I would highly recommend Marc J. Frattiaso's book "The New Haven Railroad in the McGinnis Era" for an in depth account of the various lightweight trains they New Haven tested and purchased. It really is a thorough history of the various concepts:
http://www.whiteriverproductions.com/shopexd.asp?id=41
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
My word, you're right -- I stand corrected.
By extension... ISTR those trains were being proposed for other corridors out of Chicago, but the money for infrastructure building to necessary standards (what is now Class 6) for those corridors wasnt there at the time. Would turboliners, as opposed (say) to F40PH or early GE locomotives hauling discrete push-pull-capable sets of orthodox-size equipment, be better suited to those corridors if the track and signal improvement work on them had been completed then?
(It certainly seems that the Turboliner idea has been replaced by such trains, perhaps even for "HSR-lite" services built up to standards for class 7 -- I still can't believe in my heart that the RTL IIIs didn't survive... but it appears that this snip from a post in 2003 turned out to be justified:
The other side of the coin here though is the fact that the Turboliners can run faster than the conventionals. However, Amtrak is supposed to pay for the necessary track improvements to allow this. Since they have no money, this work is not being done. So for the time being the total travel time between NYP and Albany will not change.
And in the absence of time reductions 'conventional' service operated with Genesis dual-mode power can do the job well enough...
The Turboliners did fairly well on the Chicago-Detroit route and contributed heavily to improved ridership on that route.
It was a MASSIVE mistake -- in fact, given the state of infrastructure in contemporary US practice, a particularly massive mistake. This point is extensively covered in all the references to the 'lightweight train craze' I have read.
Even the very early experiments on C&O (a road known for its track-geometry maintenance, I think) demonstrated ride and NVH problems with the lightweight trains, and customer dissatisfaction with the general lack of comfort and amenities. By the day of the UA Turbotrain, there was still (iirc) nothing longer than 128' sticks on most of the ex-NH Corridor trackage, largely if not completely on wood ties, and the track didn't have the flawless lining and surfacing maintenance needed for lightweight trains with passive suspensions capable of handling both loaded and empty states smoothly.
There was (in my opinion) never a clear distinction between 'lightweight trains as a cost-saving measure' and 'lightweight trains as high-speed machines'. And there badly needed to be!
What got built wasn't materially better than a bus in ride 'experience', but with all the potential delays, inconvenience of access en route, and environmental issues of the contemporary railroad. The nail in the coffin was probably unreliability, which is not strictly 'fair' when assessing a design's potential customer appeal, but certainly played a large part in the actual history (...'another [few] minutes and I would have been a hero' stuff...)
I don't think the problems Baldwin had with dual power and the Maybach/Mekydro business were insoluble... just not effectively dealt with or, as it turned out, solved in time to save the builder. As noted elsewhere, there were few if any problems with the Speed Merchant locomotives; the problems were more in the trainsets they pulled.
If you are running a long-distance train, it must be substantially better than potential bus competition running over "non-dedicated ROW" (the then-new system of superhighways and turnpikes connecting to the network of state roads built since the Thirties). Increasingly, it would also find the speed and convenience advantages for longer runs shifting to the airplane, for which cramped quarters and lousy aspects of 'ride quality' only have to be borne for a few hours even on long journeys. And that is before you start dealing with the issue of high-level-platform access to low wormlike consists...
Even before the Eastern Shuttle service started (in 1961, after the era of the lightweight New Haven trains in high-speed service) automobile, bus, and plane service had neatly eliminated all the niches that contemporary lightweight tlong-distance trains could fill. Unsurprisingly the consists often wound up in short-haul and commuter service -- for which they were miserably ill-suited, and showed it.
(I confess that I'm still bitter about the whole Parkersburg Turbo business, as it artificially interfered with establishment of effective Turbo service in the Corridor north of New York, and gave the train a bad name as a boondoggle. Economics of how you run a high-dollar train require good equipment utilization... which means you have to run them fast, avoid breakage or online delay, and do quick turnaround. (The effective requirements were demonstrated in the airline industry with the operating example of the Braniff 'Big Orange'). A train that stresses low tare weight at the expense of reliability is not likely to thrive any more than, say, a 160mph MU train that's Always Breaking Its Fancy Systems And Needs Riding Maintainers -- no matter how modern it looks, or how fast it goes in experimental testing...
The closest thing to a 'comfortable' modern "lightweight" train was probably something not mentioned yet in this context, the Tube Train tested on PRR, and that's scarcely in the class, either weight or size-wise, of the NH, B&M, and NYC experiments. And follow-on acceptance of that concept was if anything worse than the Speed-Merchant-hauled trains.
From the accounts I've read, the public loved the modern appearance of the new trains, including the Aerotrain. But after the novelty wore off, the bugs started to show, and the public, given a range of other choices, demonstrated conclusively where its actual preferences lay.
We could invoke the general context of Young, McGinnis and others in this business, for example for potential reasons why high speed and cheapness got conflated in design. But I think the lightweight train craze was wrongheaded for reasons that did not involve financial or managerial shenanigans. By the time it was practical to put active suspension and tilt into rail vehicles, the market *in the United States* for expensive new lightweights was minimal -- limited to a few years in the Fifties, really.
In Europe, of course, the story was different. But note how the 'take rate' for European systems (and I include the pre-Amtrak Talgo) in the USA was also minimal in the period we are considering. The Frangeco/Rohr Turboliners might be considered an exception, but use outside the Empire Corridor does not seem to have been successful.
RME
CSSHEGEWISCHThe "Roger Williams" six-car trainset was part of the lightweight craze of the mid-1950's, which hit the New Haven pretty hard.
Do you think the New Haven's efforts with light weight trains were a mistake? Certainly they were trying to reduce the costs of their passenger service. It seems to me they did but it was not enough to make a difference.
OvermodRode this in Springfield service in 1973. At that point it was like riding an older RDC with a fancy nose and funny square windows (which is more or less what it was to start!)
By 1973 it was, of course, an older RDC. As I understand it the New Haven was looking to tailor their power to the length of their trains, especially on branch lines. In that the Roger Williams was a success. However this was not enough to enable the New Haven to make a profit. Government subsidies kept it running until Penn Central was required to take it over and the subsidies continued until Amtrak came along.
The "Roger Williams" six-car trainset was part of the lightweight craze of the mid-1950's, which hit the New Haven pretty hard. It was roughly a combination of RDC powerplants applied to rather conventional coaches. All coaches had two 300HP diesels for traction but only the end cars had control cabs, which resembled the cabs of the FM Speed Merchants. I believe that this MU-car type arrangement was intended to hold a faster schedule by quicker acceleration from station stops.
Rode this in Springfield service in 1973. At that point it was like riding an older RDC with a fancy nose and funny square windows (which is more or less what it was to start!) To my knowledge it was no more effective at 'high speed' than any other RDC, which is not to say it wouldn't go as fast as speed limits on the New Haven would permit.
As an aside, the M-497 went 183mph on the stock RDC suspension (!!!) so there was nothing inherent about the train itself that would bar high speed; there's just a limit to how fast 275hp truck engines could turn torque converters...
presents another perspective on high speed multiple unit trains. It was built by the Budd Company in 1956 for the New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad for the Boston to New York (Shore Line) route. It was run as a train only a short time but continued to operate for Penn Central and into the 80's for Amtrak.
You can see a few pictures of the Roger Williams here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alcomike/8118251320/
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