Chessie (train)

The Chessie was a proposed streamlined daylight passenger train developed by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in the late 1940s, an idea of C&O chairman Robert Young, who named it for the railway's cat mascot. It would have run between Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, with feeder routes to Newport News, Norfolk and Louisville, behind a new Baldwin steam turbine locomotive able to reach 100 miles per hour. Its luxury lightweight equipment was built by the Budd Company: 46 cars including baggage cars, 36-seat coaches, dome cars, tavern-lounges, dining-observation cars and a dining car with a theater for first-run films. The C&O ordered the cars in 1944 and Budd delivered them in August 1948, but falling passenger traffic led to the train being cancelled before it entered revenue service. Most cars went to Pere Marquette streamliners, and twelve coaches were exported to Argentina.