......I suggest you read page 13 of the March-April N Scale Railroading; the half page ad at the bottom......Rapido Trains has a misty picture of a Turbo head on with the words..............."It's Coming"........... Short of having missed the "N" in N Scale Railroading or fearing that Jason has gone that last 1% towards being "nuts"... I'd say 'we all getting an N scale Turbo, in VIA, CN and Amtrak...........just like dem dar HO boys............. Mr. Wallet is not amused...........Mr Puddy is excited..................
Hm, the Turbo Train from the NH. Useless model, but that money will be better spent than on the Con-Cor Comet, I think. Poor wallet......
Not my era or locale, and nothing I need. But, dang, I always liked those trains. Thanks for the heads up, Puddington. Frank
Yep...."That" The Turbotrain is a infamous or famous segment of railway history; depending on if your in the "what a machine - ahead of it's time and misunderstood" camp or the "dang thing never worked" camp..... neither extreme being correct. Debuting in 1968 with CN, the Turbo still holds both the US and Canadian speed records (Acela keeps trying.......not !) It's revolutionary construction and leaning features were born from the Talgo concept but bettered by it makers. It ran the Montreal-Toronto route for CN in under four hours. They ran upwards of 130 mph....track conditions being the limiting factor; not the Turbo. Three sets were sold to Amtrak (I believe NH ran them) and they were exhibited in a cross country tour of the US in 1970 I think. VIA Rail ran them until 1980 here. They suffered from bad publicity in their early days, the first Turbo having a grade crossing accident on it's premier trip with the press aboard... but in reality they had a 97% or better on time record.... They were a maintenance headache, as new technology is want to be; they were not great in extreme cold until retrofitted and they were expensive in an era where passenger travel was crashing... but they are a true marvel to have ridden and see. The Turbo was ahead of it's time; and in 2010 we would still have to say that in North America because we haven't figure out that high speed; track dedicated passenger service between metroplitan centers is the economical; envirnmentally sound and safe alternative to our congested freeways and to producing untold tonnes of harmful emmisions...... That's the Turbo - in a very few words.
Read in the new Rapido newsletter: N Scale Production Production of our second run N scale cars is underway at our factory. These will arrive in the summer. You can read about them here. Many people have asked us if we are doing more cars in N scale. You bet we are! But we don't want to announce any more cars until the second run paint schemes arrive. We are also working on a certain high-speed gas turbine-powered train in N scale which shall remain nameless at present.
There's a nice video accessed through the Rapido newsletter of the HO model speeding along on a pretty cool layout. Worth watching if this model interests you. It's not my era, but I travelled on this train and I will buy the CN version. Excellent newsletter from Rapido by the way. Keith.
Second run paint schemes? They haven't finished the first run. Still no sign of the UP coach and sleeper I've had on order since September 18 2008, clicking on Union Pacific on the car's pages to see if there is any information brings you the message "The requested document was not found on this server." Oh well, I guess there's not much demand for UP.:tb-biggrin:
