The Improbable Story of the 184 MPH Jet Train

MatthewVD writes Almost half a century ago, New York Central Railroad engineer Don Wetzel and his team bolted two J47-19 jet engines, throttled up the engines and tore down a length of track from Butler, Indiana to Stryker, Ohio at almost 184 mph. Today, the M-497 still holds the record for America's fastest train. This is the story of how it happened.

Comments

Railroads killed by the government...

[mi]

Yes, I know, I know. The crazy Libertarian talk. But that is, what happened — a combination of government regulating the cost of tickets, while imposing heavy taxes and building highways, where automobiles — both passenger and goods-carrying — could travel for less and less.

And then Amtrak took over all passenger rail-travel, and has never shown a profit since — losing money on the most idiotic things — while, demanding the passengers "carry identification at all times"...

Re:Railroads killed by the government...

[serviscope_minor]

And then Amtrak took over all passenger rail-travel, and has never shown a profit since

Neither has the interstate system. And AMTRACK has to compete with that *massively* subsized road system.

Re:Railroads killed by the government...

[squiggleslash]

I think pretty much everyone accepts the government killed passenger rail. It's not just what you mention, but also state support for suburbanization and the running down of Urban areas, including effective bans on Urban redevelopment (well meant but poorly thought out "parking mandates" effectively made it prohibitively expensive to redevelop land in cities), leading to the flight out of cities to areas where car ownership was mandatory.

As far as Amtrak losing money on food service, despite it becoming a right-wing meme that this true, it's dubious at best. Amtrak doesn't charge enough for food to cover the costs of providing it, but that's normal, both commercial services - even pre-1950s when most passenger services were profitable - and government provided services generally don't expect to make their money from charges for food.

What makes food service profitable is that passengers ride the train that otherwise wouldn't. Tell Amtrak to discontinue food service, and it would destroy ridership on their already poorly performing long distance services. The subsidy needed to continue operating them would skyrocket, and would be immensely high per-passenger.

This wouldn't even be an argument but for some stupid politics in the 1980s, where Congress started to micromanage the service and decided, despite the fact no commercial railroad would dream of doing such a thing, to demand Amtrak make food service "pay" for itself out of food service charges, rather than be paid for in part through ticket revenue.

So why is Amtrak unprofitable?

Amtrak's actually pretty profitable in one area, the NEC, which is where they control their tracks and were able to build a redundant (that is, a train covering stops already covered by other trains) service that people actually wanted to use, and charge commercial rates for it.

The big problem is outside of that area, it has much less flexibility. It runs very slow (average 40mph) trains that are slow because they stop every 20-30 minutes. Why do they stop every 20-30 minutes?

Want to know? Specifically, why does the SIlver Star stop in both Orlando and Winter Park which are both part of the same metro area?

Answer: because Orlando gives them Corrine Brown's vote when funding comes up in Congress, and Winter Park gets them a (semi-reluctant, he's having to avoid attacks of being a RINO from a strong Tea Party movement) John Mica's vote. And likewise there's a train in, I don't know, the North West that stops every twenty minutes to get votes there too. And each vote crosses over. The votes in the North West are for both the Empire Builder and the Silver Star, you can't vote for one without the other. Brown and Mica's votes are, again, for the Silver Star and the Empire Builder.

Ludicrous? Yes. But we don't have a Congress based upon people deciding the "right" thing to do for the country, we have one based upon people deciding the popular thing for their constituents.

Given enough capital funding, Amtrak could probably do to the rest of the country what it's done to the North East, but it'll never get that funding, because what it needs to do is something that'd involve dropping stops, and thus dropping supporters. The good news is that private railroads are finally taking an interest, and there are projects in both Florida and Texas right now - active, in the process of getting regulatory approval, by companies who own or will own the tracks - to start building what people want to use, not what Congress makes possible.

I'm not blaming Amtrak for this state of affairs. I'm blaming Congress, and by extension, us voters.

Re:Railroads killed by the government...

[pupsocket]

The long-distance railroads in the U.S. were built by giving away land stolen from other peoples. Not just land to build the lines on, but a checkerboard of land for miles on both sides of the track, land that the railroads could sell to recoup their capital.

