The super fast propeller powered trains (and why they never caught on)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- In today's video, we take a look at trains and locomotives that were powered via propeller and why the idea didn't catch on
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I see you’ve fallen into the Milngavie pronunciation trap, as it’s pronounced Mul-guy
And it looks as if he didn't spot the second i in Milngavie either - most people not "in the know" try to pronounce it phonetically with 3 syllables.
I paused the video and came down here to post lol. Ta for grabbing it already.
In my region of the world its pronounced Mill - en - gauve - ee
@@tcmtech7515 ye used to prenounce it that way too lol
@@ScotSteam47 Okay?
Nobody getting harmed by the propeller is probably the most surprising part of the Schienenzeppelin. The Bad Piggies music too haha
Common sense was common back then
@@shaddoty True, still seems like a hazard. Like if there's a collision or someone accidentally trips.
Had this locomotive been built today, we'd have news reports of people being shredded by the propellers.
"Luckily, no-one was hurt."
I'm surprised that although the rail zeppelin didn't catch on as a propeller driven railcar, it managed to predict the shape of the bullet trains that would change the course of high speed rail 40 years later.
Rail Zeppelin inspired the Flying Hamburger which inspired Gresley for the A4's design.
The propeller-driven aspect of it didn't catch on due to it's disadvantages, but other elements of the design would become more common over time.
It was just aerodynamics. Nothing to mimic.
I love that you put the bad piggies theme music in the background. 🤣
Very fitting
Based comment
The diesel punk braincells are going BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR rn
Also the bad piggies music is spot on. I didn't know I needed it.
Do I hear bad piggies music?
I hear it too
It is 😂
I hear it
Holy crap it is,it’s the building theme. 😂
I heard it aswell
3:45 The Sudrian team really like looking up obscure and unique train and vehicle designs for creating new characters.
"How fast can it go?"
"Yes."
If we ever plan on building another propeller-driven locomotive (which I doubt it'll happen), we should weld a cage surrounding the propeller like on air boats. (Spoilers at the bottom)
As for that jet train at the end of your video for a preposed next video, you could say that having the location of the turbines would make the locomotive too tall for the loading gauge and they can be knocked off from tunnels and low hanging bridges.
ahh the Ducted fan, so lets go all the way and but a big by pass jett engine on it.
Then it will go uphil without any trouble.
The track itself on the other hand will loose all its ballast between the sleepers
@@obelic71 Not to mention how absolutely dangerous being around a jet powered train would be. Jet plane engines are already super dangerous, hell a guy got sucked in one and was reduced to atoms from one Boeing jet engine. Imagine one of those on a train. Absolutely a death trap!
Propellers only make sense in the air or sea, fluids where you cannot hold to actual solid stuff to apply forces with better efficiency (aka push through wheels).
Why push air that will push you, when you can push wheels directly.
@@GeomancerHT And there's no way you could end up getting decapitated or turned into a spray of blood unless your dumb ass isn't looking where you're going
Propellers... Pfff.... I want to See a maglev powered by a methane rocket engine 😅
4:48 this image always looks like something out of a sci-fi film of the day but nope, it was real, how incredible
Great vid ToT, an amusing idea. I too am surprised no one got caught up in the prop.
No wonder these didn't take off. No pun intended. It's a miracle no one got sliced to pieces by the propellers.
The Rail-Zeppelin also sucked up ballast in its wake turbulence and spread it evenly along the line and platforms.
Really interesting. I hadn't known anything about the predecessors of the Schienenzeppelin before.
I once was in a german transport museum where you, among other things, could hear original recordings from the radio at the time. And there was a recording of the Schienenzeppelin's speed record somewhere along the line. After a few minutes of explanation, a "ROAAAARRR" is heard, followed by the announcer's comment that this may well be the future of rail travel.
Well, it doesn't seem to have come true. 😅
I love how Thomas and Friends actually showed how limited the Schienenzeppelin really was.
Ye
Loved the background music!
Based comment
Amazing video as always. Would love for you to make a video on that NYC Budd RDC that had jet engines on it.
Very interesting to see how trains were built and how fast they can go. Fabulous stuff.
More over the schienenzeppelin (pronounced sheenenzeppelin) didn't have bogies (only two single axles) as can be seen at 5:07 which meant that it wasn't easy to shunt it for this additional reason. It didn't fit on a turntable (is that the right word?) too so if they wanted to change its direction it had to be shunted on specific rails without tight corners.
Still a lot of its aerodynamic approaches got used later on. :) It's just a prototype if you want to say so.
