Daylight Speedliner
One of the Daylight Speedliner baggage-dining-coach combines | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Service type | Inter-city rail |
| Status | Discontinued |
| Locale | Mid-Atlantic United States |
| Predecessor | Washingtonian |
| First service | October 28, 1956 |
| Last service | January 21, 1963 |
| Former operator(s) | Baltimore & Ohio Railroad |
| Route | |
| Termini | Philadelphia Pittsburgh |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) |
The Daylight Speedliner was an American named passenger train of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in the 1950s and early 1960s. Equipped with three or four streamlined, self-propelled Budd Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) coupled together, it initially operated between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, via Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D. C., as Trains #21–22.
The B&O had been using RDCs in local Baltimore–Washington, D.C., commuter service since 1950. Pleased with their reliability and lower operating costs compared to heavyweight passenger trains drawn by steam locomotives, the B&O decided in 1955 to replace its money-losing Washingtonian steam train with RDCs, ordering four RDC-1s with reclining coach seats and two RDC-2s with baggage compartments. The RDC-equipped Daylight Speedliner entered service on October 28, 1956, and reduced the railroad's operating expenses by almost half, compared to the Washingtonian train it replaced.
After B&O discontinued passenger service north of Baltimore on April 26, 1958, the Daylight Speedliner operated between Baltimore and Pittsburgh, covering the 333-mile (536 km) route on a seven-hour schedule, until its discontinuation on January 21, 1963.