Have you ever seen a Fishbowl running on railroad tracks?

[pipopak]

http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?10980
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show/?10981
http://www.davesrailpix.com/pw/htm/pw126.htm

[Busted Knuckle]

I just have to say until now, no I've never seen one running on railroad tracks before!
  BK 

[Iceni John]

Better a bus on tracks than a locomotive on the road:  http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/18/t1595090-russian-road-train-self-propelled-power-station/
Imagine meeting that on the road.

John

[wg4t50]

Have to confess, the only bus I ever saw on the RR tracks was being pushed sideways by a locomotive, bad accident. but the bus was tuffer than I would have guessed.
Dave

[CrabbyMilton]

That's differrent alright! The driver doesn't ahve to worry about steering but I'm sure instinct kicks in at times. Must have been some experimental program to generate some publicity. I could see something like this as a railroad employee transport vehicle as I think I have seen pictures of skoolies being used for that.

[Jeremy]

I sell a lot of railway magazines and have seen similar concepts to this several times - it makes a lot of sense as a cheap way of building a light transit system for lines that don't have enough traffic to justify a regular service.

It also reminded me of the GM Aerotrain - a commercial and engineering flop, but notable for using GM coach bodies for the carriages (at least, I read that once - whether it's actually true I don't know):




Jeremy

[seaton@mta]

Also in Connecticut, the New Haven Railroad once had a fleet of Mack bus bodies converted to rail cars from new.  They were strictly rail, however and did not have the ability to leave the rails and hit the road as the fishbowls did.

-- Seaton

[lvmci]

Yes Jeremy, the cars were indeed made from the GM bus models, the aero train pictured looks like the City of Las Vegas, that ran in the late 50's, they were fuel efficient but rough riding, the designer is still alive and living in So. Cal, lvmci...

[Oonrahnjay]

Yes Jeremy, the cars were indeed made from the GM bus models, the aero train pictured looks like the City of Las Vegas, that ran in the late 50's, they were fuel efficient but rough riding, the designer is still alive and living in So. Cal, lvmci... 

     I was looking at the aero train as well as could be seen on the photo and -- although I'm no expert on trains or N American-made buses -- I couldn't see any resemblance between the car and bus bodies.  What am I missing?   Thanks,  BH

[Jeremy]

Ok, here's a better photo of the carriages - sorry it's such a large photo, but as you would expect 99% of the images available are focused on the locomotive.

The carriages do look bus-ish. And what's with the weird 4-2-0 wheel configuration that this thing has? Never seen that before. Tiny carriage wheels too, without bogies - even weirder.





Jeremy

[lvmci]

Hi All, the Aero train cars, not the locomotive (which was also unusual), was an extended and widened in every direction bus body (is this where we got raising the roof, widening the body?) As far as I'm aware, these and other experiments with non standard locomotives and passenger cars were to accomidate  lower passenger counts with savings on fuel and maintainence and construction if it was successful. Lvmci...

[Oonrahnjay]

Hi All, the Aero train cars, not the locomotive (which was also unusual), was an extended and widened in every direction bus body  (snip)

     Oh, yeah, that info - along with Jeremy's photos - makes things a lot more apparent.  The siding and the "slanted oval" windows on the train cars appear very buslike.  Thanks for that.  BH

[Len Silva]

I worked for a while with a guy who converted an Eagle to run on railroad tracks.  The hardware is readily available, used on service equipment.

This was converted to crew quarters and workshop space for maintenance workers and shipped to South America (don't remember where).