For those of us who have seen the Automax up close including the interior, doesn’t it occur to you that the Automax would make a great design for an articulated passenger car? When you stand at one end and stare down the 140’ to the other end, it appears massive on the interior, giving the impression of roominess, perfect for a diner or lounge car.
Have you looked at the Colorado Railcar site? There is a logical place to do the shell conversions…
I’m not sure that the ride quality could be gotten up to where it would be well-suited to passenger service with the underframe the way it’s presently fabricated, but this could be fixed.
Wonder whether an attempt to build these conversions might not be railroading’s answer to the Great Eastern? (Gee, maybe we could get Fred Silverman out of retirement to help us fund a few prototypes for a new reality show based on 'Supertrain!" ;-})
I remember Supertrain. Are you sure you want to see a reality show based on one as bad as that?Supertrain really stunk![xx(]
That was precisely the point. You are, I assume, familiar with Isambard K. Brunel’s ‘ship that was too big’. There might be just too much available volume in an AutoMax conversion’s envelope!
The problem with Supertrain, imho, is that it was just a ‘Love Boat’ clone on rails, and didn’t have anything special about it from a rail perspective. Of course, the era didn’t help it either. I was being more than a bit sarcastic about what the ‘reality’ aspect would be – plenty of room for a Big Brother-style show inside the conversion! (Perhaps we could note the number of rows of racks and shackles that would fit inside, too… NAWWWW!)
I don’t remember the show so much as remember the concept, e.g. a “double-wide” passenger consist. It could work if there was even one complete passenger corridor of consistent width between the two tracks. Of course, you’re taking two tracks temporarily out of service to serve a single passenger train, and I don’t think there was, is, or ever will be such a thing as a two track siding to park the thing!
It would be better to use the monorail concept (a wider consist centered over the rails), in that a standard width rail line would need a double width clearance to allow an ultra-wide railcar. Even a 15’ width for a passenger coach would be better than 10’ or so width they’re using now. Don’t know how much it would cost to clear a 15’ width for such a concept, bridges and tunnels would be a problem…
I’ve always thought that the old Trains Magazine article “The Case for the Double-Track Train” was one of the inspirations for the Supertrain concept.
Not a particularly difficult thing to arrange – from the engineering standpoint – but as noted, operations would be damn near impossible today on any railroad with suitable track. A somewhat weird point is that double-track with passing sidings and carefully-coordinated crossovers might be a workable solution for combining double-track and single-track train operations – this wasn’t mentioned in the Trains article but I worked it out after reading.
With sufficient improvements in loading gage and track-center spacing, it would not be difficult to use some method of stabilization or active feedback to perform balance control for wider carbodies on 4’8.5" gauge track. Much of the required equipment would also be suitable for negative cant deficiency tilting systems.
While we’re having fun with this in more or less impracticable ways… consider the art of the slide-out, as refined by various RV manufacturers. We had collapsible stacks on steam locomotives – why not collapsible sections on railroad cars? (Yeah, I know it would be almost impossible to make them safe.) Expand your stateroom to full hotel size when running 40mph at night, then collapse it for faster running during the day – and “width-optimize” only the parts of the rail network used for nighttime traffic…
A tri level superliner, tell bombardier.
Actually the automax type conversion isn’t a bad idea. The top half can be for the passengers and the bottom half can be for the baggage and any mail. This way you eliminate the bagagge car and you might incorporate optional built in MHC service.
Another version could be a more compact sleeper (2 floors worth), another could be a diner car. The diner car could have the bottom half right section as the kitchen, the bottom half left as the storage, fridge and walk in freezer and the top part could be the dinning area. There could be a small elevator type lift for the bus boy’s dish cart or for the waiter/waitress to delivering food easier from the kitchen to the dinning level.
Another option for the dining car is to have all the kitchen area in 1st floor along with the storage, a bar/ dining area for smokers and the dinning and bar area up top plus bar for the non-smokers.
Think of the amount of cars Amtrak could save on.
You all of seen GATX stamped on the side of tank cars. There was a time when GATX employed a Roumanian immigrant named Deodat Clejan, who developed a system for circus loading of piggyback flatcars. Their more ambitious intermodal concept was called RRollway (the double RR as in railroad was part of the name).
Do a Google on RRollway and it turns up nothing. But the concept predates the Internet, and the idea was to build a broad gauge railroad to transport people inside their automobiles in rail auto carriers. The train would carry autos sideways and be about 20 feet wide, and the track gauge would be 10 feet or more. Since autos would be parked sideways, the train would pull into a toll plaza-like station, side doors would open on the train, and drivers would have “random access” to driving on or off the train.
Since these trains were electric and meant to be high speed, the right of way concept was much like interurban lines or the TGV or Interstate highways for that matters – just follow the rolling terrain and don’t worry about short grades (the whole thing would be grade separated). From a construction standpoint, it would be no more trouble than an Interstate Highway, and perhaps the committment to the Interstate killed RRollway.
As for the broad gauge rail, the contemplated gauge was much broader than anything tried, and the thing was more like a monorail in that it dispensed with solid axles between wheels, flanges, and wheel-steering cone taper and instead used guide wheels gripping one of the two rails from the sides to steer the truck. It used an unconventional switch so there would be continuous contact of the guide wheels without interference from points and frogs. The switch was not quite as ponderous as required for a monorail – it was more like some model train switches that had continuous rail contact – was the manufacturer Tru-Test or Tru-Track or some name like that? You model railroaders out there may have seen that type of switch.
If the automax idea was to work I think they would 1/ uses passenger trucks, 2/ need a super cushion system or somthing to reduce the vibrations and motion.
Basically this thing is a real souped up freight car that is made into a passenger car. If you’ve ever seen those TLC programs on t.v where they take a crumby car and turn it into something really cool; same thing only on a grander scale.