Many of these railroads were later bought out by John D. Rockefeller so that he could kill his competitors in the oil business by making it unprofitable for anyone else to transport petroleum.

Subsidy and monopoly are the parents of American railroads. Only businesses benefit. Humans can take the highway.

Re:Railroads killed by the government...

[Virtucon]

You know it amazes me to still here this from folks. I'll let you in on a little secret. The reason Amtrak was formed was because the Penn Central was bleeding money and they had the Northeast Corridor (NEC). Since a lot of Congressmen and Senators actually rode the train into DC this could be a problem if the Penn curtailed or discontinued service. Of course it couldn't because it had a long standing agreements with the government to provide passenger service. As a matter of fact all of the huge land tracks that were granted to railroads in this country included little hooks for passenger rail service. Sure, the railroads from post WWII were losing money on passenger service because people were buying cars and the feds were sponsoring airports and the national highway system. But instead of letting the railroads drop unprofitable lines, the government pushed them to continue their agreements. The government regulated Railroads and some thing airlines are the most regulated, think again. The CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) covering Railroads is extensive and still in force even in a deregulation climate. Some of the passenger services became shadows such as running an RCD (Rail Car Diesel) as a train for example instead of a multi-car train. The point is the government has been involved in Railroads in this country for a very long time. Republican or Democratic administrations, it doesn't matter hell the PRR received a $77m loan for electrification from the new deal which was a chunk of change back then. For comparison the Hoover dam only cost $46m during the same era.

So in the late 60s the Penn Central now with more absorbed Railroads consolidated and more miles of track and debt tied on started losing money, so much so that it filed for bankruptcy in 1970. This sent a shock wave up and down the east coast. Backroom deals were being hashed because a Federal Bankruptcy judge would allow the Penn Central to abandon less profitable passenger service, even if they had contracts and deals to provide it. What would the east coast people do and more importantly how would the Senators and Congressman who'd become accustomed to getting to / from DC quickly do? So a backroom deal was done and Amtrak was created but when other Railroads heard about the deal they said "hey, no fair" and lobbied their Congressmen and Senators and that's why boys and girls all interstate passenger rail service went to Amtrak as part of the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 Of course the NEC was untouched but most of the country lost passenger service. At that point the Feds were 100% in the Railroad business and because it was set up as a for profit corporation under the DOT that meant that nobody in Amtrak could ever do anything like drop or add routes without bureaucrats or congressional approval. That's not a company, that's a federal service and more importantly Amtrak is the Federal Governments toy railroad with special earmarks having been placed in front if it all along the way to add or improve service. That's all politics and Amtrak could be viable if it was allowed to drop everything but the NEC but that's not going to happen and really, think about this: Amtrak's total budget request for 2014 was $2.6 billion. Considering how much money we put into horseshit in this country that's not a lot of money but if you want Amtrak to be a independent corporation, which it isn't, it has to have an independent board who aren't appointed by the DOT and it has to be given enough funding to stretch into profitability and also, regrettably it needs to abandon routes that don't make financial sense.

Re:Railroads killed by the government...

[ColdWetDog]

a pretty good case of 'user pays'.

More than 99% of road wear is caused by heavy trucks. Once again, humans subsidize businesses.

OK, I'll bite. If you don't want humans to subsidize business, who are you suggesting? Cats? Aliens?

Re:Railroads killed by the government...

[Idarubicin]

Most of the Interstate is supported by fuel taxes. Fuel taxes are paid for by drivers. Who use the Interstate. So, I'd say that it's a pretty good case of 'user pays'.

Used to be more true, not so much today. The Highway Trust Fund - which is funded by a combination of federal fuel and vehicle taxes - has been bailed out before ($35 billion between 2008 and 2010) and is out of money again this year. And the federal government has turned over responsibility for the interstate highways to the individual states, so a big chunk of the construction, maintenance, and repair bills actually comes from the states.

Looking at 2010 numbers, total spending nationwide on highways was about $155 billion. The federal gas tax brought in $28 billion; state and local fuel taxes amounted to another $37 billion; plus state and local governments picked up another $12 billion from tolls and non-fuel taxes. All in all, that's about $77 billion in revenue for $155 billion in expenditures. Drivers are paying about...51% of the cost of the highway network.

