My girlfriend and I were taking a Christmas train ride and I was surprised to see when pulling into New Haven a Amtrak turboliner. In fact you can see it on Google Earth 41.328889,-72.893983 I thought they were all cut up.

Interesting. There appears to be an FL9 (or New Haven painted F-unit) a few tracks over too.

It's probably the 3rd of the most recent rebuilt trains, still with the plastic covers over the seats. It never saw revenue service after the rebuilding. Older posts mention that the 3 that Super Steel did rebuild were moved by Amtrak to Bear, Delaware. Then this one was towed to New Jersey and then to New England, possibly to be used as a training place for police.

Links are awesome.

https://earth.google.com/web/search/41. ... _qT2H1iFbA

Wonder if something like an fl9 or f40ph could power and haul one of these train sets? May not look good but for non railfan trips I doubt the riding public will care and will be thankful for the modern accommodations.

I doubt it, the whole point of these trains were that the turbos made them fast to accelerate, which made for a cheepo HSR set. NY, after having them rebuilt for $$$, didn't want to pay for the trackwork on CSX nor for the extra fuel use of the turbos, that is why they never went into service. They were popular with passengers though, and the crews liked them.
I once spoke to an ICG engineer from when Amtrak operated them in Illinois and he loved how fast they got up to track speed between stops. But he wasn't paying for the kerosene.

Yes but I'm talking about in a museum or tourist railroad setting. I'm willing to bet it's the right strings were pulled an organization could get one for next to nothing.

Right, but I wonder if being newly rebuilt would make up for the challenges of working with these oddballs. Perhaps I am remembering wrong, but as I recall the door mechanisms, brake systems etc are all unique, and the lot must operate as a single train, i.e. no setting out one car for repairs.

I caught a shot of a Turboliner in action north of New York City in 1990.

Reading between the lines, I got the impression Amtrak had the same 'priority' with the remaining Turboliners that it had with some of the AEM-7s, regarding potential liability. I believe they took great pains to ensure that no usable part of some of the AEM-7s might find its way beck to use where the 'chain of control' might indicate Amtrak liability should there be trouble thereafter. The two Turboliners that were disposed of were carefully sold to local agencies to be used as 'practice' for terrorist response, which I presumed would involve being set on fire or intentionally "wrecked", then scrapped without salvaging any components afterward.

I did not see any 'sale' of that one other complete Super Steel rebuilt "Turboliner III" at Bear, and was kinda holding out against hope that this one train would be properly preserved.

They were sold I can't recall they got a couple hundred thousand for them.

Sadly for the folks that seem desperate to save this, I cannot think of a single coherent rationalization for ANY museum or tourist line administration to want or accept this trainset "as is" in 2021, even if it showed up for free with clear title outside the gate. And I'm going as outright insane as trying to dream up a first-class charter train for the likes of the old American Orient Express or a "Royal Train."

It's an unfinished, aborted rebuild of a rebuild of imported, semi-failed technology whose time has come and gone. They were fuel hogs. Even the French abandoned gas turbine train technology, even at the cost of longer train schedules on the route they ran when they switched to conventional diesel trains. One T2000 was preserved in France's National Railway Museum. That's enough.

Chicago-Milwaukee has the unrebuilt units, not this thing. New York used the rebuilds, but as this survivor of a botched rebuild program stands now, it's emblematic of a state "boondoggle." New York State bureaucrats may willingly pay you NOT to "stuff and mount" this thing as it sits now!

"It's so cool" only gets you so far in museum preservation.

One set clearly belongs in a museum somewhere. Forget about operating. As Amtrak approaches it's 50th birthday next year, we have lost an incredible amount of it's history due to a combination of restrictions on Amtrak's ability to donate equipment, and/or a lack of interest or funding on the part of museums to acquire historic pieces like this. A set of these should be resting next to a set of United Aircraft Turbos in a museum somewhere, but that is never going to happen now.

BTW, does anyone know if there is a complete history of Amtrak being written by an author of note to be published for the 50th Anniversary?

Well they could run off of third rail so a museum with trolley power should be able to run one. My main question is can it be hauled with traditional power? Does it have the standared conections and couplings and could you cut in and out cars like a standard train? If it is all standard just use a few of the coaches on your regular train for first class service.

It's not so "clear," or we wouldn't keep rehashing this "gedanken experiment" repeatedly.
There are arguments for saving one (mostly the "save one of everything" and "wow factor" ones) and arguments against (foreign, mixed success, incompatibility, etc.).



None has been publicly announced, to my knowledge. I'm positive Kalmbach will issue another of their "special issues" in April, but as for books...........

One problem with the concept of a "true history" (rather than the typical "railfan history") is that Amtrak has perpetually been in a crisis mode, and as this current pandemic crisis seems set to snowball well into 2021, it's akin to attempting to write a history of World War Two just after the storming or Normandy Beach... or like nailing Jell-O to the wall...........