The Flying Yankee

The Flying Yankee name dates to at least 1891, when a steam-hauled heavyweight train ran between Bangor, Maine and Boston, but the trainset preserved today is the lightweight diesel-electric streamliner the Budd Company built for the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1935, with mechanical and electrical equipment from Electro-Motive. Only the third streamliner in North American service — after Union Pacific's M-10000 and the Burlington's Pioneer Zephyr, of which it was a virtual clone — it entered service on April 1, 1935 and covered 750 miles a day, six days a week, on a Portland-Boston-Bangor circuit, proving so popular it turned a profit and later wore the names Cheshire, Minute Man, Mountaineer and Business Man on other routes. Retired after a final run on May 7, 1957, the train went on static display at the Edaville Railroad in Carver, Massachusetts, moved in 1993 to Glen, New Hampshire under Story Land owner Bob Morrell, and was purchased by the State of New Hampshire in 1997, which launched structural restoration at Claremont before storing the train at the Hobo Railroad in Lincoln from 2005. After a planned Concord move fell through in 2017, the state offered the trainset for sale in November 2023, and in April 2024 it was sold to the Flying Yankee Association, which moved it to Conway on July 30, 2024 for continued restoration with the goal of operating it again, possibly on the Conway Scenic Railroad. In May 2025 the train was added to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places.