A few years ago i found that there was one Aerotrain left. Then i find that a second one survives. Can anyone tell me the current progress on the two Aerotrains?
This is what the folks in St Louis have done with theirs (scroll to the bottom of the page)...
http://www.museumoftransport.org/restoration.htm
The RI Aerotrain #2 in the Green Bay Railroad Museum is just collecting bird poop. They aren't doing anything with it. They used to keep it inside along with the Big Boy and the GG1, but now they have moved it outside under a shed where birds and the elements can take thier toll.
The eingine compartment of the Aerotrain in Green Bay is empty, or at least it was when I looked inside a few years ago. So I think there are no plans whatever. Better under cover of some kind than totally outside -- when I first went to the Green Bay museum in the early 1960s everything was outside and unprotected.
Dave Nelson
The Illinois Railroad Museum in Union Il. has a Rock island RR Aero Train.
dknelson wrote: The eingine compartment of the Aerotrain in Green Bay is empty, or at least it was when I looked inside a few years ago. So I think there are no plans whatever. Better under cover of some kind than totally outside -- when I first went to the Green Bay museum in the early 1960s everything was outside and unprotected.Dave Nelson
The Rock Island stripped out the prime mover and traction motors (and anything else they could use) before giving it to the National Museum of Transport near St Louis. It seems as if there is no hope of ever seeing one operate again. . I didn't realize there was another Rock Island set in Illinois. I will have to check that out next time I am up there.
Why preserve/restore the Aerotrain?
One could argue that all of the 1950's "lightweight experimentals" (Pennsy-Budd Tubular, Budd Pioneer III, Talgo, Train-X, Aerotrain) were failures (do we include the Alan Cripe TurboTrain in with that group -- it was derived from a design back in the 1950's for the C&O but never built). On the other hand, the lightweight experimentals were a generation after the switch to what are generally called lightweight streamline passenger cars (conventional 4-axle 85-foot stainless steel or Corten steel cars that supplanted the "heavyweight" steel cars around the time of the Diesel transition). When the lightweight experimentals came out, passenger rail was already in serious decline and the failure to work out the bugs in the lightweight experimentals is connected to the fact that they were supposed to be a magic cure for declining passenger revenues when their innovative designs would have needed more fine tuning and passenger service needed more than simply a new train design.
The GM Aerotrain was more of a failure than the others. Talgo and Train-X had some measure of technical sophistication in their guided axle mechanisms. Aerotrain was simply putting GM bus bodies on unsteered single-axle trucks and was fantastically bad from what I have heard. Talgo, Train-X, TurboTrain may have been rough riding compared to say, some six-axle heavyweight cars with sophisticated swing-hanger trucks that represent the gold standard of smooth ride, but it all depends on your sensibilities and expectations. Aerotrain, from what I gather, was a naive design that had a critical speed below that of mainline passenger operations, and it shook so bad as to be dangerous at speed. I have ridden TurboTrain, and while people nit pick about "lightweight trains" and how bad they are on crossover and switch frogs, at speed and on welded rail, it ran quite smoothly, which is not anything you can say about Aerotrain.
A lot of motives are assigned to GM, wanting to favor cars and buses over trains, and so on. But what I think happened is that some engineers thought, a bus runs on two axles (actually 3 axles for the big motor coaches), a two-axle bus runs smoothly enough over a highway, why don't we put two steel axles on a widened bus and hook a bunch together and make a smooth-running train? There is a lot that is said to be different about trains than highway, and one of the widely held beliefs is that trains need to be heavy to ride well, a belief that I don't share as demonstrated by European trains, which are all lightweight by U.S. standards. On the other hand, a railroad car needs to take into account the pecularity of rail-wheel guidance, and the suspension requirements for a stable train are very different from a stable highway vehicle.
In fact, the stability of trains at high speeds was put on a scientific basis by work in Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. starting in the 1960's. The guided axle designs have the potential for high speed as demonstrated by the modern Talgos; the Aerotrain was proven to be a particularly bad design from the standpoint of highspeed running.
