page_title: Capitol Limited (B&O train)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Capitol Limited (B&O train) / History
caption_attribution_description: Photo of the Baltimore &amp; Ohio's new EMD EA diesel locomotive for the Capitol Limited and the railroad's replica of their noted early steam engine, Tom Thumb. Auction copy-"A vintage 1937 ORIGINAL photograph depicting Baltimore &amp; Ohio Railroad introducing its newest with its oldest. The famous Tom Thumb is posed with a shiny EA built by Electro-Motive Corporation of La Grange, Illinois."
context_page_description: The Capitol Limited was an American passenger train run by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, originally between New York City and Grand Central Station in Chicago, Illinois, via Union Station, Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh. For almost 48 years, it was the B&O's flagship passenger train, noted for personalized service and innovation. At the time of its discontinuation on May 1, 1971, when Amtrak took over most rail passenger service in the U.S., the Capitol Limited operated between Washington and Chicago.
context_section_description: The Capitol Limited was inaugurated on May 12, 1923, as an all-Pullman sleeping car train running from Pennsylvania Station in New York City to Chicago, via Washington, D.C. Once west of the Pennsy's Newark station in New Jersey, the train used the Lehigh Valley and Reading Railroad as far as Philadelphia, where it reached B&O's own rails to Chicago. It was designed to compete against the luxury trains of the rival Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad.  Although the B&O's longer route put it at a competitive disadvantage in New York for time-sensitive travelers,  the B&O offered such luxuries in the 1920s as onboard secretaries, barbers, manicures, and valets. The Capitol's "Martha Washington"-series dining cars were particularly noted for their Chesapeake Bay cuisine, served in ornate cars with leaded glass windows, glass chandeliers, and colonial-style furnishings. The Capitol Limited derived much of its passenger traffic from businessmen and government officials traveling between Washington and the midwest.
  On September 1, 1926, the Pennsylvania Railroad terminated its contract with the B&O, which had permitted the latter to use the "Pennsy's" Hudson River tunnels and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. Thereafter, the Capitol Limited, along with all other B&O passenger trains to New York, operated over the Jersey Central's main line from the connection with the Reading in Bound Brook into its Jersey City terminal, where passengers were then transferred to buses that met the train right on the platform. These buses were ferried across the Hudson River into Manhattan, where they proceeded to various "stations" including the Vanderbilt Hotel, Wanamaker's, Columbus Circle, and Rockefeller Center, as well as Brooklyn.
  In 1938, the B&O dieselized the train after purchasing two sets of the new EA and EB locomotives from General Motors' Electro-Motive Corporation.  The B&O was heavily in debt during the Depression and could not afford to buy new equipment, so it rebuilt its old heavyweight passenger cars into streamlined ones when the diesels were introduced in 1938, making the Capitol Limited the first dieselized streamlined train in the eastern U.S. By September 1940, the through sleeping cars operating to New York were all streamlined.  For the aesthetic features of the train, the B&O turned to renowned industrial designer Otto Kuhler, who turned the Cap, as it was affectionately known, into a regal operation complete with a stunning royal blue, silver, and gold pin-striping livery (a paint scheme that would become one of the classics of the streamliner era).
caption: Brand-new diesel equipment in 1937
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