The Trailiner

Was the 'Trailiner’ a specific New Haven freight program, a marketing campaign or was it a separate company with a contractual agreement to provided truck trailer transport? Currently there is a trucking company called Trailiner, but I don’t think there is any connection.

The New Haven was an early proponent of piggyback service, running between its Harlem River Terminal and Boston. The trains themselves were marketed as Trailiners, and they were the hottest freights on the system. The Merchant's Limited and Yankee Clipper were the hot daytime trains, and HB-5/BH-6 and HB-7/BH-8 were the hot nighttime trains. How hot were they? Well, they swapped power at New Haven Union Station rather than get delayed dealing with Cedar Hill Yard, and, if push came to shove, First Class trains had to get out of their way, at least on the West End. In later years both HB-8 and BH-7 had EP-5s for power between Harlem River and New Haven.

It was both a freight program and a marketing campaign. The truck company has no connection.

Statkowski wrote:The New Haven was an early proponent of piggyback service, running between its Harlem River Terminal and Boston. The trains themselves were marketed as Trailiners, and they were the hottest freights on the system. The Merchant's Limited and Yankee Clipper were the hot daytime trains, and HB-5/BH-6 and HB-7/BH-8 were the hot nighttime trains. How hot were they? Well, they swapped power at New Haven Union Station rather than get delayed dealing with Cedar Hill Yard, and, if push came to shove, First Class trains had to get out of their way, at least on the West End. In later years both HB-8 and BH-7 had EP-5s for power between Harlem River and New Haven.

It was both a freight program and a marketing campaign. The truck company has no connection.

A couple of issues here; first off HB-6 and BH-5 were also late evening/nighttime trains which left both Harlem River and Boston a couple of hours ahead of HB-8 and BH-7. HB-6 and BH-5 ran Monday through Thursday and HB-8 and BH-7 ran Monday through Friday. I had the job as fireman in most of the spring, 1966 and at that time HB-8 got a jet every trip while BH-7 got a pair of FL-9's every trip. The power did not lay over at Oak Point but rather came down light from New Haven every evening and in the morning an additional crew would take the FL-9's usually to GCT for morning service. Prior to the return electric power to New York end freight service in 1963 both trains would normally get two road diesels and run through between Harlem River and Boston with the crew change taking place at Water Street in New Haven. HB-6 and BH-5 came off sometime around 1962 and after that HB-8 and BH-7 did it all although once in a while they would run an extra ahead of HB-8. When the Virginian motors first came on the scene they wanted to run a single motor on HB-8 and BH-7 which would have been adequate power for this train but running long end first the visibility for the engineer was extremely poor and they did not continue that practice. I worked all of these trains many different times including a few times between New Haven and Boston too. They would often run ahead of passenger trains and even though our freight train speed for these trains was 50 MPH, we ran them much faster than that and it was expected of us at that time. If HB-8 went out ahead of a passenger train at New Rochelle Junction it stayed ahead of that passenger train all the way to at least New Haven and maybe even further.
Noel Weaver

Thanks Statkowski and Noel.
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When did the 'Trailiner' start? I assume it continued till the PC days.