If I were to select a lightweight experimental for preservation or restoration, my pick would be the NYC XPlorerer (the Train-X). Is there one still moldering away in that weeded siding somewhere in the Carolinas? The reason to pick Train-X is that Talgo is still in service while Aerotrain was a naive design without future potential. As to Train-X, many regard it as an antecedant to TurboTrain, and while TurboTrain was not a raging success, it was an inspiration to many about the possiblities of modern lightweight trains (see the Midwest Highspeed Rail Association Web page for their take on TurboTrain). I have also heard rumors that the Train-X equipment was used during the development and testing of TurboTrain.
As to my nomination of Train-X, it was in part the brainchild of Robert Young, not the actor but the railroad exec who headed C&O and later NYC, and who had the failed dream of revamping declining passenger service using lightweight trains with lower fuel and motive power costs. It is also said that Train-X was to antecedant to TurboTrain, but the patent trail suggests it is more complex than that. Alan Cripe held patents from the early 1950's at C&O for a "paper train" that looks an awful lot like TurboTrain, complete with clamshell doors at the ends for connecting these unit trains in multiple. The Train-X patents ("Axle guiding mechanism" and others) are assigned to Pullman Standard and do not involve Alan Cripe, and their axle guiding mechanisms are different from either the C&O train or the later TurboTrain. The Train-X, however, uses a similar four-bar linkage remote roll center pendulum tilt as TurboTrain, not found on Talgo.
Based on a combination of the history of Robert Young, the ill-starred dreamer of restoring passengeer trains who took his own life, probably owing to mental depression illness, the indirect connection to Alan Cripe, perhaps one of the more creative railroad car designers, the sophistication of both the pendulum tilt and the guided-axle systems, my vote on preservation and/or restoration goes to Train-X, if this is still possible, rather than bothering with Aerotrain.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
"Why preserve/restore the Aerotrain?"
That is an easy question to answer. Regardless of success or failure, it is still a part of railroading history. Many folks find interest in the Aerotrain. Somebody's interest in the Aerotrain is why this thread exists. Just because you don't find something from railroading's past particularly interesting or a failure, doesn't mean it shouldn't be bothered with.
spikejones52002 wrote: The Illinois Railroad Museum in Union Il. has the Rock island RR Airo Train.
The Illinois Railroad Museum in Union Il. has the Rock island RR Airo Train.
I think you might be mistaken on this. IRM does not have an aerotrain in its collection. Maybe you are thinking of the Nebraska Zephyer?
An "expensive model collector"
In some ways, preservation, restoration, or public exhibit constitutes a kind of Hall of Fame of Railroading. Traditionally, we reserve the Hall of Fame for the greats.
In museums, perhaps we want to exhibit the failures, but more importantly the noble failures. If there was a way of turning back the clock and preserving a Pennsy T1, people would jump at the chance. Sure, the T1 was never produced in great numbers, was introduced at the twighlight of steam and had a short career, and was in no way as successful as a Niagara or a J. But if it was a failure, it was a noble failure in that it was the best effort of the Pennsy, one of the great railroads, to turn around the decline of steam.
What does the Aerotrain represent? On one hand, it was an example of a 1950's Lightweight Experimental train, but it was a naive design that in a way is a slander to the Train-X and Talgo that Aerotrain is representative of the genre. Aerotrain also represents the efforts of an automotive company, GM, to make a mark on railroading. GM's 567 Diesel was a very successful attempt to transfer the technology of the automotive world (or perhaps the submarine propulsion system world) to railroading while Aerotrain was a very unsuccessful attempt.
The Aerotrain could also represent automotive-style marketing, the Harley Earl influence. Aerotrain dominated a lot of brochures, promotional materials, I remember even a children's book, where the artwork depicted a very futurastic train along the lines of the Alweg (Disneyland and Seattle) Monorail were once the trains of the future. A lot of people, myself included, have come to thinking of the Aerotrain as cool.
