New York Central's passenger train experiment of the 1950s. I think it went to the shortline Pickens RR, but lost track. When and where was it scrapped?

http://abpr2.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?july03/07-16-03/12-025x.jpg
ryarger@rypn.org

> New York Central's passenger train
> experiment of the 1950s. I think it went to
> the shortline Pickens RR, but lost track.
> When and where was it scrapped?

Bob, I think it got cut up in a scrap yard on the Greenville & Northern, at the appropriately name town of "Traveler's Rest."

Wrinnbo@aol.com

There is a recent book, with a title something like "The 'X` Trains," that contains the history of the Xplorer, the Aerotrain, TALGO, and related designs. The book is poorly edited, but most of the material is there somewhere. I don't think it gives the exact scrapping date of the Xplorer, but I can recall the photo that appeared in Trains Magazine around 1969 of the train stuffed down a siding on the Pickens Railroad, and that the chopped-and-channeled Sharknose and train was cut up some time thereafter.

The book says that the train received a little attention in the mid-1960's, when the designers of the United Aircraft Turbotrain looked it over while reviving its steered-axle design. The UA turbotrain was really an Xplorer with a different power unit. On the Xplorer, the prime mover was attached to the hydraulic-drive truck, like on a toy train or a McKeen car. Kind of a shame this didn't survive for foamers to tinker with.

Both the "X Trains" book and the new "Pere Marquette Passenger Car Pictorial" show pictures of a Train X test coach behind a shrouded C&O caboose at Wyoming, Michigan, in 1952. Some of these photos show derelict PM 1200's in the background.

- Aarne Frobom