The Aerotrain maybe a flop, but I'm glad that it was one of the few streamliners of America that is still preserved today. I first learned about through I Love Toy Trains, but it didn't mention the rough riding that became a flop. That said, I turned to my book "The Illustrated Dictionary of North American Locomotives" to understand more of its history.
I remember learning about it through I Love Toy Trains also. It just mentioned that it had a compressed-air suspension and that the observation car looked like a 1956 Desoto. Good enough for kids but not nearly enough meat for any parents watching but I digress
Great video about the GM’s cool AeroTrain, despite some problems with them. It was also great that they have preserved some at two railroad museums. Also, I am going to be visiting the Santa Train Ride at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nevada on December 3rd 2023 where they will be running Virginia & Truckee 25 (Built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1905).
Maybe GM made the Aerotrain suck on purpose because, you know, cars. Maybe making it underpowered and uncomfortable was exactly the point so they could sell more cars.
The one hole with that theory is that GM's Electro-Motive Division (EMD) also designed countless regular trains for the railway market which were mass-adopted by virtually every railway in North America, with many of them still in service today. If their plan was to intentionally make a badly-designed train to get more people to drive cars, why would they also make tons of extremely well-designed and reliable trains that were so versatile they became the industry standard? It doesn't really make sense.
@@TheEldritchHyena They wanted to get passenger trains (money losers) off the tracks to make more room for profitable freight trains. If passenger trains had their own tracks like the do everywhere else, it would have been a different story.
Great video! Nice to see some attention on individual trainsets in more of these videos. I never knew that the Talgo sets were sneaked behind the aerotrain sets. Very clever of the Rock Island.
The Jet Rocket consisted of an Aerotrain locomotive and 1955 Talgo cars, and I believe entered service before GM/EMD began the Aerotrain demo runs. Although the Rock Island later owned both of the full Aerotrain sets as well, the Talgo cars could not be intermixed with the Aerotrain cars due to design differences. Fun note: When Rock Island later acquired the full Aerotrain consists, they inadvertently coupled some of the cars into the consists backwards (source: Partick Dorin's book 'Commuter Railroads'.)
I was at the National Railway Museum(Green Bay) last week to see the Big Boy, A4 Pacific "Dwight D. Eisenhower", and their GG1. Every time I saw the AreoTrain, both scale and full size, they look ridiculous but I can see why GM styled them that way. The museum is worth a visit if you have membership to a museum in the ASTC system.
GM Aerotrain could have been successful had it not been designed based off buses. The Rock Island would wound being the only true customer of the aerotrain. Thankfully we saved two aerotrain sets for preservation and there are mini versions of the Aerotrain like the Viewliner which stopped operating and the Zooliner. We can learn what went wrong with GM Aerotrain and work from there.
The Aerotrain's own defects and slow speed were the train's undoing. Plus, some of features of the buses of the 50's like the GM PD-4501 were actually influenced by the dome cars on trains which started in the 1940s.
Very complete (& creative!) video, liked the quick background appearance of "The Rock," one of so many nifty quirks. BTW Chuck Jordan designed LOTS of GM cars, including the famous extreme-tailfin 1959 Cadillac.
Although the AeroTrain did not do what it was designed to, it was the one of the most awesome looking trains on the railroad. I have one on my model railroad and a color lithograph of the AeroTrain as well. By the way, the BL-2 was extremely sleek looking too and I’ll be watching the video on the BL-2 following this one and giving that one a thumbs up as well. Thank you for sharing these vintage videos, they’re outstanding. 👍
I have personally seen the Aerotrain at the National Railroad Museum. I would recommend checking it out if you end up in the area. It seems to me if GE hadn’t cheapened out on everything the train itself would have been alright. The streamlining on it looks cool though.
If anyone wishes to go see this train in person, I suggest go to the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, WI. It's a great thing to go see, sadly you can't board her anymore but still a cool site!