So some people find the Aerotrain interesting and are worried that it is properly cared for in a museum. I guess this is a free country and if this is what people want museums to do, so be it. But if I was asked to write something for a museum exhibit of Train-X, I would write about Robert Young, Alan Cripe, the initiative at the C&O, the connection to Train-X or the XPlorer built by Pullman Standard and tested on the NYC and New Haven, the inspiration for the TurboTrain. I would have some diagrams or perhaps some models of the guided-axle links and the remote roll center pendulum tilt. I would point out the similarities and differences to the current generation Talgo.
But if I was asked about Aerotrain, I would write that this design based on a low-speed European two-axle freight car was more marketing campaign than serious effort to generate a modern passenger train, contributed to the demise of passenger trains be discouraging further innovation in lighweight fuel-efficient trains, and the naive application of technology was symptomatic of the troubles at GM that are leading to their imminent demise in the early part of the 21st century. Yes the Aerotrain was a failure, and there is a part to document failures, but it wasn't even a noble failure but was the consequence of corporate hubris. I suppose along with the Aerotrain, there should be an exhibit of a Chevy Vega.
To exhibit trains, one is chronicalling not only the history of the trains that were but also the history of technology. Yes, there is a place to exhibit failures, but to exhibit the Aerotrain without explaining that it was a failure and why is a real disservice and abrogation of the educational mission of a museum -- a railroad museum reverts to being a cabinet of curiousities and Believe it or Not. And the Aerotrain was not simply a failure, it wasn't even an honest effort at success, it was more about the 1950's version of futuristic styling and a marketing campaign.
If one is to exhibit this train, explain that it was an experimental design meant to reduce the cost and fuel consumption of passenger trains by employing single-axle trucks and bus bodies along with styling to make it appealing to a public enamored with streamline cars and airplanes, explain that it was an abject failure in that it shook dangerously at high speeds and had to be relegated to slower speed operation on commuter trains. Tell people that the reasons it shook dangerously became understood by science later on in the 1960's by efforts in Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. to develop high speed trains to compete with air travel. Tell people that it was contemporary to the Talgo, which was a someone more sophisticated design that steered the axles into curves rather than relying on a loose axle mounting to let the wheel and axle sets steer themselves, and explain that with technical refinements, the Talgo is in service in Europe and the U.S. today. Exhibit this train without the historical and technological context and a railroad museum because a junk collection of neat stuff.
I can not say if IRM has a Aero Train now. They had one 12 years ago.
I use to see the Rock Aero train every day I went to high school.
I had to change buses every day at the corner of 103rd and Vincennes in Chicago Il. about 07:15. The Rock tracks paralled Vincennes ground level for several miles. Then the Rock when over head all the way into the Loop.
When I went to IRM I was surprised to find one on display. The tour guide and I got into discussion about them.
I would not think they would get rid of it. As I recall the prime mover was removed also.
I don't know if you can make the case that all the lightweight train designs of the mid-1950s were failures. I agree that concepts such as the Aerotrain or Train X did not make the grade. I would also argue that the Budd Company products such as the Tubular Train, The RDC-based "Roger Williams" and the Pioneer III, although not replicated at all or in limited numbers, were more successful operationally because Budd built them to a more proven design (four-wheel trucks, standard 85' length, etc.)
Long after the Aerotrains, the early TALGOs and the Train Xs were squirreled away on obscure sidings in Illinois, South Carolina and Connecticut, the Pennsy's "Keystone" (Tubular Train), New Haven's "Roger Williams" (the "Hot Rod" RDC) and Pennsy and Reading MUs (Pioneer III) were still generating revenue miles, even if not in their original service concept. Both the mid-1950s-vintage "Keystone" and "Roger Williams" cars lasted into the early years of Amtrak (and largely still survive today), and Philadelphia's SEPTA regional rail system still had early-1960s-vintage Pioneer IIIs in service in 2007.
If we can agree on anything, it's probably that none of the radical train concepts of the 1950s could have truly stopped the decline in rail passenger service that was underway at the time. Commercial air travel and the freeway-driven personal passenger car were becoming "sexy", and no amount of streamlining, light weight or innovative design could change that.
