The ''Whippoorwill'' was a short-lived

passenger train A passenger train is a train used to transport people along a railroad line. These trains may consist of unpowered passenger railroad cars (also known as coaches or carriages) hauled by one or more locomotives, or may be self-propelled; self pr ...

operated by the

Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad The Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad was a Class I railroad that linked Chicago to southern Illinois, St. Louis, and Evansville. Founded in 1877, it grew aggressively and stayed relatively strong throughout the Great Depression and two Worl ...

(C&EI) between

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

Evansville, Indiana Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...

. The C&EI introduced the ''Whippoorwill'' in 1946 as a day train supplement to the express

streamliner A streamliner is a vehicle incorporating wikt:streamline, streamlining in a shape providing reduced air resistance. The term is applied to high-speed railway trainsets of the 1930s to 1950s, and to their successor "High-speed rail, bullet trai ...

s it operated in conjunction with the

Louisville and Nashville Railroad The Louisville and Nashville Railroad , commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States. Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of the ...

(L&N). The ''Whippoorwill'' was one of the first new streamliners introduced after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, with completely new equipment delivered by

Pullman-Standard The Pullman Company, founded by George Pullman, was a manufacturer of railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Through rapid late-19th century ...

. A C&EI advertisement in ''

Trains In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often know ...

'' magazine touted the "ultra-modern chair car accommodations" and "latest type passenger Diesel locomotives."; 70 The train's original consist, as delivered by Pullman-Standard, included the following cars: A famous publicity photograph, which the C&EI used long after the train's discontinuance, showed a single

EMD E7 The E7 was a , A1A-A1A passenger train locomotive built by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division of La Grange, Illinois. 428 cab versions, or E7As, were built from February 1945 to April 1949; 82 booster E7Bs were built from March 1945 to J ...

locomotive (#1102), leading these seven cars which made up the train's original consist. The photograph was colorized to accentuate the train's blue and yellow color scheme. The northbound train (#4) departed Evansville at 7:00 am and arrived in Chicago's

Dearborn Station Dearborn Station (also referred to as Polk Street Depot) was, beginning in the late 1800s, one of six intercity train stations serving downtown Chicago, Illinois. It remained in operation until May 1, 1971. Built in 1883, it is located at ...

at 12:20 pm. The train then returned south (as #3) at 5:30 pm, arriving in Evansville at 10:50 pm. The C&EI discontinued the ''Whippoorwill'' in 1948 after the L&N began running a section of the ''

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

'' to Chicago over a similar schedule. The C&EI reassigned the ''Whippoorwills equipment to the ''Georgian'' and the ''

Humming Bird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics aro ...

'' until finally selling most of it to the Illinois Central in the early 1960s.

References

External links

The famous publicity photograph
{{CEI named trains Railway services introduced in 1946 Named passenger trains of the United States Passenger trains of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Railway services discontinued in 1948