1939 World's Fair Trackless Trolley's

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The trackless trains of the 1939 New York World’s Fair

Jim O'Clair May 8th, 2014 at 4pm | 39 comments

Trackless train photos courtesy BusTalk.info.

With all the focus recently on the 1964 World’s Fair and the release of the Ford Mustang, we thought it would be interesting to jump back another 25 years to another World’s Fair held in the same city. The 1939 fair was also a memorable one in terms of technology, Art Deco design and automotive history. “Building the World of Tomorrow, Remembering the World of Yesterday” was the theme of the fair, which was open for two seasons: from April 30 to October 31, 1939, and then again from May 11 to October 27, 1940.

The Transportation Zone of the fairgrounds had pavilions sponsored by Ford, GM, Chrysler, Firestone, Goodrich and Budd. Additional buildings housed displays for aviation and marine designs as well as the railroad building which presented the “Railroads on Parade” pageant, a rolling history of rail service in America. The grand finale of the pageant featured both the Raymond Loewy-designed Pennsylvania RR K-4 streamlined locomotive and the NY Central RR, Henry Dreyfuss-designed Hudson J-3A engine, two of the most stylish train engines ever built.

The Theme Center in the middle of the fairgrounds featured more iconic Art Deco designs with the 610-foot-tall Trylon and 185-foot-diameter Perisphere garnering most of the attention.

Fairgoers paid 75 cents to walk through the front admission gate throughout the first summer, but prices were lowered to 50 cents on October 1. More than 26 million people visited the fair between its grand opening in 1939 and its final closing in 1940.

Many of the visitors walked the vast expanse of pavilions and displays; however, Greyhound Bus Lines offered an alternative – trackless trains. For an additional 25 cents (15 cents for children) the trackless train would carry fairgoers from pavilion to pavilion.

The trains were pulled around by a 67hp, 210-cu.in. Mack EN-11 (Continental F6209 L-head) six-cylinder engine placed inside a modified Mack truck body that still retained the 1938 Mack ED-series chrome grille. The people were seated in open-air trolley cars with canvas canopies that could carry up to 12 passengers per carriage.

The trackless train was also available for any young boy to take home with them as well. Arcade Toy Manufacturing produced a diecast version of the trackless train as well as a diecast model of the Yellow Coach 1207 buses that brought visitors to the admission gates. Both are still very popular and sought after collectibles among vintage toy and die cast collectors. A good example of the trackless train still showing its original white decals can be worth more than $200 and even more with the original 1939 World’s Fair box it came in.

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