For comparison, I note a comment below that shows in fiscal 2012 Amtrak spent $4.036 billion and had revenues of $2.877 billion. In other words, Amtrak riders paid 71% of their costs out of pocket--a much bigger share of the costs than highway users.

Re:A Century Ago

[Charliemopps]

Keep in mind, the majority of the negatives you're attributing to malice weren't even a concern to the majority of scientists at the time.

Re:A Century Ago

[Irate Engineer]

This. Fast trains are not rocket science...unless you live in the US of A. Here it is a Jetson's fantasy future world to have trains that can get you from point A to B faster than a car.

In the rest of the world, meh, not so much. Been there, done that.

Hate to break it you America, but our shit does stink. We're headed toward 3rd world status, all for the want of motivation.

I'll get modded to negative infinity pretty soon by the folks who can't face the truth, but America needs to get off its ass and get moving on a really basic level.

And?

[ledow]

So in 1966 it took two jet engines to reach 184mph.

Whereas in 1938 it took only a quite ordinary, in-service steam train to get to 125mph.

Does anyone think that, by comparison, the jet-engine thing isn't really that impressive?

Re:And?

[Belial6]

That's how I feel about my 2012 Prius getting 42 MPG while my 1992 Geo Metro got 52 MPG.

Re:And?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, dear. _Energy_ is half the mass times the velocity squared. I'm afraid that's directly tied to the amount of fuel needed, not counting losses, to achieve that speed without friction. It's not really tied to the capabilities of the engines involved.

The difficulty is the necessary _thrust_, or force, needed to overcome resistance and _accumulate_ that much energy, and that much momentum, in the train itself. Even a well designed train will have considerable friction losses, at those speeds, in its own wheels and bearings. And the air resistance of a not-well-streamlined object can go up as the cube or more of the velocity, as turbulence forms and makes the resistive losses even worse.

Re:And?

[jonbryce]

The Eurostar between London and Paris / Brussels does 300km/h (186 mph), and that is a normal scheduled service. It isn't even the fastest scheduled service in France.

Re:And?

[Crashmarik]

Hey Jimmy*, drag is proportional to the square of velocity *because* of air resistance. Thought you might like to know, but knowledge doesn't seem to be your happy place.

You don't know what you're talking about AC, so please shut the hell up and let the more knowledgeable adults talk, m'kay?

And before you start getting all snarky, I teach engineering, and I am quite capable of telling you that you don't know your ass from your elbow.

You don't know your ass from your elbow.

So shut up. Now.

*Jimmy is my favorite pet name for dumbshits that don't know basic physics but like to spout off like they do on Slashdot.

Not to beat a dead horse but drag is a force not a unit of power or energy and the amount of power needed to overcome drag is proportional to the cube of velocity not its square. While the force from drag is important in terms of the design of the train and the materials used in it's construction, it's the power requirement that is the determining factor for the engine spec.

Re:And?

[squiggleslash]

Nah. There's a lot of crap spoken about the NYC Jet train thing. One presumption, which has more to do with smarty-pants hindsight, is that it was a prototype for a serious train, that NYC actually planned to run high speed trains like that. But that's not the case.

NYC added jets to some unused rolling stock because it was a _quick_ _cheap_ way to get a train to go fast. They wanted a train to go fast because they were studying how high speed trains would interact with the track. Would it be possible to run them without huge infrastructure upgrade costs?

And lest you think "But track's track right? Surely all they have to do is make it strong enough", there are known problems with running trains at high speed on conventional track without significant engineering. The major one is something called "Hunting", which is an oscillation of the wheel sets between one extreme and the other that generates a kind of feedback loop. With slower trains, it's not a problem, there's not enough energy involved, but as the train reaches higher speeds, the wheelsets oscillate left and right with greater, and greater, violence. Anything over 100mph generally is thought to require a certain amount of attention.