Although you can't ride the real deal, in the Washington park Railways replica of the aerotrain is quite nice and pretty. She's my favorite of the fleet. Plus, they have a replica reno I believe
I thought the same. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think the bad design quality of the Aerotrain was intentional, being yet another effort by GM to kill public transit in America so they could sell more cars
Hay i got a flashback of this type of bus body thing. The britts did the same thing. on the br class 142 pacer thay used a layland national bus. Also mayby Rolling stocks of amtrak
I have seen both of the preserved trainsets in person, but never looked at them closely. I wonder how gutted they are. It would be neat if one could be restored to operation. They probably aren't geared well for running in a loop at a museum.
I think some of the problems with acceleration can be attributed to the LWT12 having only 2 traction motors. Solo 1200HP locomotives have worked for passenger service before, hauling trains of similar or sometimes even greater weight than the AeroTrain: the EMC EA, UP's M-10000 and M-10001, the Green Diamond, GM&O's Rebels, and the early Zephyrs. But all of those power units were B-B instead of the LWT12's B-1, and we know from the 6-axle vs. 4-axle debate (plus multiple unit trains like the Shinkansen) that more motors means more kick from a start even if at high speed the difference is more minor.
Ive seen the one at the National Railroad Museum in person. Its as ugly now as in it was back then, but it is still worth visiting. You can walk through some of the coaches behind it, which are regular coaches
That was really interesting. Of course, in every railway history book I've seen, there is always the obligatory promo photo of the Aerotrain, but I've never really seen any info on the technical or performance details. So it was good to see just how it was built and what happened to it.
I've seen this train in person, it is a super cool looking train they have one at the kirksville train museum near St Louis Missouri, they also have one of the Union Pacific big boys there as well (of course not running)
Say, could you do a quick vid on NYC's "Xplorer" and NH's "Dan'l Webster" & "Roger Williams," two other attempts at 1950s lightweight trains (also failed)?
While both Aerotrain sets were built with ten cars, I've always understood that a maximum nine-car consist was ever operated in service. The tenth car of each set was retained at LaGrange as a 'test car' to try out modifications that the railroads may have recommended based on their in-service experience.
amazing video as always . hey can you do a video about german steam locomotives and there history here are some examples the BR 10 , the short lived life of the BR 06 and my favorit engine the BR 18 201 i would realy love it if do it
The "I like money" quote made me laugh. 😂 thanks. But our 3 cats were slightly miffed at the cat running on wood floor comment. Ok... great video. Confession (yeah, I'm Catholic) my fave train growing up was the Amtrak Turbotrain... it reminds me of a 'slightly' more practical updated version of the monstrosity that was the Aerotrain.😊
I am very curious if GM just allocated small amount just to say they got in passenger rail business or whether this was a serious effort with inadequate experience. The lack of horsepower in the locos is inexcusable for a company that made locos. Consider the next north american train would be the United Aircraft turbo train in the mid 1960s. Aluminium, jacobs bogies, mechanical tilting, turbine engines and I think still has the speed record for north america. This was just a few years behind the Japanese Shinkansen whose first iteration was not that much faster than the Turbo (albeit: real service speed on Shinkansen vs trials for Turbo. The turbo had all the modern train designs that are still used on trains such as TGVs. It did not last long in USA (but did sport Amtrak colours for a few years) but CN in Canada had invested enough in it that it made it work, albeit with a few years of downtime while it was all fixed up (and they went from 5 7 car trains to 3 9 car trains). These traisn lasted into early 1980s. After the Turbo, the only trains the USA built were done with steel and eventually steel industry protected by FRA rules to favour heavy steel trains. Cou;nt import a TGV, so a customer heavy steel Acela was built for Amtrak with a few TGV loco components included. The rest had nothing t do with TGVs due to steel structure, old style bogies etc. It wasn't until 2018 that the FRA relented and allowed use of modern traisn in USA (they had no choice because Amtrak had already placed order for a mix of TGV locos and Pendolino coaches for its replacement Acelas (the mid is why the locos don't "match" the coaches). Aluminium becomes very important in curves because total mass of each car puts lateral force on the rails, so going too fars means the rails can be detached from the railroad ties. Heavy cars can't go as fast due to that cant defficiency. Banking also helps reduce lateral force on the rails in curves (assuming the banking actually works). What is amazing is that the USA was a leader in "high speed trains" in the steam era where PRR and NYC competed on who could be fastest betwen New York and Chicago. NYC even had long gulleys filled with water along the tracks so a steam engine could pickup water without stopping. This is why that GM aero train was just a let down with marketing totally unsupported by actual design.