Now, in recent years, we've seen rail becoming "sexy" again, although it faces significant challenges from long-entrenched air and highway interests. And in a good example of "everything old is new again", even lightweight designs such as the TALGO have achieved modest success, largely from a timely combination of better, more mature design, more interest in rail and better infrastructure to support them.
The Rock Island had a third LWT12 (the same type of locomotive found on the Aerotrain) on its "Jet Rocket" TALGO. This locomotive and its train were scrapped after retirement from RI commuter service in the mid-1960s. The LWT12 was, incidentally, a passengerized version of the EMD SW1200 switcher.
There is also an operating "version" of the Aerotrain, although in reduced scale. The 30"-gauge Washington Park & Zoo Railway in Portland, Ore., which runs a scenic line around the Oregon Zoo and through the park to its famous Rose Gardens and Japanese Garden, has a scale version of the GM Aerotrain, built by a Portland-area company in 1958.
This train, in addition to its long service on the WP&Z, also ran at the 1959 Oregon Centennial Exposition. Today, as #2, the "Zooliner", it operates regularly and even includes some interesting innovations of its own. The rear car is configured with a hydraulic lift to allow wheelchair-bound passengers to ride (and this car also recently had a "vista dome" added over the accessible space). The locomotive has a mail slot where visitors can actually deposit letters that are cancelled with the railway's own special stamp, a service it has provided for more than 40 years.
The WP&Z rolling stock also includes #1, the "Oregon", a scale version of a Virginia & Truckee 4-4-0, and #5, the "Oregon Express", a shovel-nosed locomotive that, most recently, has worn a gold stripe-on-blue variation of the famed Pennsy "pinstripe" scheme.
Well I suppose divided drive duplexes, improved blast pipes, and rotary cam poppet valves were not going to save steam either given the momentum of Dieselization. Although there perhaps was some overlap between the Talgos and when they were still building conventional streamline passenger cars, the lighweight trains came at the twighlight of major private railroad passenger operations, and it is perhaps hard to distinguish between successful failures, otherwise good designs that came too late (i.e. Niagara, J for steam, RDC Hot Rod for passenger service) and failed failures (I am arguing that the Aerotrain was a design that inherently didn't allow smooth riding at speed).
I also get the impression that all of the lightweight experimentals get lumped together as being rough riding and ill-conceived when there must have been some variation in how they performed. Was Train-X really on the same level of rough riding as Aerotrain? Train-X had a guided axle system not that much different than TurboTrain, and the reason guided axles are important is that a train car with a pair of unguided single-axle trucks is like a conventional truck of extreme wheelbase length, where you have to allow a lot of wobble for individual axles to allow the coned wheel taper to do its thing, and that wobble allows for the development of a severe shimmy past a critical speed. I have ridden on Turbo and have read accounts of the modern Talgo, and while there are critics that panned each of those as rough riding, my own personal experience was that TurboTrain was quite smooth compared to the original Metroliner MU's. Given that when the government got involved with the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project derived from Claiborne Pell's legislation that they greenlighted the TurboTrain that was a lot like Train-X, was Train-X really that bad? Was the TurboTrain that much improved over Train-X because if the Train-X was on the level of TurboTrain, I would not see anything wrong with riding it.
That Talgo is still in business is another matter to consider. The points about Talgo are 1) articulated guided axles with short train cars results in a highly streamlined low-drag train with attendant fuel savings, 2) passive tilt, 3) guided axles improve the tradeoff between axle yaw stiffness, wheel wear, the expense of maintaining wheel and rail profiles, and critical speed, and 3) the unorthodox independently-rotating wheel sets (which TurboTrain, Train-X, and none of the others apart from some streetcar designs have) allows for gauge changing for the unique situation of the border between Spain and France. T
he world isn't actually beating on Talgo's door. Conventional coaches with two-axle trucks are the norm: Jacobs bogie style articulation (like the Pioneer Zephyr and the current TGV's) are an alternate way of saving on weight, either active or passive tilt can be incorporated into special swing hangers in conventional two-axle trucks, axle steering is also incorporated into conventional two-axle truck designs, and gauge changing is a very limited market. European high-speed trains incorporate various combinations of these non-Talgo methods.
