TurboTrain: One of the Biggest Scams of American Railroading! 

Yet the Canadian built ones ran till 82 and once they had the bugs worked out were considered very reliable

I rode the TurboTrain from Providence to New Haven in the mid-1970s. Between Providence and Westerly, RI... it zoomed! Then, it slowed between Westerly and New London. The worst segment was from New London to New Haven. We were going 65 MPH. I asked the conductor about the reduction in speed. He told me it was because of the condition of the tracks and the number of grade crossings. The track east of New Haven would not actually be upgraded until the Acela Project, long after the TurboTrain was sent elsewhere.

Up here in Canada, I've only ever heard of people speak of the Turbo train in hushed whispers! Great video as always.

These turbo trains were epically poor. At the end of a trip, they needed sixteen hours of shop time just to get ‘em to make a six to eight hour trip. That ain’t good. They were a railfans dream if you didn’t mind smelling jet fuel. CN/VIA’s turbos were running much faster over a longer distance this helped them out. The further it could go, the better it did.

What's surprising is the lack of testing and re-engineering that went into this, the Metroliner, and the SPV2000. It's like Amtrak, and the pre-Amtrak companies insisted on putting untested trains into service in a hurry. I really like the SPV2000 concept, as it seemed like a practical replacement for the Budd RDC, but the thing was dog crap from the get-go.

I never rode one of these. They were gone when I was a child. I do find the history of the Turbotrain quite interesting though.

The Canadian turbo trains were built by Montreal Locomotive Works, with their ST6 engines supplied by UAC's Canadian division (now Pratt & Whitney Canada) in Longueuil, Quebec. They were much longer at 7 cars. At first they had reliability problems, especially in winter. I rode it a number of times in the 70's and did not find that it was all that loud. It was comfortable, but not luxurious. But boy was it fast at 3hrs 55 minutes compared to the 5 hrs and 8 minutes today. Although they had an early reputation for unreliability, according to CN's records, the rebuilt TurboTrains had an availability rate of over 97% for their careers with CN and Via. They were taken out of service in 1982 and only ran for 14 years.

I actually have a manual for the turbo train. It’s fascinating reading and it is a shame that none were preserved. They were built at the Sickorsky in Connecticut.

I always wanted a ride on the Canadian Turbo Train between Toronto and Montreal, it seemed space-age technology for the 70s. A friend of mine got the chance and I remember his biggest recollection at the time was not being allowed onto the platform until the train came to a full-stop in the station. For some reason the trains were always left running even at-rest which caused a locomotive fire and partial meltdown at Toronto's Union station.

This was not a scam, it was a failiure by the government to support a good project. The Canadian ones, while still nowhere near perfect, fared much better.

Great topic, I rode on it in 1971 round trip. It was fun, like a World's Fair pavilion that moved. In the film "The Seven Ups" the climax scene at the end is alongside the northeast corridor tracks and you see a turbo train and some GG=1's

The Turbo operated for many years very successfully in Canada. They were very unique trains that were ahead of their time.

I rode a TurboTrain from Boston to NYC once, back in the last century. My main impression of it was how NOISY it was! Every time it pulled out of one of the en route stations, the jet engines would roar even louder than they sound when you're on an airplane! ....and when it pulled into the cavern under Penn Station in NYC, it filled the air with superheated fumes, which accompanied exiting passengers up the escalator from the platform.

A good number of the Metroliners are actually still in service today on the Northeast Corridor, now hiding in plain sight as unpowered Amfleet cab cars.

One of the major issues in the US is the almost complete abscence of dedicated track. You can't run trains at high speed on tracks designed for goods trains with grade crossings everywhere

Lasted twice as long at CN and Via Rail in Canada.

Great you should make an episode about the Dutch Fyra, a failed high speed train because the NS did not want to spend the money and a manufacturer that had no experience making trains.

Experiments with Jet propulsion for rail was going on in Germany, France and elsewhere at that period. The problem for the Turbo Train was that the 1973 oil crisis and aftermath put an end to the experiment in the USA.

Fun fact, a picture of the UA Turbotrain is included on the Voyager Golden Record to tell aliens what a train on Earth looks like.

Calling turbo trains "a scam" is intellectually dishonest. A poor design, certainly. Insufficient testing prior to being placed in production, absolutely. But a "scam" absolutely not. A scam is a deliberate criminal act. The turbo train may have been a mistake, but it was NOT done with criminal intent.

