I thought that readers would like to know that the CB&Q “Silver Dome” shown on Photo of the Day about 3 days ago still exists. It’s at the Mad River & NKP Museum in Bellevue, Ohio. It’s in Amtrak paint, and the museum is slowly replacing the Amtrak-applied, almost opaque, Lexan dome windows with glass. “Silver Dome,” the first dome car in the U.S., has been at MR&NKP for several years and is under cover at the museum’s Monument Station building. If you’re in or near Bellevue, please stop by and visit “Silver Dome.”
Not to 
, but the Lake Superior Railroad Museum also has aquired a CB&Q dome, which is being rebuilt now and will be on property in 2012.
I’m wondering what comparison we can make from the above mentioned, “Silver Dome” of CB&Q to the original {4}, dome cars on GM’s “Train of Tomorrow”…The design seems similar, with the flat glass panels in the dome sections of roof framwork.
The GM “domes” on the Tof T were being shown over the US back starting in 1947. I saw them on the four car train as it came up thru Kantner, Pa., on the former B&O branch, Somerset & Cambria, {now CSX}, on the way to Rockwood, Pa., where it would have switched on to the Sand patch line, east / west.
When were these 4 domes manufactured…? Anyone have any info on that…?
“Silver Dome” was originally a flat top coach with a different name which had the dome added by CB&Q in 1945 or 1946. The domes for the Train of Tomorrow were built by Pullman-Standard in 1947.
The Train of Tomorrow was a GM/Pullman Standard demo train that made a barnstorming tour of the country in 1947-48 to show what would be possible in the new post-war trains. The train set was sold to the UP and used in their Seattle-Portland pool service. I may be mistaken, but I believe all the cars from the ToT have been scrapped.