or homes. Maybe it traps moisture? Nice to see the Big Boy restored back to it’s former glory. Great write up.
The Aerotrain has a Mini Me version in Portland Oregon at the zoo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Park_and_Zoo_Railway#The_Zooliner.
I didn’t a get a chance to visit the transport museum the one time I was in St. Louis, but I can console myself with memories of the oh so CC Corvair club autocross I watched while my wife took the Missouri clinical social worker’s exam.
Great post. I was in STL recently for the first time and enjoyed it, but did not have time to check out this museum.
I laughed out loud at your “fat guy” crack. I assume it is you, or a friend of yours?
The Aerotrain looks a bit like a giant gray snake that just swallowed a ’57 Chevy coupe.
Well, it was me and my offspring that were the only ones at that end of the museum at that time and I’m too young to have a son as old as the guy in the picture.
Another place you can catch a train ride is Greenfield Village in Dearborn. The train makes a slow loop around the village. If you ever saw “Young Tom Edison” and remember the scene where Tom’s experiments set the baggage car on fire and he’s tossed off the train, that happened at Smith’s Creek, at the station that is now at the Village.
Thanks for the tour; it’s been too long since I did a train museum. The B&O in Baltimore is good, as well as the one in Sacramento.
The GM Aerotrain is a curious thing, apart from its locomotive styling. It was an attempt by GM, which was of course the leading builder of locomotives at the time, to come up with a low-cost passenger train to sell to the struggling railroads, which were all bleeding money with their passenger trains.
The coaches are body shells from GMC’s PD4104 transit coach. Apparently, it didn’t ride very well, and was a flop, although I don’t think anything was going to work at that stage of the decline of the passenger business. Budd’s RTC self-propelled cars did reasonably well, as they could be used in multiple units or a single unit.
It’s not too dissimilar to the Spanish Talgo train, which is being used on some routes nowadays, including here in the Northwest Corridor. The Talgo shares axles between units, and has a unique tilting mechanism, and rides quite nicely.
I think you mean “RDC” for the Budd products. They were quite successful, running into the ’80s in Boston commuter service. It helped that Budd stainless steel carbodies were already the postwar American standard. They used torque converter transmissions related to those used in Army tanks IIRC.
Yep. The Aerotrain is very cool looking, sort of like a ’58 Chevy on rails, but it turned out that bus bodies make very poor rail cars.
Great tour passenger trains really have transformed over the years unfortunately NZ has little left of it passenger rail network but Ive spent some time on Aussie trains the interstate XPT being the best fast train to ride and of course no-one whose ridden one car forget Sydney’s 1920s Red Rattler suburban effort I think the last one was replaced in the late 90s a museum in action for the enthusiast/commuter great in winter without heating NOT.
I spent a long time poring over a Chrysler Turbine at Amelia Island this year. Really cool car. The sound it makes while starting and running is like a jet engine
I actually met a Chrysler Turbine going the opposite way while visiting Detroit in 1965 or 1966. I agree, that sound is unforgettable.
It looks like they took some cue of the 55 Aerotrain and added them to their car lines in the later 1950’s
I love the Aerotrain. I’ve never seen one in person, but I’ve seen pics of the train.
I visited the museum for my one and only time in the early 1980s. At that time the GM Aerotrain locomotive was stored…on its side! A museum official said they were not proud to do that but with even more STUFF then than now, with less property, and less money with which to run the museum, they had to do that to squeeze it into a location under cover from the elements. That didn’t make any sense to me, either; but that was what the guy said. At least it seems none the worse for the experience.
The cabooses bring back memories, particularly because I spent many workdays in them!
As to the Union Pacific Big Boy, the UP Railroad itself has bought back a sister engine, UP 4014, from a museum in California, has moved it on its own wheels to Cheyenne WY., and over the next few years will restore it to full operation.
SWEET ! .
I’m a Rail Fan too , THANK YOU for these lovely photos .
” Uphill slow ,
Downhill fast ~
Tonnage First
And safety LAST ! ”
Railman’s creedo in the 1920’s .
-Nate
That credo was stenciled on the wall of one of the cabooses I walked through!
Time was it was scribbled everywhere in corners, telephone boxes near rail yards etc. .
S.P. ! .
-Nate
I had never heard or seen pics of the Aerotrain before. The family resemblance to mid-fifties GM cars is unmistakable… So cool!
That V16 turbo diesel is a familiar sight- the power station at the mine I did my trade at had a pair of similar ones to run backup generators.
Piece done by KETC in St Louis about the museum and the Aerotrain
Didn’t the GM engine work on the Chicago-Northwestern line in the early 1960’s? 50 year old memories are just that – old memories, but the distinctive styling sticks in my mind. Also, that FIAT may be capable of 80, but not with me in it, that’s certain. I know my limitations.
The Aero Train originally ran from Chicago to Detroit. If everything went well, it did the 287 miles in a little over three hours. It only ran about a year.
Thanks for the photographs of the railroad locomotives; Big Boy 4014 has been moved to Cheyenne Wyoming and is undergoing restoration, UP claims it will be running in 3-5
years. That will be a fantastic sight to watch!
This makes me realize I need to re-visit the Virginia Museum of Transportation, in Roanoke, which is reasonably close to me and has a very cool collection of old rail equipment, plus has added vintage cars since the last time I visited way back in ’96. Of course, the star attraction is absent right now, but for good reason–the Norfolk & Western J-class #611, one of the last great steam streamliners, has just departed in tow for the NS Spencer Shops roundhouse, where it will undergo restoration to operating condition for the first time since the mid 90’s.
Come to think of it I need to visit Spencer also…don’t know how I managed to never get there while living in North Carolina for 32 years…
Nice photos of some of the high points of this collection! If I’m ever in St. Louis, this will definitely be a stop.