I really wonder why they made so many weird decisions with this, it genuinely could’ve been a great idea, but the bus-bodies were never gonna be a good idea, the engine was seemingly deliberately underpowered, and the fixed length was always gonna be a downside. It seems like they shot themselves in the foot completely, did they not see it coming?
The Aerotrain wasn't the only time GM tried to make a train styled like a car. Contemporary to the Aerotrain General Motors Diesel in Canada made two models of streamlined diesel-hydraulic switcher called the GMDH-1 and GMDH-3, yes I said switcher, no I don't know why they thought it made sense to streamline switchers. Unsurprisingly these were an even bigger flop than the Aerotrain, less than 20 GMDH-1s were sold and only a single demonstrator GMDH-3 was built, although the GMDH-3 does survive in operating condition to this day.
I was commuting to Chicago on the Rock Island. Train consist was 1926 passenger cars. The conductor warned us to keep arms inside the windows. Soon an aerotrain whizzed past us at speed.
I think your disparaging remarks about the Aerotrain using the same engine as the SW-1200 are specious. If it can switch a yard full of cargo wagons it's got plenty of power for a few lightweight passenger coaches and if you were insinuating about the train speed, you do realize that the engine doesn't drive the wheels directly, that it turns a generator that can power either low-speed switching motors or high-speed passenger motors... yes?
The sad reality is that... passenger rail only got their profit from two things: being a literal monopoly (because other forms of transportation weren't mature enough or fast enough to compete) and _the US Postal Service Contract_ (or similar contracts in Europe, please note that in the US, this contract was literally the only thing keeping most of the lines open). Once the former was broken (first via effective car travel (and the US military literally telling their rail division that they were no longer needed because WW2 showed that being rail-based is a losing proposition) and later on effective air travel) and the latter canceled, US passenger numbers were destined to die outside of a handful of corridors. In addition to that, railroads never had any real profit out of the passenger lines outside of a handful of corridors. What was the actual money maker was the _goods contracts_ i.e. the freight. Passenger lines were used not as money makers (if anything, they're money _pits_ instead) but as _advertisements_ to the real money makers of railroads: the aforementioned goods work. That's why every time a railroad has a choice between passengers and cargo, they _always_ chose cargo (even _Britain's_ railroads, after privatization, chose cargo over passengers).
Passenger rail can be profitable and successful if it has fast tracks to ride on and travel at competitive speeds. That however requires huge upfront investment which is usually a government spending program to improve infrastructure. In the United States with most tracks owned by privately-held corporations the new lines required for this wouldn't pay out in terms of shareholder value. Just building snazzy looking trains and running them on the same old worn-out tracks doesn't work as shown here: It's a rough ride. I see this (and some others) as prototypes that didn't result in series orders because of a number of problems. It's also a curious phenomenon that plenty of US built "lightweight passenger trains" were only made in one or two units and not produced in series.
@@uncinarynin sorry but that's laughable. The problem is that passenger rail was of subsidized profitable at best outside of a literal handful of corridors. Hell, Europe has to subsidize at least half of the passenger rail ticket to even hope to compete with cars and aircraft... with the added problem of literally pushing the cargo off the rails and onto the roads.
I know the Aerotrain was a flop in a way. But I think it is a really cool and interesting train. I think people should come together and restore one with today's technology, safety equipment and newer powerful engines on today. So people can see and ride one as a reinstated passenger train of the 21st Century. Would that be cool? Please leave a comment and like. Please and Thank you.
