"Shrinking Land"
by John Young
A Ford Trimotor, travels across America's Midwest, a trip which took days instead of weeks -- a great improvement over rail travel of the day.
In 1929, Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) pioneered transcontinental passenger transport with the aid of an already popular airplane, the Ford Trimotor. It was selected by the airline's technical advisor, none other than Charles Lindbergh -- who also planned the route, and flew the inaugural flight from Los Angeles, while Amelia Earhart christened the first Ford out of New York.
Travelers flying on the new service would leave New York City at night aboard a Pennsylvania Railroad Pullman car on The Airway Limited to Columbus, Ohio, avoiding the difficult air crossing of the Alleghenies. At Columbus they would board a waiting Ford trimotor and fly to Waynoka, Oklahoma, then take a second night train ride, on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, to Clovis, New Mexico. The last daylight leg was a plane to the West Coast. The entire trip took forty-eight hours.
City of Columbus at Port Columbus, Ohio (8 July, 1929)
TAT Ford at Wichita, Kansas (c.1930)
The first trip left Pennsylvania Station in New York City on July 7, 1929, with Lindbergh pushing a button on the West Coast, causing a signal to light in Penn Station, whereupon the conductor gave the highball. Early the next morning in Los Angeles, actress Mary Pickford christened the trimotor City of Los Angeles, and Lindbergh then piloted it on the first airborne leg east to Winslow, Arizona.
Nineteen passengers, including famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who served as Assistant to TAT’s General Manager, made the inaugural westbound trip. After leaving New York City at 7:05 pm by train on 7 July, 1929 they arrived at Port Columbus Station near Columbus, Ohio, aboard The Airway Limited at 7:55 am the following day. Two Ford trimotors, the City of Columbus and the City of Wichita, were waiting to take them to Waynoka, Oklahoma where they would transfer to another train for the third leg of their journey. The entire coast-to-coast trip was publicized as taking 48 hours to complete.
TAT route as depicted on a First Day Cover flown on the inaugural flight
While TAT offered luxury service, the complicated plane-train (with buses to connect airfields and train stations) was expensive, required frequent transfers, and cut only a day off the railroad’s 3-day coast-to-coast trip. Initially, bad weather often grounded the planes, resulting in TAT travelers having to ride most of the way by train. Pilots from other lines derisively began referring to TAT as “Take A Train.” With the crash of 1929 coming only a few months after TAT’s inauguration, its ridership sagged, and it lost $2.7 million in eighteen months. On 16 July, 1930 TAT ceased to exist after it was merged into Transcontinental & Western Air along with two other airlines: Western Air Express (WAE) and Pittsburgh Aviation Industries Corporation (PIAC).
Interestingly, a similar air-rail venture was launched by the New York Central at the same time but it was eclipsed by the Lindbergh connection.
Ford Trimotor
The Ford Trimotor was based on the general layout of the highly successful Fokker F.VII/3m three-engine, high-wing monoplane, except that the Ford was all-metal --- even to its corrugated metal skinning which earned it the nickname "Tin Goose." It was a flexible design which could be fitted with a variety of power plants in the 300/400-hp power bracket. Many were built and used in different parts of the world, particularly in the less-developed areas, for which the Ford was ideal. With the depression in the early thirties, however, the Ford Company ceased to make aircraft.
