America's Failed High Speed Train - Budd Metroliner

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In this long-form video, we take a look at a train that has long held my fascination, both for a mixture of what it got right and what it got wrong, the Budd Metroliner being a seldom remembered part of America's railroading history, but was in fact a catalogue of missed opportunities, though even in the midst of its overall failure, this train would form the basis of one of Amtrak's main pieces of rolling stock, and still lives on to this day in other forms.

During the 1960s, the railways of the world were taken by surprise when Japan delivered the first dedicated high speed service between Tokyo and Osaka, a viable means of transporting passengers between major urban centres that could combat both domestic airlines and motorways alike, thus leading to a slew of facsimiles being adopted, ranging from major successes like the TGV of France, to significant failures like the APT of Great Britain.

However, a seldom remembered failure of this high speed trend during the 1960s was the Budd Metroliner, which was at one time America's fastest passenger train that had the potential to reach 160mph, and under tests proved it could obtain this goal, while at the same time providing a superb bodyshell with comfort and quality that even led to its own derivative range of coaching stock.

Sadly, the Budd Metroliner was very much a flawed idea from its conception, the main problems being a lack of infrastructure upgrades, a deficit in technological prowess and knowledge within the railway builders of the country, no dedicated high speed lines with which to avoid slow moving freight trains or commuter services, an exceptionally strict timescale set by Congress, and a general ambivalence towards the notion of high speed trains by the various governments that oversaw its creation, reflected in that the Budd Metroliner project received only a fraction of the funds and technical input necessary to deliver when compared to military projects being delivered to fight the concurrent Vietnam War.

Chapters:

0:00 - Preamble
1:40 - The Birth of High Speed Trains
4:14 - Creating the Project
7:48 - The Compromises Begin
10:33 - Underfunded and Short on Time
14:38 - Demonstrators, not Prototypes
18:03 - Into Troubled Testing
22:23 - The Project Stops, Then Starts Again
25:45 - Finally Into Service
28:22 - Problems and Problems
30:15 - Amtrak Arrives
33:40 - Replacing Brand New Trains
36:30 - The End of the Budd Metroliner
38:25 - Further Derivatives
41:07 - A Failure Decades in the Making
46:19 - A Low Priority Project
51:00 - Conclusion

I would like to give a special thanks to those who have very kindly allowed me permission to use their footage, which can be found at the following links:

- Don Oltmann:    • DO 010 Metroliner 3 28 1975  
- 1990s Railfan:    • Metro North SPV-2000s. Garrison, NY. ...  
- Railroad Media Archive:    • Princeton Jct New Jersey Late 70s (Re...  
- Railroad Media Archive:    • PRR New York Penn Station to South El...  
- Hunter Lohse:    • The Northeast Corridor Circa 1970  

All video content and images in this production have been provided with permission wherever possible. While I endeavour to ensure that all accreditations properly name the original creator, some of my sources do not list them as they are usually provided by other, unrelated YouTubers. Therefore, if I have mistakenly put the accreditation of 'Unknown', and you are aware of the original creator, please send me a personal message at my Gmail (this is more effective than comments as I am often unable to read all of them): [email protected]

The views and opinions expressed in this video are my personal appraisal and are not the views and opinions of any of these individuals or bodies who have kindly supplied me with footage and images.

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References:
- American-Rails.com (and their respective sources)
- "High-speed rail and barriers to innovation: The Budd Company and the limits of US indirect industrial policy in the 1960s and 1970s" by Jonathan Michael Feldman (and his respective sources)
- "Moonshots to Nowhere? The Metroliner and Failed High-Speed Rail in the United States, 1962–1977" by David Reinecke (and his respective sources)
- Wikipedia (and its respective references)