IF, they were put the engine from EMD GP9 or GP18 which produce 1750hp or 1800hp along with its generator and re-geared traction motors, as well as make the passenger car more thoroughly as a passenger car and give it 2 axle instead of 1 axle, and also make the other end exactly the same as the front (a loco), it would be a hit again. Moreover, if they put traction motors in 1 or 2 cars behind the loco, it would be so much great. Giving it faster moving and faster acceleration due to more wheels that get it to traction. But the world is not what you hoped or liked, so, yeah, GM what GM did and they did again in the 1980s with the 645F series engine which slowly making them bankrupt.
Sometimes when I look at the AeroTrain and its appearance I cant help but compare it to the design of the KiHa 81 series. Perhaps JR just decided to copy GM's homework and make their own. Or I could be utterly wrong ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯ Nice video!
So Amtrakguy, just before watching this video, I have found out that Amtrak has plans and federal funding for new rail lines in my state of Ohio, one of which is being considered to be high speed rail, the Cleveland-Columbus-Dayton-Cincinnati line. I don't know if you had heard about it yet or if you had thoughts on it.
The aerotrain literally looks so futuristic yet so old
I love it
Straight out of fallout
It is to my knowledge the only trainset to be fitted with tail fins, take a close look at the Obs Car.
I like the gm aero train😂
Retrofuturism
so do i
GM always shooting themselves in the foot.
@OzzythePlushFrom a Giant Vehicle Superpower, to just a generic automobile manufacturer just like Ford.
Emd: Am I a joke to you
@@TailsFan369no2 This joke would've been funny if you spellcheck EMD*...
@@SomeRamdomAhole darn autocorrect
The Aerotrain maybe a flop, but I'm glad that it was one of the few streamliners of America that is still preserved today. I first learned about through I Love Toy Trains, but it didn't mention the rough riding that became a flop. That said, I turned to my book "The Illustrated Dictionary of North American Locomotives" to understand more of its history.
I remember learning about it through I Love Toy Trains also. It just mentioned that it had a compressed-air suspension and that the observation car looked like a 1956 Desoto. Good enough for kids but not nearly enough meat for any parents watching but I digress
"My grand dad says the aerotrain looks like a 1956 DeSoto. Whatever that is"
Jeff McComas "I Love Toy Trains"
I had to look up what Desoto is.
@mattskey1 it looks like every 1950/60s car ever made.
It's kinda ironic that passenger service is being brought back with a new trainset with the same name The Amtrak Airo
Yeah I'm beginning to see a pattern emerge
I love it. Looks like something that would be in the Thunderbirds puppet show from the 60's
Great video about the GM’s cool AeroTrain, despite some problems with them. It was also great that they have preserved some at two railroad museums. Also, I am going to be visiting the Santa Train Ride at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nevada on December 3rd 2023 where they will be running Virginia & Truckee 25 (Built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1905).
I'm glad two of them have been preserved
Maybe GM made the Aerotrain suck on purpose because, you know, cars. Maybe making it underpowered and uncomfortable was exactly the point so they could sell more cars.
The one hole with that theory is that GM's Electro-Motive Division (EMD) also designed countless regular trains for the railway market which were mass-adopted by virtually every railway in North America, with many of them still in service today. If their plan was to intentionally make a badly-designed train to get more people to drive cars, why would they also make tons of extremely well-designed and reliable trains that were so versatile they became the industry standard? It doesn't really make sense.
@@TheEldritchHyena They wanted to get passenger trains (money losers) off the tracks to make more room for profitable freight trains. If passenger trains had their own tracks like the do everywhere else, it would have been a different story.
Great video! Nice to see some attention on individual trainsets in more of these videos. I never knew that the Talgo sets were sneaked behind the aerotrain sets. Very clever of the Rock Island.
The Jet Rocket consisted of an Aerotrain locomotive and 1955 Talgo cars, and I believe entered service before GM/EMD began the Aerotrain demo runs. Although the Rock Island later owned both of the full Aerotrain sets as well, the Talgo cars could not be intermixed with the Aerotrain cars due to design differences. Fun note: When Rock Island later acquired the full Aerotrain consists, they inadvertently coupled some of the cars into the consists backwards (source: Partick Dorin's book 'Commuter Railroads'.)