So Talgo has a design and its product to sell. I gather a lot of why Talgo was considered for the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative and why Talgo factory reps have been showing up at Midwest Highspeed Rail Association Meetings is that Talgo is the "Avis, we're number 2 but try harder" of the passenger train industry and that Talgo is one of the few outfits left willing to build to U.S. FRA compliance specs. If we get a Midwestern Talgo it will be because Talgo is eager to sell trains rather than that the engineering people here in the U.S. are clamoring for guided-axle trains or even the tilt feature.
On the other hand, while Talgo is perhaps an engineering solution looking for the right problem, I get the feeling that there is a contingent in the passenger rail advocacy community that feel that current generation Amtrak trains such as Amfleet (derived from Pioneer III) and Superliner (derived from Hi Level) represent proper trains and a lot of other stuff is a bunch of experimental nonsense.
End-stage technological innovation did not save the passenger train, but I get the feeling that people are dismissive that technological innovation could play any role in making trains more energy and cost efficient. There are no major initiatives to bring steam back apart from tourist railroads, but there are major initiatives to bring back passenger trains, and I think it would help to look back at the lighweight experimentals as well as current European trains to assess what worked and what didn't.
For example, the Colorado Railcars DMUs are thoroughly conventional and not particularly light weight, but combining DMUs with trailers and dispensing with the locomotive and cabbage car, one could have a corridor train of nearly half the weight of what Amtrak uses now. I asked someone in the rail advocacy community with some experience in the operation of passenger equipment about Colorado Railcars as an alternative to Talgo, and the answer I got was entirely dismissive of the concept of weight saving by eliminating separate locomotives. I was told "the RDC was a failure." End of story and end of discussion.
Maybe technological innovation is not of interest to people because getting back passenger trains is more a matter of getting government money to help pay for it, a political problem, rather than a question of making trains more fuel efficient and lower in cost to operate, a technological problem.
As I recall, at the Green Bay museum there was an explanation of the reasons behind the creation of Aerotrain and the causes of its failure, although the display did not go into technical detail regarding truck design and development.
Because they're way better looking than a Geep, thats why.
They might have been an operational flop, but boy were they a winner in the design catagory.
They just ooze 50's optimism!
PS, if someone really REALLY wanted to restore on to operational status they could...a suitable replacement dismal and traction motors could be retrofitted or custom built using the original plans, it all depends on how much $$$ your willing to throw at it.
Have fun with your trains
I suppose Aerotrain has this mix of art decco, Buck Rogers, and GM-Buick-Harley Earl styling to it and preserving it gives some sense of the industrial design of the era and what people thought looked modern and futuristic in that day.
What streamlined steam locomotives are preserved, if any? Is there still a J someplace? A T1 would have been mega-cool, but we would have to go back in time to preserve one.
Not to mention prying one out of the hands of the museums, THAT would take some doing!
Might be easier and cheaper to simply rebody an old GP unit, its really the engine unit thats so cool looking.
Imaging an Aerotrain styled engine pulling a line of smoothsides on an excursion trip!
Don U. TCA 73-5735
DMUinCT wrote:At least you can buy a scale model of it. MTH has made one in "O" gauge (Lionel size).
I believe it was Bowser that produced them in HO. I think that Con Cor is also going to release one in HO.
At the risk of being shoed over to the Model Railroader side, I have looked at those sites regarding model Aerotrains, and one of them has a large collection of prototype photos.
Looking at one of the HO models, it seems that the models will follow the prototype in having fixed, unguided axles. I took one of my Electrotren HO Talgo models and uncoupled a string of cars so that there was an unguided axle at the end. On the 42 foot wheelbase, that end axle is in a pronounced slide on 18" radius track, and also prone to derailment with the NWSL RP-25 wheels I have retrofitted. Unsteered axles don't work on long wheelbases, whether in HO or 12" to the foot scale. I wonder if a lot of modelers will buy the Aerotrain because it is cool and then these things will sit in boxes on the shelf because like the prototype, they won't run well.
