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/
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…
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.
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.
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.
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 r
The Turboliners did fairly well on the Chicago-Detroit route and contributed heavily to improved ridership on that route.
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:
And in the absence of time reductions ‘conventional’ service operated with Genesis dual-mode power can do the job well enough…
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:
The United Aircraft TurboTrain was a “lightweight” train, sponsored by the gummint about 10 years after the New Haven got tired of fooling with its lightweight trains.
I rode the TurboTrain. I thought it rode well. I rode the original Metroliner, more of a heavyweight train by the time they up-powered the Budd Silverliner. I thought it rode rough. I rode the Turboliner. Lightweight for using “power cars” and not a heavy Diesel electric locomotive, but yes, heavier than the TurboTrain. Smoothest thing I ever rode, and no, it did not have active tilt or active suspension apart from possibly air-spring load-leveling. The somewhat heavier Amcoaches that replaced it rode a little more stiffly, but not as bad as the Metroliner.
As to the rough riding of the Train-X, Train-X was pretty much the first iteration of the guided-axle TurboTrain. It had a design flaw in that the guided-axle steering didn’t apply to the end axles on the consist. I read that the conductors herded the passengers into the smoother-riding middle cars, which squares with that theory. The TurboTrain had conventional trucks at the ends and to my knowledge didn’t have a rough riding problem.
Using the United Technologies PT-6 helicopter turbine in railway service was probably naive. TurboTrain designer Alan Cripe had a Diesel truck engine version that he called the Fastracker DMT that never sold.
The Aero Train? A “naive” engineering design that predated modern theory on rail wheel “hunting.” The Talgo? The company is still building them with an upgraded design.
Why light weight?
I understand your points that Budd Rail Diesel Cars (which is what the Roger Williams was made of) gave a rough ride because the New Haven’s tracks were not adequate for a light weight car, the cars broke down frequently and even when they didn’t break down they were never as fast as was promised. In fact it did wind up on the New Haven – Springfield route which is a short haul. Those are all pretty bad faults.
But Budd RDC’s seem to have continued in use for a long time. Australia used them well into the 90’s as did some railroads in the United States. And some US roads still use them as well as Canada’s Via Rail. Can you shed any light on why they lasted so long if they were so bad?
When I say “massive mistake” I am referring mainly to the lightweight-train ‘craze’ of the 1940s and '50s… up to the point where railroad companies stopped buying new experiments to try and seize back demand (or keep subsidized mail service, etc. at lower cost)
UA Turbotrain and others ‘of that ilk’ were, I think, largely spurred by Johnson’s UMTA, the incentive that was described to me as an American attempt to show it could compete with innovation in the rest of the world. Metroliner was originally designed and spec’d to have a variant of the Pioneer III truck architecture (I don’t remember what it was going to be called) but someone got cold feet and retained the heavy GSC truck architecture. Not good especially as PC negligence began to set in. It might be recalled that the original ‘shin kansen’ Tokaido line, with greatly lighter equipment, was having to rebuild line and surface about every six weeks to keep the ride smooth – I’m a bit more understanding of NVH issues on the Metro in light of that (rightly or wrongly). (If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, what is an iron horse designed by a government committee…)
I confess that I loved the whole design philosophy of the Turbotrain, an airliner on tracks. I had no objection when riding it, either, but I stayed upstairs in the ‘dome’ the whole time every time I rode one, so I literally have no idea about comparative ride quality. One thing I remember, though, is that if you made the suspension compliant enough for smooth ride, it would beat itself out of alignment more readily and require repair – what the repairs actually were, I don’t recall, and I haven’t read the book on them (which probably tells about all that.
I actually thought the PT6 was the most reasonable contemporary choice for turboshaft engines, for a variety of detail-design reasons I won’t blather on about. (Or, put another way, I can
Thanks for your recommendation. However, my book budget is quite minimal and I can’t afford to buy the book. Usually I can get what I want from my library’s system which covers 4 counties but Mark Frattasio’s book is not there. I do know Patrick McGinnis is not exactly highly regarded by people familiar with the railroad.
John, you could TRY to get it via interlibrary loan. (The guy’s name is ‘Frattasio’ if the library system is too stupid and literal-minded… ;-} ) Sheesh is it rare in libraries! WorldCat only shows three:
Overmod,
I just searched our interlibrary system–84 libraries in 4 counties do not have the book. And I can search other local systems and the State of New Jersey library too. But none of them have it.
I suspect it is a book of local interest. I probably could get it in the Providence Library. Except that I live in New Jersey.
PS. There is a fair amount of material about Budd RDC’s on the internet though.
[quote user=“Paul Milenkovic”]
The United Aircraft TurboTrain was a “lightweight” train, sponsored by the gummint about 10 years after the New Haven got tired of fooling with its lightweight trains.
I rode the TurboTrain. I thought it rode well. I rode the original Metroliner, more of a heavyweight train by the time they up-powered the Budd Silverliner. I thought it rode rough. I rode the Turboliner. Lightweight for using “power cars” and not a heavy Diesel electric locomotive, but yes, heavier than the TurboTrain. Smoothest thing I ever rode, and no, it did not have active tilt or active suspension apart from possibly air-spring load-leveling. The somewhat heavier Amcoaches that replaced it rode a little more stiffly, but not as bad as the Metroliner.
As to the rough riding of the Train-X, Train-X was pretty much the first iteration of the guided-axle TurboTrain. It had a design flaw in that the guided-axle steering didn’t apply to the end axles on the consist. I read that the conductors herded the passengers into the smoother-riding middle cars, which squares with that theory. The TurboTrain had conventional trucks at the ends and to my knowledge didn’t have a rough riding problem.
Using the United Technologies PT-6 helicopter turbine in railway service was probably naive. TurboTrain designer Alan Cripe had a Diesel truck engine version that he called the Fastracker DMT that never sold.
The Aero Train? A “naive” engineering design that predated modern theory on rail wheel “hunting.” The Talgo? The company is still building them w
I remember having a long “oh, what do you do for a living conversation” with a guy married to someone who worked with someone that my
So are you saying that there was never anything wrong with Budd RDC’s in themselves but the mistake was in seeing them for something they were not?
It’s really ‘both’, but one thing that has really made the difference is the improvement in rail-fastening systems. I had thought in the mid- '70s, looking at some of the track-mechanics stuff coming out of France (mention of EIGHTH-order differential equations was not something that escaped my youthful sense of wonder!) that actual sprung track, like the German experiments in the '20s but much better damping, was going to be required. Pandrol et al. changed that, dramatically (and subsequent experience in the United States with concrete ties has, I think, borne that out).
Second big difference: lighter vehicles. I think both Paul and Henry6 were mentioning this in slightly different contexts in other threads. Perturbing force in the track, and the amount of reflected energy that the track has to disperse without geometry change, go down with lighter mass, and while the increase in force goes up with the square of velocity, we’re predominantly concerned with the vertical component of that velocity, which of course is considerably less than ‘conversion of forward momentum into vertical shock’ or the like.
Third big difference: Development of automatic track-maintenance equipment, and the diagnostic procedures to optimize its use. Just look at the sophistication of modern European systems, and consider the amount of manual tinkering that would be required even to approximate what the machines can do.
Fourth big difference: better suspensions, both active and passive. The revolution for single-axle guidance that came out of Britain in the '60s isn’t as recognized as it should be (HSRV-1 has now been preserved, hallelujah – but I’d bet not one in ten American railroaders, let alone railfans, can tell you what it was without Googling…) There is also much better analysis in control theory and nondeterministic mechanics to determine consequences of critical speed and geometry interaction. Most peo