Your narration continues to improve. Keep up the nice work!!
I was at the National Railway Museum(Green Bay) last week to see the Big Boy, A4 Pacific "Dwight D. Eisenhower", and their GG1. Every time I saw the AreoTrain, both scale and full size, they look ridiculous but I can see why GM styled them that way. The museum is worth a visit if you have membership to a museum in the ASTC system.
Went there one time I never knew how big the gg1 is until I saw it in person
I went there yesterday as of typing this, gotta say that those locomotives are way bigger in person
Having seen both of the survivors, its great to see a video talking about them. Keep up the great work!
I really like the aerotrain painted just sliver on the rock island! It’s not too fancy and looks great!
Not this failure of a train…
Great video as always my man!!
that rock island edit was smooth!
Awesome video! I always like the design of the Aerotrain, so always good to see videos about it.
Another video about obscure locomotives! Nice!
My takeaway from this video is that the AeroTrain was essentially the platypus of the railroading world
Or it was a head of it's time. Look at something like ICE-L in Germany. While it desinged very diffretly, the core concept is basically the same
Absolutely fascinating history. Thanks for posting.
GM Aerotrain could have been successful had it not been designed based off buses. The Rock Island would wound being the only true customer of the aerotrain. Thankfully we saved two aerotrain sets for preservation and there are mini versions of the Aerotrain like the Viewliner which stopped operating and the Zooliner. We can learn what went wrong with GM Aerotrain and work from there.
A bit like a pacer
The Aerotrain's own defects and slow speed were the train's undoing. Plus, some of features of the buses of the 50's like the GM PD-4501 were actually influenced by the dome cars on trains which started in the 1940s.
Great video it needed more power definitely but amazing train!
Very interested video on the AeroTrain set. Learned a lot on this unique train set.
1:21 i saw THE original Buick LeSabre during The Amelia Concours d`Elegance earlier this year
I got to see the AeroTrain at St. Louis around 12 years ago.
Very complete (& creative!) video, liked the quick background appearance of "The Rock," one of so many nifty quirks. BTW Chuck Jordan designed LOTS of GM cars, including the famous extreme-tailfin 1959 Cadillac.
Although the AeroTrain did not do what it was designed to, it was the one of the most awesome looking trains on the railroad. I have one on my model railroad and a color lithograph of the AeroTrain as well. By the way, the BL-2 was extremely sleek looking too and I’ll be watching the video on the BL-2 following this one and giving that one a thumbs up as well. Thank you for sharing these vintage videos, they’re outstanding. 👍
I have personally seen the Aerotrain at the National Railroad Museum. I would recommend checking it out if you end up in the area. It seems to me if GE hadn’t cheapened out on everything the train itself would have been alright. The streamlining on it looks cool though.
Where is the National Railroad Museum?
@@markmh835 Green Bay Wisconsin.
@@markmh835NJP is right.
*GM
3:22 to me, if i were the designer of this train, that low powerful engine just would not cut it
my favorite train set!
If anyone wishes to go see this train in person, I suggest go to the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, WI. It's a great thing to go see, sadly you can't board her anymore but still a cool site!
Everytime i saw this train at the Oregon Zoo i thought "what the heck is that train supposed to be based on??" Haha thanks for the vid
It was certainly one of the trains of all time.
Although you can't ride the real deal, in the Washington park Railways replica of the aerotrain is quite nice and pretty. She's my favorite of the fleet. Plus, they have a replica reno I believe
It's almost like GM, who coincidentally made busses, designed the Aerotrain to disappoint the train riding public so they would use busses instead.
5:05 This was the very first time I actually saw the AeroTrain go that fast; in all other footage I saw of it moving it was running at a snail's pace
Wow, this thing is right on track!
