12 Most Amazing Abandoned And Forgotten Trains

trains were built to get groups of people from one destination to the other and so we expect to see them full of life hustle and bustle that's why we're always a little sad when one gets abandoned forgotten or left behind but such is the way of the world when a new train is created an old one becomes obsolete and then becomes a strange thing gathering dust and rust somewhere in the world like all the trains you're about to see in this video we usually associate the name General Motors with car manufacturing but the company has turned its hand to other kinds of vehicles in the past one such example was the GM Aero train a concept train made during the 1950's that could have become the Train of the future GM had an electro-motive division back then and the divisions main customers were train companies given that they were already building the engines GM decided to see if they could cut the middleman out of the deal and just build the whole train themselves using aluminum bus bodies they already had laying around according to the early promotional materials that were released regarding these new trains they would be lightweight cheap to build and capable of sustaining a top speed of 100 miles per hour back then that kind of speed was a big deal in practice though they didn't work out GM put two of the trains into service in 1956 and quickly discovered they struggled to get up hills and the lack of suspension rattled the passengers around way too much the units were handed back to GM after less than a year on the rails and both are now museum exhibits France spent many years in pursuit of making Aero train of its own but they really meant for their futuristic mode of transport to be a narrow train they wanted to replace their existing rail network with a series of so-called trains without wheels which would run on a cushion of air above the ground they were almost successful engineer Jean Burton spent most of the 1960s and 1970s trying to make a hover train that would be both reliable and economical enough to replace the work of regular trains this wasn't an easy task trains of that kind though technically possible require a reinforced-concrete track to run over so the cost of the track has to be factored in alongside the cost of the vehicle the closest he got to a passenger model was the Aero train s 44 which was supposed to be capable of speeds up to 120 miles per hour and would have acted as a connection between major cities and airports sadly it had serious issues with overheating and so wasn't viable the prototype was badly damaged by a fire in 1991 the s 44 was a large Jean Burton prototype but the talented designer also worked with other shapes and sizes one such example would be the tridem which was little more than a high speed floating cabin that hovered over the rails it wouldn't have been able to carry many passengers but at only 15 feet long the idea was that it would be extremely maneuverable and therefore perfect for small railways and inner city transportation unusually for its era it was fully powered by electricity Burton designed the cabins to be connectable meaning that a larger tridem could be built if the occasion called for it as with all of the French Aero train designs of the time it ran into difficulties once a prototype was built the maximum speed that the vehicle attained was a mere 37 miles per hour which meant it wasn't suitable for the purpose Burton had to go back to the drawing board yet again and the prototype of the vehicle is now the property of a heritage charity based in Paris let's look at one more of Burton's creations before we move on the Aero train i8 ehv by the time Burton came to make this variant on his air cushion theme he was determined to build something capable of both speed and power in real terms this was a reworking of his earlier eye 8250 Aero train but had been modified to reach and sustain greater acceleration in March 1974 Burton had his prototype taken to a specially assembled tract and launched it into life the results were astonishing it hit a top speed of 267 miles per hour and in the process broke the world record for any vehicle running on Rails finally Burton seemed to have a perfect machine but then the French government discontinued the Aero train project and decided to push ahead with the TGV instead the Aero train IAD hv was taken to Cheveley stripped of all its valuable parts and then put into storage it was later almost completely destroyed by fire in 1992 it wasn't just the French who were trying to come up with a commercially viable Aero train during the 1970s the Americans were added to roar industries tried to get in on the action in 1970 when they acquired a grant from the urban mass transit organization of America to come up with a solution to the predicted transport issues of the future namely that more people would depend on public transport and that the public transport would need to be faster than it was at the time the solutions they came up with was the urban tract air-cushion vehicle which ran on a linear motor and had a maximum capacity of 60 passengers the 20 ton trains demonstrated a top speed of 150 miles per hour which was considered a good result despite these encouraging signs the urban mass transit organization of America decided to withdraw funding from the project and look elsewhere for a solution instead unable to press ahead without that funding Rohr reluctantly gave up on their train it's now housed at the Pueblo Railway Museum [Music] not to be left out the British were also trying to crack the hovering train conundrum in the late 1960s and late 1970s too in true British engineering style though the resulting prototype looks more like a ship than it does a train it also has a charmingly British name they called it - the RTV 31 tracked hovercraft we should give the British their dues here they invented the hovercraft so all they were trying to do was make their invention work on Rails the fact that it's now a rusty spectacle at a largely unknown railway museum in Peterborough tells you that they failed the inventors of the tracked hovercraft hoped for speeds of 300 miles per hour which would have made London accessible from Scotland in only 90 minutes unfortunately a huge planning mistake was made the 5,000,000 pound test track for the prototype had been built on marshland and it's sank the government furious at the wasted money and incompetence of the error withdrew funding from the project in 1973 it's been in Peterborough since 1996 and isn't