An old newspaper was found in my Aunt’s house, it is the December 22, 1955 Escanaba Daily Press (Escanaba Michigan).
The newspaper includes a wire service or press release article about the GM Aerotrain which was supposed to go into service January 5, 1956 on the New York Central between Chicago and Detroit.
“A new era in American railroad passenger service gets underway in Chicago on Jan. 5 when the New York Central Railroad instroduces the new Aerotrain, the first of the revolutionary trains to be placed in service on the railroad”
“The New York Central Aerotrain, latest model in lightweight passenger trains, will hit the rails at 107 miles an hour Jan 5 in an initial run from Chicago to Detroit. Although the Aerotrain carries 400 passengers, it weighs 50 per cent less than conventional trains.”
“The center of gravity in the Aerotrain is 10 inches lower than conventional trains and makes it possible to take curves at highspeed. This helps make faster schedules between cities possible. The schedule between Chicago and Detroit, for example, may be shortened by one and one half hours.”
Well, that was the publicity and predictions. Does any one know what the reality was? How many Aerotrains did the NYC actually operate? Did schedules change?
Thanks for the info, I know that I wasn’t born when the Aerotrains started running, and I probably wasn’t born when the last Aerotrain was retired.
If you do an advanced search on “Aerotrain” on the forums over about the last 6 months to a year, there are a number of other posts that may be useful to you.
The Aerotrain was a flop universally. GM had two demonstrators that barnstormed the country and tested on several railroads. One wound up on the PRR for a time running between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The cars were made from GM bus bodies and if you look closely at the windows you will see the bus form immediately. The ride was har***o say the least. Downright uncomfortable to many and were disliked by the passengers. Both would up on the Rock Island in Chicago commuter service. One resides in Green Bay at the train museum there and the other is at the National Museum in St. Louis. How many did NYC buy? Same as the other railroads - 0.
A reasonably good reference is Doughty’s book “New York Central and the Trains of the Future” (from 1997). Out of print, but used copies available – for a price, it seems; the amazon.com link for it is
My guess is that the bad ride quality of the Aerotrain had a lot to do with the two-axle train cars.
As many of you know, a railway train axle has a pair of wheels joined by a solid connecting axle, and the wheels have a conical taper. If this axle is displaced a little to one side, it rides on the bigger diameter section of one wheel, the smaller diameter section of the other wheel, and since the wheels are forced to turn the same speed, the axle will turn. This arrangement is not stable – the axle will turn back and forth across the railhead in a sine wave pattern (unless it contacts the flanges), and the rate of the sine wave increases the faster you go.
Usually, a pair of axles is combined into a truck (bogie in British usage). Tying a pair of axles together suppresses this natural self-steering to allow for a stable ride. The truck, however, cannot be perfectly rigid, otherwise the axles cannot self-steer at all and you will be up against the flanges on any kind of curve. You have to have some give against the journal boxes, and the wheel base, the amount of give, and the amount of cone taper of the wheels all interact to produce a critical speed – below the critical speed smooth riding, above the critical speed, shakes like anything or even jumps the track.
You would think that the longer the wheelbase somehow the better the suppression of the axle self-steering and the better the ride. But if you have a very long wheelbase, such as a two-axle train car, you have to allow a lot of give in the journal box guides, otherwise the thing cannot track around curves. With that much give, you have a lowered critical speed, and the rest of the story follows.
This theory regarding wheel hunting and critical speeds is consistent with the historical record – the story was that the Aerotrain ride was really bad past 50-60 MPH or so. I guess the engineers at GM were well meaning – why can’t you just slap a couple of axles on a bus body, and run it down the ra
…On the several times I have ridden Amfleet cars I thought the ride was very decent. Locations ranged from old Pennsy main, central Pennsylvania to down in Fl. on CSX.
On riding Aerotrain…The one chance I had to ride from Pittsburgh to Johnstown I found a paper on the seat of my conventional Passenger train coach stating: “The Aerotrain is not available today it is in for it’s monthly service”…and that was as near as I got to riding the new lightweight.
Aerotrain was GM’s answer to the passenger train "problem in 1955. With Harley Earle inspired styling it looked pretty good by mid-50s standards. Imagine what an E9 would have looked like with that styling![:0] NYC’s new (in 1955) Chairman Robert R. Young was pro-passenger and had the $ to back him up. But, he found that his theories were proving to be inadequate to cure the Central’s problems. His suicide led to the ill-fated and ill-conceived merger with PRR one of the great business mistakes ever made.[B)] Alfred Pearlman steered NYC into disaster and killed one of the nation’s premier passenger operations. Problem was, Pearlman was right about passengers then and were he to be alive today, he would not be a supporter of Amtrak![^] I am Peter Benham and I approve this message.
Of all of the lightweight experimental trains, my all-time favorite is the Alan Cripe-United Aircraft Turbo Train. Those domes were just ultra cool. As to the fixed consist, those fiberglass clamshell doors come apart and you could have coupled Turbo Trains into multiples with passage between the sections. As to the fuel-hog turbine engines (in rail service you need full power to accelerate to keep schedules, but only need partial power to cruise, and that is what kills turbine fuel efficiency in rail service – I also heard that the jolts of rail service – coupling shocks, bumps – are rough on turbines), what is to say that you couldn’t put in those Detroit Diesel 600 Hp overhead cam turbo Diesels used in the Colorado Railcars DMU in place of the turbines.
The Midwest Highspeed Rail Association (the group promoting, but not to be confused with the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative) has good things to say about Turbo Train on their Web site. The MRRI, or at least the DOT’s of the component Midwestern states, are thinking Talgo these days, but I am told that someone has the rights to the Turbo Train design and was promoting construction of a Dieselized version of the Alan Crip guided-axle tilt-train for this service. Anyone know anything more about this?
The June 1968 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine featured a color shot by Hal Carstens himself of the Aerotrain in New York Central paint leaving Chicago’s La Salle Street Station in 1956. The caption is ambiguous whether the set was in actual NYC service or had aleady been acquired by the Rock Island for its Chicago to Joliet service.
Dave Nelson
My knowledge of the Aerotrain was very limited. I’ve seen the Aerotrain at the Green Bay WI railroad museum, and knew that this particular train had been operated by the Rock Island.