I was reading an account on the Web (I believe it was a NH historical society page) about the Dan'l Webster (or Daniel Webster) train. In its later days, the New Haven was run (or some say run into the ground - did he spend some time in the Big House for his efforts?) by a fellow named McGinnis who was doing a lot of the experimenting with lighweight trains.
Apparently there were three such trains named after historical New Englanders: Daniel Webster (the Baldwin Diesel-hydraulic powered Train-X), John Quincy Adams (the FM lighweight Diesel-electric powered Talgo), and Roger Williams (the Budd RDC Hot Rod -- those Budd RDC cars with the altered roof lines and the locomotive-style cabs at the A ends).
Apart from their exotic nature (although the RDC Hot Rod was pretty much a restyled RDC of which hundreds were built), they were all troublesome, but perhaps not for the reason you would think. There is this matter about needing electric power to enter Grand Central Terminal; the 3rd rail shoe dual-mode capability on all three trains were afterthoughts and led to serious breakdowns.
It is sometimes hard to get accounts from people about any and all of these trains apart from "they rode rough", "they were junk", "they were failures." For example, there is a modern Talgo in Pacific Cascades service, and many people ride it and seem to like it, but there is a vocal contingent complaining that guided-axle is worthless and that those train ride rough. One account of this is that over the southerly part of that route the trains ride smoothly, but over the Seattle-Vancouver section, the tracks are in bad shape and that anything would ride rough over that segment.
There are comments to the effect that the NYC Train-X called XPlorer was called "XPloder" by the crew. In the NH article about the Danial Webster Train-X, it was remarked that the cab crew experienced a very rough ride, others have attributed to the very long wheelbase "power truck" of the Diesel-hydraulic engine-transmission package on the Baldwin locomotive.
Another attribute of Train-X is that the patents indicate that they locked out the axle steering on the end axles of the train. That too could contribute stability problems. The TurboTrain solved the axle at the end of the train issue by putting conventional two-axle trucks at the ends under the domes; Talgo originally had a scheme for steering the end axle at the locomotive end with a special drawbar. The current Talgo steers the end axles with a link arrangement to extrapolate the last between-car axle alignment, and they also use a shorter wheelbase on the end cars to reduce the extrapolation error. I have modified the Electrotren HO models with that kind of end-axle steering, and it works well if you have a curve with a good easement, but running such equipment through crossovers has the end axle being shoved in non-tangent directions.
In fairness to the Aerotrain, all of the lighweight experimentals were naive designs in that the preceded the engineering research done in the 1960's to put stability of guided vehicles on a scientific basis. Perhaps the two-axle Aerotrain car could be made stable with the right give in the journal boxes and hydraulic shock absorbers located in the right places - the current generation Talgo has a raft of shock absorbers in almost every axis in the articulated connection between train cars.
The railroad industry along with the electric power utility industry tend to be very conservative and skeptical of any innovation or novel engineering solutions. As a result, passenger trains in the U.S. are changed very little from the early 1950's while autos and airplanes have undergone remarkable improvements in fuel efficiency. This skepticism of anything new bleeds over into the foamer community and the passenger rail advocacy community.
Perhaps I am guilty of the same thing to pile on to Aerotrain, but of all of the lighweight experimentals, Aerotrain is probably foremost in the public consciousness because of GM's publicity tours and marketing efforts while the other lighweight experimentals weren't even heard of, and the design faults of Aerotrain tars the entire effort with the same brush.
Aerotrain was a classic example of GM "Autothink," use enough style and maybe nobody will notice that the mechanicals suck. It was mechanically problematical and rode like a Radio Flyer wagon, but it sure was pretty!
To answer a question, N&W J #611 and A #1218 are at the Virginia State Railroad Museum in Roanoke, under cover and in cosmetically nice condition. Due to the unavailability of repair parts they will never run again (unless somebody tools up to manufacture such things as Baker valve gear parts and non-standard staybolts.)