ever likely to move again we've already mentioned that Shaun Burton's dream of air-cushioned trains and France were crushed by the French government's decision to use TGV instead TGV trains are still setting the transport standard in France today but it hasn't been plain sailing in fact the prototype vehicle TGV 0:01 was completely abandoned meaning the project was almost doomed from the start commissioned in 1969 the prototype took to the rails in 1972 using a revolutionary gas and electric hybrid engine which was intended to push it to almost 200 miles per hour it was an articulated train which meant that maintaining stability at high speeds was no longer an issue despite its apparent successes which included demonstrating a top speed of 198 miles per hour it never saw commercial use an oil crisis in 1973 increased the cost of the tests and so the French simply stopped using TGV 0:01 and moved on to an all-electric model the prototype is now on public display near B shame it's clear from the examples we've looked at so far that the common final destination for discarded trains is either a museum or the scrap yard that isn't the case every time though when a train reached the end of its useful life in China a group of students from the art school of Chang Zhu completely refurbished it into an innovative student dorm building the completed project includes kitchens bathrooms solar heating and bunk beds for students to sleep in it looks a little bit cramped but there's no denying that it's a creative and adventurous project up to 300 people can live in the old train and the idea of doing so is gradually catching on with the students so far 85 people are living inside it and that number includes teachers as well as students the low rent might be a great motivator for more people to move in it's only 86 dollars per month to live in a four-person carriage if you don't mind sharing as part of a carriage of eight that drops to $55 per month to the untrained eye wind / trolley graveyard in Pennsylvania USA is just a collection of old rotting trolleys - those who know about the project though it's a means of preserving historic old vehicles which would otherwise have been destined for the scrap yard the trolley graveyard project all started with a man named Edie metka who fell in love with the trolleys as a child when he rode them through Chicago after his retirement he bought 14 of the decommissioned trolleys and had them moved to their current location metka unfortunately hasn't been able to pay for maintenance all the trolleys and that's why nature is beginning to push through some of them tree branches have penetrated some of the windows and weeds grow all around them he hopes to find a buyer for his collection one who will be able to restore the trolleys to their former glory he even hopes that with a little love and attention they might be able to ride on the males of an inner-city transport system somewhere in America once again when the channel tunnel between France and Great Britain was opened in 1994 it represented an incredible engineering feat trains between the European nations ran in tunnels below the seabed between the countries reaching speeds of 200 miles per hour the Train tasked with performing these duties were known as Euro stars during the mid-1990s they were the ultimate in luxury but time has moved on since then and some of the early models have now been replaced this old Eurostar which is train 3 7 3 0 1 8 is now permanently stationed near valence n on the French side of the tunnel nobody's quite sure why it's there all the old trains were supposed to be headed for storage with nobody to protect it it's become a target for vandals and so it's now covered with graffiti it's become a home for dozens of birds though so it's not completely useless perhaps becoming both a living canvas and a bird house is a better use of the old train than just sitting in a warehouse somewhere we just called the Eurostar trains luxurious but normally when people talk about luxury and train travel they're thinking of the Orient Express only the most well-heeled members of society were ever able to buy a ticket for the famous train which was as much about showing off your status as it was about making the journey because of that you'd probably imagine that old Orient Express trains are well preserved museum pieces but not all of them are one of them is slowly falling to pieces in Belgium this is an old type 620 train it never even had the chance to run on the original Orient Express route between Istanbul and Paris but it's the exact same model of train as the ones which did allegedly it was brought to Belgium to become the star of a railway museum but the museum was never built and the train has simply become forgotten despite that it's remarkably free of vandalism the exterior of the train is battered in weathered but internally you can still get a sense of the opulence which once existed here earlier on we looked at the abandoned American hover train which is permanently based in Pueblo Colorado now we're going back for another look because it isn't the only forgotten Aero train which you'll find parked there it has a companion in the form of the groom and tracked levitation research vehicle which was yet another designers attempt to bring about the air-cushioned Transport Revolution of the future like most hovering trains it was touted as being capable of reaching 300 miles per hour by squeezing compressed air through tubes that ran along the body of the Train it ran into the same problems as the roar Aero train including the confusing fact that the test track was far too short for the expected top speed to be achieved that's a very basic design error which someone hopefully got fired for when the urban mass transportation administration defunded the Roar experiment they also defunded the test track which the Gruman train relied upon for development that meant curtains for the project and a lifetime of being left standing side by side with its failed cousin subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and you will be the first to know when a new video comes out thank you for watching and see you soon

Channel: Amazing Stock

Views: 204,050

Rating: 4.7711444 out of 5

Keywords: Most Amazing Abandoned And Forgotten Trains, abandoned trains, abandoned vehicles, abandoned, incredible abandoned, trains, amazing trains, fast trains, fastest, abandoned technology, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: LM9Y5eriAuw

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019