It would've been interesting if UA had a Diesel Electric or fully electric version of the turbo train ustilizing the dome and coach designs that looked so pretty. I had no idea such an advanced train, used Bunker C Fuel!! Great work, Jeff!

ANY RE- INVENTION OF THE WHEEL, USING NON STANDARD EQUIPMENT AND LACKING ABILITY TO BE INTERCHANGED WITH STANDARD PASSENGER TRAIN INFRASTRUCTURE , HAS AN 99. % CHANCE OF FAILURE!! KEEP THEM ROLLING BROTHERS!! 👍👍

You're the man Jeffrey. Thanks for posting. I got a few episodes to catch up on

Thanks for your work putting these videos together Jeffery. I buy books and have a good Public Library, but I've never seen this loco, wouldn't have known it existed were it not for your knowledge. Excellent 🇦🇺👍

I am curious about the green carpet now.

I really don't think the turbo-train was a "scam." It was a great product except for the speed over-running the gate crossing signals and the problems with winter cold freezing up the water pipes. It had "teething problems" but was cancelled when CN chose not to extend the leases from Pratt and sent the train-sets back to the USA, where they did run for a bit on various lines in pre-Acela service. Really nice trains, though. I loved the Montreal-Toronto run! 400 miles in "under four hours"!

Having routinely taken the turbo-train bwetween Montreal and Toronto as a business traveler, I can attest that they would run on CN mainline heavy-rail at 125 mph. there was a speed indicator in the passenger section so passengers could see how fast it was going! At 125, the train was steady and comfortable. It was designed with a "tilt-train" body that pivoted on end-frames with a pivot bolt at the top, so the carriage would lean into curves. The run would do the 400 miles central-city to central-city in 3 hours 59 minuites - the target was "under four hours" to compete with the Air Canada flight service. On the inaugural run, the train was going so fast it was over-running the gate arms at crossings, something that would give motorists a bit of a fright. Just outside Kingston, Ontario (the mid-point) a farmer was crossing at an unguarded dirt road and got his hay wagon clobbered at full throttle, demolishing the wagon and spreading hay bales abut the countryside. On board was a full load of newsmen and photographers, so the pictures made the front pages. Public-relations nightmare. Other than that fisaso, the runs were basically uneventful. You would roar along and have your coffee and read the newspaper, then arrive in Toronto downtown and a short walk to whatever office tower you were visiting. Roar back that night and you were home, missing the hotel bills. It was great! The train was powered by two Pratt & Whitney jet turbos, model PT-6, flat-rated at 1,000 shaft horsepower each. That part worked fine; the problems were in the water lines, that the builder ran along the outside skin unprotected. Nobody at the Pratt factory in Connecticut realized that Montreal had temperatures routinely below zero, so those pipes would freeze and ther was no way to thaw them. Additional to service water, the pipes also contained the suspension dampening water and then the dampers would stop working. The inability of the trains to handle the cold was the proximate cause of CN abandoning the turbo, which sets were leased from the builder. Oh, well.

The Turbo as run by VIA did not carry any baggage, your bags were delivered by regular Budd car sets that ran between Montreal &Toronto & were delivered to you the next day.

My Mom rode a round trip on the TurboTrain between the Rt. 128 station to NYC. When the train arrived for the trip to NYC there was a broom handle sticking out of the front. The engineer explained that the A/C wasn't working so he put the broom stick in to hold the door open slightly and it helped. She said she enjoyed the train but that the broomstick didn't work well enough and the trip to NYC was really hot.

Only $20,000,000?? That's quite a bargain compared to California's bullet train to nowhere.

As a youngster, I remember the French ones running on the Chicago-Milwaukee runs. But they didn't actually purchase them? Seems to me they were around 4 or 5 years, maybe..

I did not get a chance to ride on the turbo train. But I did see it in Parkersburg, West Virginia when it ran between Washington DC and Parkersburg.

I rode a Turbo Train set from Parkersburg to Grafton, WV in April of 1972 when I was 14. The train set ran every other day between Washington, DC and Parkersburg, WV It was part of a politically operated service (for House Surface Transportation Subcommittee Chairman Harley Staggers, nicknamed derisively as "Harley's Hornet") in the early days of Amtrak. Return service was conventional coaches pulled by E-units. I got my first cab ride on a Diesel that trip, walking through an E-8 to the head end on the return to Parkersburg. I was with my local railroad club and we rode in the "dome" section of the power car, right behind the engineer. The sound from inside sounded like a muffled vacuum cleaner. We never got over 40 mph on that section of the line, but it did hit 79 mph closer to DC.

