What Happened To America's 183 MPH Jet Train?

From Forgotten Machines · 00:19:16

Show by Forgotten Machines

The M-497 jet train still holds the American speed mark for a train on an existing main line. On Saturday, July 23, 1966, the New York Central ran a thirteen-year-old Budd commuter car, with two surplus bomber jet engines on its roof, east from Butler, Indiana. Near Bryan, Ohio, the railroad's timing recorded 183.85 miles per hour. This is how it was built in a few weeks, how the runs went, and what the railroad wanted to learn.Narrated with an AI voice. Written with AI help from the sources below, fact-checked by the channel's editor, and approved before publishing.How this was madeResearch and script. Written with the help of an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) from the sources below. Each factual claim is checked against those sources, and against a second source where one exists, in two separate AI fact-check passes and then by the channel's editor. Where sources disagree, the narration says so and gives each side.Narration. A synthetic voice from ElevenLabs' built-in voice set. It does not imitate anyone in the story.This episode is the full narration of the video of the same story. The video, with the archival photographs and their credits, is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wBg2kAh4JsM. The show art is a 3D illustration of M-497 made for the channel, given an aged-photo look. It is not a photograph.Final checks. The audio is machine-transcribed against the script with AI tools.Corrections. If you find an error, please comment with a source on the YouTube video. Corrections are listed in its pinned comment.Chapters0:00 Butler, Indiana, Saturday2:02 Thirty days earlier, Collinwood5:31 Bolted rail and hot radiators8:39 Milepost 347, near Bryan12:14 Why a railroad bought two jet engines14:53 Sunday, and Tuesday in Manhattan17:21 What happened to M-497Where sources disagree: the full list of points where accounts differ (the speed figure, the cost, the deadline, who had the idea, where the car was restored) is in the YouTube description and pinned comment.Sources (the full list of 20 is on the YouTube video)Otto M. Vondrak, "M-497: Built for Speed," Railfan & Railroad, July 2016, posted online November 27, 2019. railfan.com/?p=2917Ed Pershey, "Jet Train," Invention & Technology, Fall 1999 (Vol. 15, Issue 2). inventionandtech.com/node/86017Old Machine Press, "New York Central M-497 Black Beetle," April 29, 2015. oldmachinepress.comNew York Central System Historical Society Archival Collection, negative NG516340, "RDC-3 #M-497 at Collinwood, Cleveland, OH," July 24, 1966. nycshs.omeka.net/items/show/91645Adam Burns, "M-497," American-Rails.com, revised September 11, 2024. american-rails.com/m-497.htmlHank Morris with Don Wetzel, The Flight of the M-497 (2007).The Autopian, "Six Decades Ago The Fastest Train In America Was A 183 MPH Diesel Locomotive With Two Jet Engines Strapped To Its Roof." theautopian.com

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