The picture at 4:21 looks like 95th street on the Beverly Sub
I mean. They probably wanted the passenger train service to fail
A passenger train built by a company that has a vested interest in the success of the passenger car. The AeroTrain never had a chance.
I thought the same. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think the bad design quality of the Aerotrain was intentional, being yet another effort by GM to kill public transit in America so they could sell more cars
Hay i got a flashback of this type of bus body thing.
The britts did the same thing. on the br class 142 pacer thay used a layland national bus.
Also mayby Rolling stocks of amtrak
I have seen both of the preserved trainsets in person, but never looked at them closely. I wonder how gutted they are. It would be neat if one could be restored to operation. They probably aren't geared well for running in a loop at a museum.
Me early in the video: a loud uncomfortable emd? Sounds like something Metra would run
Me by the end: oh shit I was right?
Wouldn't the railroads going to GM to create a viable competitor to cars be like slugs asking Morton salt how they can stop slugs from dying?
I think some of the problems with acceleration can be attributed to the LWT12 having only 2 traction motors. Solo 1200HP locomotives have worked for passenger service before, hauling trains of similar or sometimes even greater weight than the AeroTrain: the EMC EA, UP's M-10000 and M-10001, the Green Diamond, GM&O's Rebels, and the early Zephyrs. But all of those power units were B-B instead of the LWT12's B-1, and we know from the 6-axle vs. 4-axle debate (plus multiple unit trains like the Shinkansen) that more motors means more kick from a start even if at high speed the difference is more minor.
Ive seen the one at the National Railroad Museum in person. Its as ugly now as in it was back then, but it is still worth visiting. You can walk through some of the coaches behind it, which are regular coaches
GM: Let's build something to demonstrate passenger trains don't work so we can sell more cars.
1:23The Christine from the 1983 Horror Film as shown on the bottom which is a 1957 Plymonth Fury.
That was really interesting. Of course, in every railway history book I've seen, there is always the obligatory promo photo of the Aerotrain, but I've never really seen any info on the technical or performance details. So it was good to see just how it was built and what happened to it.
Great video
I'm gonna have to be honest this looks like a train you'd see in Fallout
The AeroTrain belongs in Fallout, id love to see it in Fallout 5
I've seen this train in person, it is a super cool looking train they have one at the kirksville train museum near St Louis Missouri, they also have one of the Union Pacific big boys there as well (of course not running)
The name of the museum is the national museum of transportation. The latter listed in the video.
I wonder if giving it Jacobs bogies and a second power car would have solved most of its problems
It does suck that no rear cars were saved.
Say, could you do a quick vid on NYC's "Xplorer" and NH's "Dan'l Webster" & "Roger Williams," two other attempts at 1950s lightweight trains (also failed)?
The aero train I saw was the one at the national museum of transportation in st louis MO
"My grandpa says the Aerotrains looks like a 1956 DeSoto.
Whatever that is."
Great video!
While both Aerotrain sets were built with ten cars, I've always understood that a maximum nine-car consist was ever operated in service. The tenth car of each set was retained at LaGrange as a 'test car' to try out modifications that the railroads may have recommended based on their in-service experience.
because these trains were so light, they derailed due to high winds when running through the canyons.
Did that really happened?
amazing video as always . hey can you do a video about german steam locomotives and there history here are some examples the BR 10 , the short lived life of the BR 06 and my favorit engine the BR 18 201 i would realy love it if do it
The "I like money" quote made me laugh. 😂 thanks. But our 3 cats were slightly miffed at the cat running on wood floor comment. Ok... great video.
Confession (yeah, I'm Catholic) my fave train growing up was the Amtrak Turbotrain... it reminds me of a 'slightly' more practical updated version of the monstrosity that was the Aerotrain.😊
I am very curious if GM just allocated small amount just to say they got in passenger rail business or whether this was a serious effort with inadequate experience. The lack of horsepower in the locos is inexcusable for a company that made locos.