The Acela which is out being used today biggest issue is, it runs on tracks that weren't designed for the 150 mph speed, causing it to not be able to hit the 175 mph speed for almost the whole trip..

Rapido Trains done an HO scale model of the UAC Turbo Trains severa lyears back. They offered several of the variations from the Penn Central and Amtrak ones to the CN and VIA variation. They are planing on doing an updated version as the earlier ones had running issues.

The Turbo train was cncepived by Chesapeake and Ohio with those grants and than tken on by United Aircraft. You mentioned the steam engine suits worn by engineers. That wasn't the problem, The problem is that the railroads did not have any maintenance expertise to maintain aircraft, their expertise was steam-heated trains and now diesel locos which were still relatively new in 1960s. The Turbo still has the north american speed record for a train that went into service. (the new Acelas will likely get that record). Its overall design was decades ahead of cimpetition at if it had been introduced on time, its service speed would have been close to that of the early speeds achieved bu Shinkansen. (though it was at the top of potential with diesel turbine whereas Shinkansen was able to raise its speed tremendously since originally introduced). The turbo had reliable passive tilting, jacobs bogies (shared between cars), short and light cars, light aluminium body, pressurized interiors to reduce noise/dust and pressure waves when passing trains and extremely quiet engines, quiet enough that there wwere passenger seating and a dome cars right above the engines. But it had bugs and improperly documented maintenace requirements because railroads were unfamiliar with modern tech. CN in Canada learned quickly that it had bugs and widthdrew it from service for a few year while a lot was fixed and also changed its 7-car trains into 3 9-car trains. (after having lost a few in accidents). However, as CN was committed to making the Turbo work, it also prioritized its passage and reduced its travel time between TOronto and Montreal from 5 and a half hours to 3 hours 59 minutes. Later on, its schedule was brought back to same as conventional trains. Because its bogies only had 1 axle, the ride was not as smooth as if they had had 32 bogies as the TGVs have. But otherwise, the 1960s design of the Turbo was far more similar to the 1980s TGVs that it had with north american trains. That should not be underestimated how far ahead of its time it was. On the demo run with press aboard, CN had underestimated tilting and in a curve, the train sideswiped a freight train on track next to it. You'll note that the new Acella trains are not in service because Alstom has not yet been able to demostrate to FRA that its new Pendolino tilting will be safe to operate on those tracks without sideswiping passing trains. (contrary to marketing, the coaches are Pendolino cars while the loco is dongraded from the new TGV-M (Averilia Horizon and tyis expoains the werd incompatible shapes between the 2). TGVs are designed for high speed tracks that have the right cant and don't need heavy tilting mechanism. The version of Pendolinos that ave tilting are sold to go on conventional tracks. (there are high speed Pendolinos but they do not have tilting). In the USA, the Turbo was the last modern train produced after which, the lobby from legacy Budd and Pullman pushed the industry back to old heavy simple steel trains. Remember that Budd was (and its surving descentant) was/is a steel company and making train cars out of steel was just to feed its steel business. There was no way it would switch to moder aluminium trains. The current Acellas are made of heavysteel because the FRA in the 1980s formulated it standards to help Budd survive by making steel an almost requirent for trains, and had to give waivers for the modern Talgos that were initially imported for the Pacific Norwest services (later Talgos were made in USA we a totally different model with steel). In Canada, MLW which built the Turbo in the 60s from the UAC designs got feedback from CN and started to design the LRC to be far more conventional. It maintained aluminium structure, but put in standard diesel locos. It dropped jacobs bogies to have standard bogies and standard couplers to allow consist changes to trains. But having tilting required active tilting since with conventioanl bogies you can't use angle between cars to do the tilting like Turbo and mahy other trains do. MLW was then bought by Bombardier who makde the sale of LRCs to VIA and Amtrak. Howeer, Amtrak imposed a lot of "made in USA" restrictions so a custom made untested train went into service witg Amtrak with USA components and was a disaster that Amtrak was not willing to work the bugs out and quickly returned to Bombardier. VIA Rail was stuck with its decision and had to wrk the bugs out. And there were many. (there was a federal report on it at one poit that had the list of problems and it was comical - outside doors started to open when train exceeded 80mph). It wasn't long before VIA disabled the tilting which made people sick (huge challenge in separate cars to have tilting engage at exactly the same time as curve starts instead of having a delay between curve being felt and car tilting more than necessary in preduction for the curve getting tighter. (this is what the new Acelas are trying to solve by having the track geometry pre-programmed in each car that will have precisiuon location along the track and will *hopefully* know ar precicely what point in time to titl to what amount). VIA also changed the outside doors to have manual stair deployment because the original automatic mechanism was not reliable in winter. (and this meant that it required 1 attendant per door instead of the conductor pressing 1 button to open all doros either for upper or lower platforms). Ironically, CN had told MLW to not use modern tech that the railways maintenance folks didn't understant. So it built its banking logic with relays and anaoguye electrical stuff which ended up being highly unreliable compared to electronic components. Same with door operation. The other aspect with odern train desig is location of components. Old trains were designed to be maintained in a yard. But both the LRC ended up requiring maintainace bays so workers could work from under the car which VIA learned the hard way and had to build temporary maintenance facility in Montreal to desig maintenance practices to end up with reliable LRC and eventuually built permanent ones. In the USA, the introduction of the Turbo came at a time when Penn Central was not healthy and could not afford to babysit a new train and build "aircraft" maintenance facilities for 1 train. VIA had no choice but to build new facilities because it had bet the business on LRCs replacing most of the corridor trains. While VIA ceased to maintain the LRCs circa 2020 and begun to canibalise cars for parts (and thus unable to restore pre-pandemic service frequencies), those cars lasted 40 years. 10 of the cars underwent total rebuild in 2010 with new electrical, HVAC, door mechanism etc and will be good for another 40. But the rest are in a state of abandonment which is very sad because they are stil more modern than the heavy steel Siemens cars VIA hopes to replace them with. (those, despite being so conventional are also eperiencing a need for a lot of debugging). The moral of the story: any new train will require debugging. and if the operating railway is not willing to invest to debig it, the train will be a failure. Don't faiult the Turbo, fault Penn Central for not doing it (and at time Amtrak inrehited the Turbos, it likelyt also inherited the Penn Central maintenance facilities and staff that didn't have what it took to maintain and fix those trains. BTW the Rohr RTL Turboliners were basically the french RTGs but with modifications to meet the "made in USA" rules. The French ones were imported into USA with almost no modificatiosn at all except for US couplers at the end of locos so the trains could be pulled by an old US locomotived when they failed.

