Brief History:

The AeroTrain name is recognized by most model railroaders, and yet finding good information about it has been a challenge. There were two AeroTrain consists (train #1000 and train #1001). Built in 1955 and debuted at the 1955 "GM Powerama" which was held at Soldier's Field just south of Downtown. 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. In addition to the roads listed below that used the AeroTrain in regular service, it also ran on many other railroads such as the Southern Pacific, New Haven, Canadian National, and even spent a couple of months in Mexico! Today you can find parts of one Train Set at the Museum in St. Louis, and parts of the other Train Set at the Museum in Green Bay. The one in St. Louis was cosmetically restored about 5 years ago using a $10,000 donation from the NMRA.

The Consist of the AeroTrain:

Each AeroTrain consisted of the locomotive unit, eight 40 seat coaches and the tail end observation car. A total of 10 units per train set. The Locomotive used the drive train off the SW-1200 switcher (re-geared so it could hit 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. The GM Designer responsible for the AeroTrain project Charles "Chuck" Jordan who is now retired and living in Southern California. "Chuck" was the primary designer of the 1958 Corvette, and was named Cadillac’s Chief of Design in 1959. CON-COR would like to acknowledge "Chuck's" cooperation with the Aero-Train project.

The AeroTrain models:

Designed similar to the "N" Pioneer Zephyr models introduced recently, the AeroTrain will be DCC compatible, have full interiors, and interior lighting, reversing headlights and tail lights. The AeroTrain will be as faithfully reproduced as CON-COR can make it. It is designed so you can just buy the basic 4 car set and it will run just fine as a 4 car train with all the features. But it will be easy to add the extra "Add-on" car set(s) to make a longer train if you so choose either immediately, or at a later date. Con-Cor will offer the AeroTrain in a basic set of 4 units, the Locomotive 2 coaches and the Observation car. And "add-on" sets of 3 more coaches will be offered. So a modeler can buy the basic 4 unit set, plus one "add-on" coach set to make a 7 car "AeroTrain", or buy 2 of the "add-on" coach sets to reproduce the full 10 car prototype train.