Consider the next north american train would be the United Aircraft turbo train in the mid 1960s. Aluminium, jacobs bogies, mechanical tilting, turbine engines and I think still has the speed record for north america. This was just a few years behind the Japanese Shinkansen whose first iteration was not that much faster than the Turbo (albeit: real service speed on Shinkansen vs trials for Turbo. The turbo had all the modern train designs that are still used on trains such as TGVs. It did not last long in USA (but did sport Amtrak colours for a few years) but CN in Canada had invested enough in it that it made it work, albeit with a few years of downtime while it was all fixed up (and they went from 5 7 car trains to 3 9 car trains). These traisn lasted into early 1980s.
After the Turbo, the only trains the USA built were done with steel and eventually steel industry protected by FRA rules to favour heavy steel trains. Cou;nt import a TGV, so a customer heavy steel Acela was built for Amtrak with a few TGV loco components included. The rest had nothing t do with TGVs due to steel structure, old style bogies etc. It wasn't until 2018 that the FRA relented and allowed use of modern traisn in USA (they had no choice because Amtrak had already placed order for a mix of TGV locos and Pendolino coaches for its replacement Acelas (the mid is why the locos don't "match" the coaches).
Aluminium becomes very important in curves because total mass of each car puts lateral force on the rails, so going too fars means the rails can be detached from the railroad ties. Heavy cars can't go as fast due to that cant defficiency. Banking also helps reduce lateral force on the rails in curves (assuming the banking actually works).
What is amazing is that the USA was a leader in "high speed trains" in the steam era where PRR and NYC competed on who could be fastest betwen New York and Chicago. NYC even had long gulleys filled with water along the tracks so a steam engine could pickup water without stopping. This is why that GM aero train was just a let down with marketing totally unsupported by actual design.
I guess you could say GM went completely off the rails on this one.
This could be something that could be in the Fallout games
I really wonder why they made so many weird decisions with this, it genuinely could’ve been a great idea, but the bus-bodies were never gonna be a good idea, the engine was seemingly deliberately underpowered, and the fixed length was always gonna be a downside. It seems like they shot themselves in the foot completely, did they not see it coming?
The most 1950s train I've ever seen.
The Aerotrain wasn't the only time GM tried to make a train styled like a car. Contemporary to the Aerotrain General Motors Diesel in Canada made two models of streamlined diesel-hydraulic switcher called the GMDH-1 and GMDH-3, yes I said switcher, no I don't know why they thought it made sense to streamline switchers. Unsurprisingly these were an even bigger flop than the Aerotrain, less than 20 GMDH-1s were sold and only a single demonstrator GMDH-3 was built, although the GMDH-3 does survive in operating condition to this day.
In my opinion, the Aerotrain could've been successful had General Electric not been greedy assholes just to win back passengers.
We also have MTH models of the Aerotrain.
Americas electric engine that was ahead of its time
Have you heard about the french Aérotrain project, that was Led in the sixties and was in fact a guided overcraft running on a concrete track ?
The SW1500 of the future
Oh Boy! F U N N Y L O O K I N G T R A I N
I was commuting to Chicago on the Rock Island. Train consist was 1926 passenger cars. The conductor warned us to keep arms inside the windows. Soon an aerotrain whizzed past us at speed.
I love the aero train
I think your disparaging remarks about the Aerotrain using the same engine as the SW-1200 are specious. If it can switch a yard full of cargo wagons it's got plenty of power for a few lightweight passenger coaches and if you were insinuating about the train speed, you do realize that the engine doesn't drive the wheels directly, that it turns a generator that can power either low-speed switching motors or high-speed passenger motors... yes?
The sad reality is that... passenger rail only got their profit from two things: being a literal monopoly (because other forms of transportation weren't mature enough or fast enough to compete) and _the US Postal Service Contract_ (or similar contracts in Europe, please note that in the US, this contract was literally the only thing keeping most of the lines open).
Once the former was broken (first via effective car travel (and the US military literally telling their rail division that they were no longer needed because WW2 showed that being rail-based is a losing proposition) and later on effective air travel) and the latter canceled, US passenger numbers were destined to die outside of a handful of corridors.
