M-497 Black Beetle train

[SCEtoAUX]

Sawr a thing about the New York Central M-497 Black Beetle experiment the other day. Basically a Budd Rail Diesel Car-3 with a surplus B-36 jet engine pod mounted on it to get some high speed rail action.

New York Central M-497 Black Beetle

Looks like they would strap a jet engine onto anything back then to get some speed.

[Burning Beard]

Very interesting article.

Beard

[airdave]

Great video.
Scary stuff though.

I wonder why they mounted the engines at the front and not the rear?
When I saw the first photo, thats what I thought I was seeing.

But no, the engines are mounted right at the front of the car.
Then I read that the jet exhaust went over the Diesel air intake and overheated the engines.

I can imagine axle and bearing failures.

Did they seriously think it could ever corner?
Other high speed trains using tilting bogies, banked tracks, and wider turns.
The existing US rail lines would not have been acceptable.

...
But still cool!

[John Bowden]

Can you imagine the noise...........and the expressions on the faces of idiots who would try and beat it at a crossing.

[SCEtoAUX]

The story I saw about it stated that it would have cost billions of USD to upgrade all of the tracks to accommodate the speed. That was in the mid 1960s so it would be significantly more now. Making the curves would have been a bit hair raising.

Yep, bet it was loud. Imagine waiting at a crossing while something like that went screaming by.

[SJPONeill]

In the meantime, there is this: https://vk.com/photo-53733134_357855922

[sgoti]

If you read the whole article (and the plethora of others on this subject), this was ONLY to test high-speed operations on existing track- It was NEVER to be "the solution". The engineers wanted to propel the vehicle to very fast speeds very quickly, and the jet engines were the quickest/simplest means to that end.

The M-497 never had any reverse capabilities, it had to be towed back to the start point after each test. Not something you want to see in anything that's supposed to be the future of transportation.

And also notice that they searched out a long section of straight track for testing- These were engineers after all, I'm sure they maintained no illusions about what would happen should this attempt a non-superelevated (non-banked) curve a jet engine speeds. Can you say full-scale "Addams Family"?

I should point out that there were jet powered trains in regular use- Union Pacific's Gas Turbine Electric Locomotives (GTELs). My personal favorites were the 8500HP "Big Blow" 3-unit versions: RailPictures.Net Photo: UP 24 Union Pacific GTEL at Grand Island, Nebraska by Collection of Chris Zygmunt

[OgdenBob]

I think the Russians tried this idea too, and I have seen a paper model of it somewhere.

Bob

[JohnM]

Originally Posted by OgdenBob

I think the Russians tried this idea too, and I have seen a paper model of it somewhere.

Bob

The link in post #6 will lead you to that model Bob.

[OgdenBob]

Originally Posted by JohnM

The link in post #6 will lead you to that model Bob.

Thanks Johnny! That's the one I saw.

Bob