OTOH, I don't know if any of the 400+ NYC J's have been preserved (the NYC 4-6-4 Hudson was class J with various suffixes.)
With 50 built, the PRR T1 was far more numerous than the N&W J class, but nowhere near as good. If Pennsy had followed their usual practice of exhaustive prototype testing, the T1s would have been one-off experimentals like the S1 and S2.
Chuck
1. I think preservation of any rare part of railroading's history (or any American history) is worthwhile. And diversity of interests is also worthwhile.
2. I think it is great that Talgos operate in the NW, makes Amtrak and NA passenger trains less of a cookey cutter situation. My own experience is that Talgos are OK, not great but OK.
3. I rode the NH Turbotrain plenty of times between Boston and both GCT and later (underPC) Penn Station. I'ds say in general it was a success. Passengers generally liked it. It did draw a limited number of passengers down from the sky, It played its small part in th e funding of the electrification to Boston and the Acela program.
After trying to buy a copy of Geoffry Doughty "New York Central and the Trains of the Future", I found that I could read/borrow a copy for the State Historical Society Library on campus -- they also have a complete set of back issues of Trains Magazine. I also found that the Wendt Engineering Library has back issues of Railway Locomotives and Cars and Volume 130 covering 1956 has all kinds of info about the Train-X (NYC XPlorer) and there may be information on Aerotrain if I were to dig.
I have always wondered about the bad-riding rep for the lightweight experimentals, including Aerotrain. The standard narrative was "Yep, those lightweight trains were all failures -- railroads thought their jet-age styling could win back passengers but they rode rough and chased passengers away." I guess I dissed Aerotrain based on the non-guided long-wheelbase two-axle design; Doughty says they were the roughest-riding of the bunch and they had bad "laterals", I guess bad side sway, that fits with my conjecture that the design wasn't stable above a critical speed, although Doughty said that XPlorer had some rough ride characteristics that were worst for the end cars and especially for the trailing car at the far end from the locomotive.
On the other hand, Doughty shows a picture of the Aerotrain suspension, showing not only the air springs but shock absorbers placed in the vertical and horizontal axes. Damping can cover for a multitude of sins from the standpoint of suspension design and perhaps the Aerotrain wasn't that bad after all. Dampers or shock absorbers are things that can wear out; perhaps the bad rep for Aerotrain was maintenance when they let the shocks go bad.
Doughty also attributes the bad ride of Train-X/XPlorer to design compromises made to Alan Cripe's original Train-X test car. The test car is kind of cute -- the consist was a locomotive, some kind of business car, a streamlined Aerotrain-like 2-axle transition car made from a caboose, and the bob-tailed Train-X prototype car, hanging in semi-trailer fashion from the transition car. The book is not very technical and some details may be lost in the translation. But I gather from the patent database references that the end axles of a Train-X consist were locked out of steering, and this may have given the ends of the Train-X similar tracking problems to the Aerotrain.
The Talgo of that era (Rock Island used one Aerotrain loco with GM bus-body cars; another Aerotrain loco pulled a Talgo; B&M and New Haven each had a Talgo consist with the FM Speed Merchant loco at each end) was a 3-unit string with 2 end axles and 2 intermediate axles. The modern Talgo steers the end axles with link work off the steering angle of the adjoining intermediate axle; perhaps the 1956 Talgo lacked this arrangement and again had similar tracking problems to Aerotrain. Anyway, Talgo was 3-unit strings that were about 110 feet long that were coupled in multiples to form trains.
