City of Miami - 1
Modeling the City of Miami, part 1
Model this late steam era name passenger
train, car-for-car
By James Eager
D
ecember 18, 1940 the inaugural run of the City of
Miami ,a seven-car coach streamliner. Its route was
from Chicago to Miami, a distance of 1,493 miles
(2,403 km). Like a ship leaving harbor, her bow had a wave-like
pattern that cut the prairie as she moved.
I first saw an image of this train on the cover of Paul M. Somers
book, “Illinois Central Streamliners 1936-1946”. A whole chap-
ter of the book is devoted to this train.
My City of Miami train is a study in stops and starts, errors, and
doing something over until you get it right. As I learned dur-
ing this process, passenger cars take more effort to get work-
ing correctly than freight cars. I thought they would be easier. I
ended up farming out some parts of that could get done faster
and better by others.
MRH-Jul 2013