In addition to that, railroads never had any real profit out of the passenger lines outside of a handful of corridors. What was the actual money maker was the _goods contracts_ i.e. the freight. Passenger lines were used not as money makers (if anything, they're money _pits_ instead) but as _advertisements_ to the real money makers of railroads: the aforementioned goods work. That's why every time a railroad has a choice between passengers and cargo, they _always_ chose cargo (even _Britain's_ railroads, after privatization, chose cargo over passengers).
Passenger rail can be profitable and successful if it has fast tracks to ride on and travel at competitive speeds. That however requires huge upfront investment which is usually a government spending program to improve infrastructure. In the United States with most tracks owned by privately-held corporations the new lines required for this wouldn't pay out in terms of shareholder value. Just building snazzy looking trains and running them on the same old worn-out tracks doesn't work as shown here: It's a rough ride.
I see this (and some others) as prototypes that didn't result in series orders because of a number of problems. It's also a curious phenomenon that plenty of US built "lightweight passenger trains" were only made in one or two units and not produced in series.
@@uncinarynin sorry but that's laughable. The problem is that passenger rail was of subsidized profitable at best outside of a literal handful of corridors. Hell, Europe has to subsidize at least half of the passenger rail ticket to even hope to compete with cars and aircraft... with the added problem of literally pushing the cargo off the rails and onto the roads.
@@TheTrueAdept yes, because road users get their infrastructure for free. It's not a fair competition.
@@uncinarynin that isn't entirely the case, as taxes are required for road users to have roads.
The aerotrain solos any ocs 🤣💀
I know the Aerotrain was a flop in a way. But I think it is a really cool and interesting train. I think people should come together and restore one with today's technology, safety equipment and newer powerful engines on today. So people can see and ride one as a reinstated passenger train of the 21st Century. Would that be cool? Please leave a comment and like. Please and Thank you.
Now we are getting a airo
i like the design i wish a company like rapido would make a ho scale model of it
Gotta love these brilliant lookin disasters
The Aerotrain sounds like a bit of a gadgetbahn, to be honest. More about looking good, and less about actually doing the job.
I like trains and planes, so this is a funny combination in my opinion.Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Delta Airlines bought this, LOL.
Just look at 0 series Shinkansen 😅
I’ve heard of it, it’s so sick!@@ryadi1703
2:00 “Hello 😁 🦀 I like money!!!🤩” lol
For some reason it gives me Turboliner vibes
I saw a Aerotrain in Real life and rung the bell of it.
Who thought it was a good idea to design a train like a bus?
Britain did something similar with the Pacer trains
IF, they were put the engine from EMD GP9 or GP18 which produce 1750hp or 1800hp along with its generator and re-geared traction motors, as well as make the passenger car more thoroughly as a passenger car and give it 2 axle instead of 1 axle, and also make the other end exactly the same as the front (a loco), it would be a hit again.
Moreover, if they put traction motors in 1 or 2 cars behind the loco, it would be so much great. Giving it faster moving and faster acceleration due to more wheels that get it to traction.
But the world is not what you hoped or liked, so, yeah, GM what GM did and they did again in the 1980s with the 645F series engine which slowly making them bankrupt.
Imagine if this train was still running today, OMG, LOL!!!
Sometimes when I look at the AeroTrain and its appearance I cant help but compare it to the design of the KiHa 81 series. Perhaps JR just decided to copy GM's homework and make their own.
Or I could be utterly wrong ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
Nice video!
0:53 GAT MUFUKIN DAMN NEPHEW
Lesson learned: make something new and different to attract people to trains
Dang, missed it again!
rock
So the railroad went to a car company, asked them to build an alternative to the car, and then wondered why they were sold a turkey...
Nice
So Amtrakguy, just before watching this video, I have found out that Amtrak has plans and federal funding for new rail lines in my state of Ohio, one of which is being considered to be high speed rail, the Cleveland-Columbus-Dayton-Cincinnati line. I don't know if you had heard about it yet or if you had thoughts on it.