"OK", you say, "But why jets? Why not just regear a normal locomotive and have it carry a couple of cars so it can get to that speed?" The answer to that is that a normal locomotive is heavy. Virtually every vision of high speed rail from sane people (that is, people who don't work for the Federal Railroad Administration) involves trains that are as light weight as practically possible, because heavy = more energy needed to start the train, heavy = more problems stopping the train in an emergency, and heavy = greater damage to tracks. Sticking a Jet, designed for an aircraft, a device known for needing designs where every pound of weight is justified, on a railroad carriage doesn't sound so insane now does it?

Had NYC continued to exist rather than being merged into PR in the horrific Penn Central project, and decided to make a serious go of this, you would have expected the research to lead to a conventional EMU style train, or maybe something like the APT with light weight cars and as light weight as possible electric motive units. No trains with jets. It's an interesting question what the railroad map of the US would have looked like had governments not imposed impractical restrictions on urban redevelopment, had they not overregulated the railroads, and had the Penn Central never happened.

Re:And?

[cdrudge]

It's strange how your Metro is nearly 10MPG higher then it's rated economy, while your Prius is 10MPG lower than it's. Plus I also bet your Metro didn't get anywhere near 52MPG city driving where your Prius is designed for it's best economy due to regenerative braking.

Re:Nice site

[waddgodd]

You realize the J47 is a GE jet? Of course they're going to have a "look what cool stuff has been done with our crap" story or five. It's prolly the only place you can find that story told in a semi-reliable fashion anymore.

Re:A Century Ago

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that the US have a much better freight rail system than Europe. This is main reason that rail travel is slow in the US.

184 mph is the fastest train in America?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

That says something about the state of train travel in the US. That ain't nothing to be proud of: there are trains in Europe and Japan that have been running regular services at higher speeds for a long time.

The death of trains

[mcrbids]

In Europe, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that didn't wreck, with numerous controls and systems to prevent collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and low cost.

In the United States, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that survived wrecks with minimal injuries, with heavy crash cages and crumple zones in order to gracefully survive collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and ridiculous costs.

Making a US train go as fast as an EU train is very difficult to do feasibly, since it weighs at least 4x as much per passenger.

Re:The death of trains

[phantomfive]

FWIW since the US train system is designed for freight, not passengers, speed isn't really a priority.

Re:The death of trains

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, false. European trains have crumple zones, too. They're the areas near the doors, above the axles. You'll generally sit between those areas, not above the axles. This is especially true in high-speed trains where those areas are reserved for luggage etc.

As for "numerous controls", the EU rail safety system (ERTMS) is not exactly a resounding success. Over time, over budget, and as a result many countries still use their national, outdated 60's-era train control systems. Passing red signs happens in about 1E-6 of red signs, which is definitely an issue with todays crowded rail systems. High-speed rail is less susceptible though because it's newly built without level crossings.

Not so impressive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, the Japanese Shinkansen (Bullet Train) started regular commercial service a full two years earlier in 1964. Shinkansen now routinely exceed 200mph, although the first ones (Series 0) ran at 137mph.

For those that have never used the Shinkansen, they are truly awesome. They leave and arrive to the scheduled minute. There is no TSA bullshit, so you can arrive at the station a few minutes before departure. There's loads of leg room. For any journey less than around 3-4 hours there is no point thinking about air travel.

Amusingly, the Shinkansen actually makes Japanese domestic airports more efficient as well. After all, the more crap a traveller has to deal with at the airport, the more likely they are to take the train. Thus, there is no TSA bullshit at Japanese domestic airports and you can arrive 10 minutes before your flight and easily make boarding.

Track-train dynamics

[Animats]

That jet-powered locomotive was neverintended as a useful means of propulsion. It was just to test track-train dynamics at higher speed. Not much was done with the info, since Amtrak wasn't into high speed rail.

The next big advances in high speed rail were Japan's Tokaido line and San Francisco's BART, both around 1970. The original Tokaido trains had conventional wheel arrangements, and required a very good and very high maintenance roadbed. The SF BART system had the first trains with an active suspension, with each car body supported on a triangle of three air bags controlled by electronic controls. This allowed a higher body height at higher speed, allowing more wheel travel and a softer suspension. Also, all wheels were powered, as is normal in transit operations.

