In the summer of 1968 my father took me to Grand Central Station to see the Turbotrain. “That’s the future of rail service” pointing to the train. Sorry dad!
Can anyone tell me if the Turbotrain was running in regular service then?
Thanks!
Completed in the Summer of 1968, they were taken to severial cities for display and then used in “Press Runs” until October. The two United Technologies (then known as United Aircraft) “Turbo Trains”, UAC-1 and UAC-2 were then accepted by the U.S. Dept of Transportation on October 21, 1968 and renamed DOT-1 and DOT-2.
As the “Penn Central” was taking over the “New Haven”, they did not enter Boston to New York service until April 8, 1969.
Alright already, the first person to tell me to post this in the Model Railroader section gets slapped about the face with a wet fish in the manner of that Monty Python sketch.
Some may know that Rapido Trains is coming out with an HO model of the TurboTrain.
Rapido Train’s Jason Shron is a self-admitted TurboTrain fan, starting with his childhood experiences of riding it in Canada. One of his stories was that as children, he and his brother would stand in the passageway between train cars at the articulated connection, allowing themselves to be bounced against the sides during the time the train would negotiate crossovers and slip switches in the terminal areas, a time when the official announcement was that you were supposed to stay seated.
Apparently the TurboTrain model is not just another product from Rapido Trains, although I am told based on MR reviews that they make fine products. The Turbo is not only a “labor of love” on the part of Jason Shron but perhaps something bordering on an obsession.
Anyway, the realism of the prototype TurboTrain in the HO model is taken to such an extent that the HO model will be well over a year late. Representing a prototype promised in 67, delivered in 68, and finally operating in 69, the model was promised in 07, delivered in 08, and mine (cross fingers) will be finally “put into service” at a passenger train advocacy exhibit as a “train of tomorrow” at the February 2009 Mad City Model Railroad Show. Don’t laugh about the “train of tomorrow” aspect to the thing – see the Midwest High Speed Rail Association Web site for one advocacy group’s take on the TurboTrain.
Jason Shron apparently has his TurboTrain book out already. I am supposed to get a copy of my “TurboTrain, a Journey” upon delivery of my TurboTrain model in US DOT colors, probably sometime in October. Many of these questions could be already answere
“bordering on an obsession” doesn’t do it justice. “beyond an obsession” would probably be better. Even after spending years working on the model and writing the book, I still love that train.
You will be in luck. Unless the factory burns down or is abducted by aliens, all of the TurboTrains will be in stores well before then. The Late Amtrak TurboTrains are just about to leave the factory. Here is a picture of a production sample. I added exhaust and a dust trail in Photoshop. The image without photo effects will appear in the September MR.
I’ve never posted a photo here before so hopefully that works. I think the “Totally Wired” Telephone Poles really make the photo. The first shipment of those is also about to leave the factory.
I have not seen any evidenc
Jason:
I guess my obsession is the “wishbone” and “drag link” arms that make up the TurboTrain guided-axle suspension. I have been working for the last two years on a theoretical understanding of that mechanism. It is hard to say if Alan Cripe had any theoretical insights on this or worked from geometric intuition, but the only prior publication I have seen is in his patents. What got me started on this is that Talgo was/is considered for the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative if it ever gets funding, and either Alan Cripe or his associates had been promoting the Fastracker DMT derivative of the TurboTrain design to advocacy groups in the mid 1990s shortly before his passing.
A paper relating the TurboTrain suspension to the theory of constant-velocity couplings – Paul Milenkovic, Triangle Pseudo-Congruence in Constraint Singularity of Constant-Velocity Couplings, submitted to ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics – has been accepted pending a review of a revised manuscript. A constant-velocity coupling, or CV joint, is something you have four of in a front-wheel drive car, and what a CV joint does is maintain a constant roll angle for a pair of shafts so your steering doesn’t shake when you go around a curve, and the theory states that it has to maintain a symmetric relationship between the two shafts and the part in the middle. The TurboTrain maintains a constant bank angle of the pendulum tilt for the neighboring train cars, and the guided axle is that bit in the middle maintaining a symmetric relationship between the train cars.
Not only does the TurboTrain suspension “split the difference” of the yaw angle between train cars to maintain “radial steering”, it also splits the difference in the pitch angle, or any combination of the pitch and yaw angle experienced by the train cars as they roll in response to the pendulum effect around curves. The TurboTrain system maintains the r