Never heard about it. No one I mentioned it to heard about it.

Honestly its not a scam if it was amtraks decision to run it, it was sort of an unproven concept that really didnt get to improve, The Canadian sets faired better. I think some of the bigger issues that made the UAC not a big thing. were the modular truck design & the turbines being expensive af. The UAC was a rushed concept that should've had more time to develop, the PDCs were litterally bigger than they needed to be due to a swap from Diesel to turbine power mid development! But with the speeds it was capable of, and being able to enter NYP, i think the UAC could've been a good thing for American high speed rail but due to the Ground speed act the DOT wanted a fast train fast, and lead to the UAC as we knew it.

This was the American equivalent to the APT-P.

I remember seeing the Turbotrain at Boston South Station just before Penn Central took over the New Haven RR that was in 1969

Jeffrey,maybe move the mike to the side out of shot a bit,very distracting.

Really it wasn’t the trains it was the infrastructure, and it’s the same thing today with the Acela trains. If you took the existing set to France and put it on the same lines one of its French siblings runs it would be much much faster. But because much of the NEC is mixed with freight and because the lines are over a century old. They can’t operate as fast as they are actually designed to.

It was an expensive experment. We do not know if we do not experiment.

Certainly had good ambitions at the time. They could have had luxurious coaches powered by standard locomotives. They couldn’t go faster than 75mph anyway. Still interesting and informative as usual.

Can I buy one in HO scale?

The TurboTrain might've had its fair share of problems, but it can't have been anywhere near as poorly performing as that damned _Empire Builder_ I had a decade ago... 🐌💨🚂🇺🇸😣 Next time I need to go from Chicago to Seattle (A trip our Class 390 Pendolinos could manage in under 12 hours) I'm taking a bicycle. Not only healthier and cheaper than my last Amtrak experience, but will probably work out visibly faster, too... 🏔🚵💨😇