Perhaps the sad thing about the lightweight experimentals as they came on the tail end of the private-railroad passenger era in America. The first batch of experimentals -- Pioneer Zephyr, Green Diamond, City of Salinas, etc - were lightweight fixed-consist articulateds of the 1930s that led to the standard "lightweight streamliner" of the 40's, 50's, and the Amtrak Heritage fleet. The second batch of experimentals -- Aerotrain, Train-X, and Talgo -- didn't lead to anything because passenger trains were dying owing to historical forces that a quick technological fix couldn't remedy, but they stand out in people's mind as a slap-dash response to the passenger crisis from railroad management (or perhaps style-over-function GM) that didn't have their hearts in it. The third batch experimentals -- Metroliner and TurboTrain -- were funded by the government as part of the Pell Plan to jump start private railroad passenger trains through technology, only this time done by the USDOT instead of Robert Youngs NYC. I guess the TurboTrain hasn't led to anything (yet) although the Metroliner, also plagued with a multitude of small problems, and in my opinion it rode rough, or a least rougher than the guided-axle TurboTrain, led to the AEM-7/Amfleet combination that has been the workhorse of the NEC.
Rough riding is also a subjective thing; people will put up with some rough riding in terminal areas. Have you experienced the ground-mode of the Bombardier Regional Jet. Once you are in the air it is OK (although the cabin seems confining compared to a 737 owing to the curved sides and low ceilings -- again, a lightweight experimental train effect), but on taxi, you feel every last bump on the cement.
csmith9474 wrote: "Why preserve/restore the Aerotrain?"That is an easy question to answer. Regardless of success or failure, it is still a part of railroading history. Many folks find interest in the Aerotrain. Somebody's interest in the Aerotrain is why this thread exists. Just because you don't find something from railroading's past particularly interesting or a failure, doesn't mean it shouldn't be bothered with.
the same could be said to those that dont think 19th century railroading is interesting or worthy of discussion.....if it wasnt for the primeval railroads of the 1830's and 40's we would be talking about the newest canal barge on the Erie canal
tomikawaTT wrote: With 50 built, the PRR T1 was far more numerous than the N&W J class, but nowhere near as good. If Pennsy had followed their usual practice of exhaustive prototype testing, the T1s would have been one-off experimentals like the S1 and S2.Chuck
WHAT.....no where as good???!!!???.....the only thing ive been able to find negitive on the T1 was it was "slippery" to start with a heavy train......they racked up service mileage comparible to diesels of the time ( mileage between required service/repairs) they were more effiecent then a "modern" 4-8-4....had a higher TE higher drawbar HP.....and they did do testing on the T1..2 years worth i believe..the S's were nothing more then to much of a good thing..and if you include the Q class....why would they build 26 "failures"...please dont get me wrong in thinkin that i dont like the N&W's J's they like most N&W locomotives were true thoroughbreds.....but to insinuate that anything the Standard Railroad of the World did was subpar.....well.....thems fightin words
In capable hands, the T1 wasn't all that slippery starting, either. The engineer just had to remember it wasn't a K4.
When tested on C&O and N&W there were no complaints about slipping. In fact on C&O there were many comments (in correspondence that is still very much available) about the T1's not slipping under difficult circumstances. Of course, C&O had to fix the sanders on both T1's before testing. Seems that PRR didn't have them aimed at the rail heads. This is straight from the daily test reports written by the PRR engineman assigned to the tests.
Glad you brought up the mileage in a positive light. This is a long standing myth. At first, the top T1's were matching the E7's monthly mileage, about 10,000 to 11,000. This comes directly from the monthly mileage reports tht PRR kept and some still survive. However, someone made the remark that the best one only managed something like 2,800 miles early on. Of course, that's what made print, but it was unsubstantiated hearsay. Hard evidence says otherwise.
However, whether they were really what PRR needed.....well, that's subject to considerable debate. I'm afraid I'm in the camp that considers them not the best possible choice for PRR's operating conditions.
The thing to remember is this - all recent research indicates that the T1 wasn't nearly as useless as we've been led to believe for almost 50 years. They pretty much took what was handed them and got the trains over the road. This is based on PRR memos, test reports from PRR, C&O and N&W, interviews with the crews that operated them, letters between C&O, N&W and PRR. Primary source stuff, first person commentaries. A lot of this has appeared in magazines published by PRRT&HS (many articles), C&OHS (one so far) and N&WHS (one). There's more on the way at PRR and C&O. Keep an eye on the magazines from these two groups.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.