The French TGV brought both of those ideas together - high speed plus active suspension with more suspension travel, with all wheels powered. This allowed high speed trains without excessive track wear. (That's a big problem with high speed rail. A French test in 1955 reached 331 km/h, but damaged the track seriously in only one run. There were serious doubts for years whether steel wheel on steel rail could ever go that fast in routine operation.)

As with cars, there's been more than enough power to go fast for decades. Wheel and suspension issues are what limit speed.

Re:Track-train dynamics

[Alioth]

You miss out one innovation - Talgo rolling stock. The company by that name in the Basque country (Spain) developed a lightweight, low CofG articulated train that could efficiently run at high speeds (Talgo is an anacronym - Tren Articulado Ligero Goicoechea Oriol - Lightweight Articulated Train by Golcechea Oriol). The current Talgo designed high speed units run up to 320km/h (just over 190 mph) and have an entirely passive tilting mechanism. The wheelsets are connected via the roof of each vehicle so the car will naturally lean into a corner without requiring the complex electronic controls that dogged the British APT experiment (incidentally the APT technology ended up being sold to the Italians who now use it in the Pendolino trains)

Re:A Century Ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans laugh when Americans think 100 years is a long time.

Americans laugh when Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance.

Any trip in America much longer than one tank of gas you're most likely better off flying, because if you're going that far you're probably going a LONG ways, and jets are faster than any train will ever be. America, unlike Europe, simple lacks a sufficient number of destinations beyond casual driving distance but close enough for trains to still beat planes because they don't have multi-hour turnarounds at every destination (i.e. ~100 - 400mi range, ballpark). And unless you take the train into a city center, congratulations, you have no way to cover the last few miles once you get off the train, whereas if you drive, the car's wonderful "goes exactly where you want" property comes into effect.

Re:A Century Ago

[Sique]

Jets might be faster for the actual distance, but considering the whole time of travel, they aren't really faster. Boarding a train takes 5 mins. boarding a plane with all the security checks takes 1 hour. In this 55 mins, a bullet train of 150 mph goes 100 miles (and that's including acceleration). And then you have to go to the airport, while the train station is downtown, this takes another 1 hrs to get there, and 1 hrs to go from the airport downtown at your destination. In this time, the train has covered another 200 miles. Yes, the plane may take for the 400 mls flight only 1 hour, but the whole trip takes you 4 hrs, and in this time, the train makes it also to the destination.

Maintenance for all trains is high

[justthinkit]

Railways have the highest fixed costs of any transportation system. 25%, I was told 30 years ago when I worked on one.

High fixed, low variable cost. So adding one freight car = dirt cheap. Going one mph faster on a curve = very expensive, due to increased wear on rails, road bed, etc.

There is also the not small problem of grade. Trains dislike hills, with a grade over 1% being excessive to them. Cars routinely handle ten times this.

Grades dictate routes. The only way around this is tunnels & bridges. Either way, cost per mile for a track is much higher than for a road. With costs born by one company, rather than all of us.

It is a fundamental problem, that leads to the division of bulk (slow) hauling = railways, people & fast hauling = trucks/cars.

Re:A Century Ago

[stomv]

That, and the insistence of running freight, commuter rail, and long distance passenger rail on the same set of tracks.

Re:A Century Ago

[captbob2002]

That's a nice story you have there. The reality is a little more complex than an attractive conspiracy theory. http://www.citylab.com/commute...

Re:A Century Ago

[Talderas]

I had a flight from my local airport to Dallas/FtWorth which is about 750 miles. My boarding time was 8:46am with the flight taking off at 9:11am, scheduled.

It takes 30 minutes for me to drive to the airport, though I live on the opposite side of the city from where it's located. I arrived at the airport at 8:43am. Printed my boarding passes off, there, at 8:45am. I was in and through the TSA checkpoint by 8:49am. I was on the plane by 8:53am (10 minutes to board my plane). We were in the air by 9:07am for what I think was a 2 hour 20 minute flight. I got my rental car and drove to where I needed to go in Ft Worth, which was about another 30 minutes. Total time spent was about 3hrs and 40 minutes. This is a 750 mile distance.

In my time spent flying the time I've spent in a TSA line has been as low as 2 minutes and as high as 20 minutes.