Big Red: Lost Gas Turbine Semi Found

[MrRING]

https://www.thedrive.com/news/37925...emi-truck-big-red-thats-been-lost-for-decades

Several months ago, we set out to catch a ghost. First seen at the 1964 World's Fair alongside a fun new car called the Mustang, Ford's "Big Red" was the automaker's experimental gas turbine semi-truck, a moonshot experiment built to lift American motoring into the jet age. Thirteen feet tall, nearly 100 feet long with its tandem trailers, packed with truly futuristic features and powered by a monster 600-horsepower turbine engine, the fully-functional prototype was a wonder to behold. It wowed fair attendees and captured the imaginations of thousands on a cross-country promotional tour that followed. Then, it was mothballed when turbine technology didn't add up. It changed hands by chance, people lost interest, and years after the 10-ton fire-breather barreled down America's highways, it vanished.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Another former vision of the future lost and forgotten by the time we got to the time when it was supposed to be common.

 

[Cochise]

Rover (before it merged - or was forced to amalgamate - with BL) made significant investment in gas turbine cars. Their last was was close to success. And although their fuel consumption would have been unacceptable now they were mechanically much simpler than conventional cars. whose to say the fuel consumption might not have been drastically improved in the 60 years since?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_JET1#:~:text=The Rover JET1 was a,a speed of 152.691 mph.

https://www.carsupermarket.com/news/motoring-trailblazers-rover-t3

The T3 was a good looking beast :

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...hUKEwj1w6fJotbvAhWi34UKHUPMCosQMygCegUIARCsAQ

https://hackaday.com/2017/12/06/the-last-interesting-rover-had-a-gas-turbine-engine/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover-BRM

 

[Stillill]

I think there was a gas turbine train that ran in the U.K for a while. I don’t think it lasted too long in service though.

 

[Cochise]

I think there was a gas turbine train that ran in the U.K for a while. I don’t think it lasted too long in service though.

Three of them , two designed by the Great Western (although they went in to service after its demise) and one a purely experimental 'proof of concept' by the makers, GT3:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_GT3

The bizarre thing about BR's rejection of GT3 was criticism of it's single ended steam loco layout - but this was purely a matter of convenience and the two GW examples showed that a double-ended layout was entirely practical.

The two GW examples ran for several years but also fell foul of the utterly blinkered BR policy of the late 50's /early 60's. Literally the only sensible design of diesel loco - as opposed to the lumbering inefficient beasts thought to be the savior of BR - to emerge in that period was the Napier (English Electric) Deltic which revolutionised the ECML (London - Edinburgh). They introduced modern concepts of availability and maintenance that the then PTB's simply could not grasp and rejected for wider service - and indeed led them to scrap said Deltics as soon as they had a reasonable excuse, even though the few survivors have been in demand by private operators for revenue earning service right up to the last decade.

 

[Stillill]

Three of them , two designed by the Great Western (although they went in to service after its demise) and one a purely experimental 'proof of concept' by the makers, GT3:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_GT3

The bizarre thing about BR's rejection of GT3 was criticism of it's single ended steam loco layout - but this was purely a matter of convenience and the two GW examples showed that a double-ended layout was entirely practical.

The two GW examples ran for several years but also fell foul of te utterly blinkered BR policy of the late 50's /early 60's.

Very interesting Wiki article. Looking at other images of the GT3 online it looks like the driver wasn’t positioned at the front of the train and was in the steam train driver position.

 

[Cochise]

Very interesting Wiki article. Looking at other images of the GT3 online it looks like the driver wasn’t positioned at the front of the train and was in the steam train driver position.

Yes, that was part of the criticism, but it was by no means inherent in the technology. Possibly today we would call it a marketing error?

 

[Cochise]

Should also add, in the US, the Union Pacific ran some 50 or so enormous gas turbine locos over their mountain division for 15 years or so from 1952 on. The problem, again, being the costs in running a minority technology as opposed to cheap diesels in their thousands.

 

[RaM]

Bedford I think it was had a few experimental gas turbine trucks under test,
they would come steaming passed us on the M-way fully loaded as though
we were standing still.

 

[Austin Popper]

Should also add, in the US, the Union Pacific ran some 50 or so enormous gas turbine locos over their mountain division for 15 years or so from 1952 on. The problem, again, being the costs in running a minority technology as opposed to cheap diesels in their thousands.

I saw one of those UP behemoths on display somewhere in Utah, I think. It was ginormous. As I recall, the placard telling about it said the fuel consumption was impressively horrific.

 

[Nosmo King]

I saw one of those UP behemoths on display somewhere in Utah, I think. It was ginormous. As I recall, the placard telling about it said the fuel consumption was impressively horrific.

Union Pacific 18, a third-generation GTEL with four three-axle "C" trucks, preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum.

 

[Carse]

Bedford I think it was had a few experimental gas turbine trucks under test,
they would come steaming passed us on the M-way fully loaded as though
we were standing still.

Not sure about Bedford but Leyland had a project to produce gas turbine lorries in the late 60s/early 70s pre oil crisis and actually built six prototypes (the 2S/350), one of which survives in preservation today -