Glad to hear the speed in metric, thank you!
I love the Bad Piggies music. It really fits this, as it was like that in the olden days when building vehicles.
It's so cool to see photos of these things to go with the information about them.
I find the the idea of having a propeller powered train to be... practical all things considered. As shown in the first two examples, all one needs is a suitable rail carriage and an airplane engine to make one, no more fussy transmission system to worry about breaking down and needing lengthy periods of time to replace. Also the idea of it being unsuitable for any moderately steep inclines seems moot when one remembers that high-speed rail lines these days require that the tracks be as straight and level as possible. Sure the propeller is a massive safety hazard but then again you can cover it with some cowling and have it taper at the end for more power.
The way I see it is that this system is the best way to create a moderately priced high-speed rail system without going through much expense. Yes, the rail lines would be modified to cater to the train's unique attributes but I believe that cost less that trying to make an entire new line from the ground up and use proprietary rolling stocks for it...
but you would still have the capacity issue of not being able to add coaches, they would also need other engines to work at low speed and while high speed lines are generally straight some of them still require steep gradients that an electric train can handle but not a propeller one. Not to mention the constant loud noise of the propellers at ground level!
I personally see them as a mix between most of the inefficiencies of the Hyperloop and some of the efficiencies of normal rail.
@@marcogentile3392 Those issues would be mitigated with technical ingenuity like make the train a pusher configuration and making sure the line doesn't have too many gradients. Noise is... something they have to live by, unfortunately.
But your observations are astute...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 But there's no advantage over a conventional diesel or electric high speed train from using a propellor, and I suspect it is heavier on fuel - that put paid to gas turbine trains as well. As for gradients, modern high speed lines can have very steep gradients because the trains have so much power. It's sharp curves that they need to avoid. Indeed on the French TGV Midi line the only speed restriction was where it changed from 1 in 28 up to 1 in 28 down and the restriction was to stop it literally taking off. Propellors really aren't very efficient and the only reason they were used in aero engines is because you couldn't simply transmit power to wheels when airborne.
“Why I never caught on?”
To paraphrase Jeremy Clarkson “have you called the Railway board and said you’re riding around with, effectively, a blender on the back?”
This is some really fascinating information! TH-cam algorithm did me a favor by recommending your channel!
3:44 As a german, this hurts my ears
As an Englishman, I apologize
I wonder what would happen if instead of 1 big propeller, we use a bunch of little propellers. Kind of like a drone. Also, for the safety of the people around the train, put some sort of case around the blade's like what we have for most fans.
Also, I like your use of the bad piggies theme.
More propellers would mean more complicated and less efficient. Using a cage would add drag, making it slower and less efficient. Might be possible, but there's really no compelling advantages and many disadvantages versus wheel-driven propulsion.
We could rotate the propellers 90 degrees, make them really strong steel things with like a circle shape, and use them to also support the weight of the train. I feel like where wheely on to something here. They probably wouldn't catch a lot of air, but they could use electric engines or fuel driven engines to drive these propellers and I'm guessing they'd be fairly efficient at transferring power.
Excellent choice of music
Flying Hamburger? That sounds like something Red Bull would make if they expanded into making food!
It was running between Berlin and Hamburg, hence the name. From its start in 1933, it was the fastest train to travel that line, and remained so until 1997!
@@achim8239 I thought it would be because it was built or designed in Hamburg... Still, the name makes it sound like food that either flies or makes you fly.
An earlier example of a prop driven railcar was constructed in WW1 by German airmen assigned to Palestine. They used a 4-wheeled flat car with a Mercedes 6 cyl engine and prop to reach the beach as fast as possible. Reputedly it didn't have brakes...
Very interesting and informative! Thank you for uploading and sharing! 😊
I see that I'm not the only one to notice the Bad Piggies music.
Good times.
Based comment
I'm glad you added the bad piggies theme to your video I love bad piggies.
4:01 Hugo from Thomas and friends
shut
@@LYR_375 bugger off mate
4:15 To add on to this, I think that propeller-driven trains would struggle to pull a large load, since the propeller would just move air instead of wheels providing traction and thus motion.
Unless, of course, they made a turboshaft locomotive that applied the torque directly from the jet engines to the wheels.
At which point you just have a gas turbine locomotive with mechanical transmission... and a propeller on the front.
I don't really see this sort of locomotive be used for freight. It's purely a passenger service...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 I see a jet turbine powered locomotive a death trap on rails!
@@ZackarySchejbalCODBO2RGM2 Nah, they power tanks with a jet turbine. Though I think you mean if it was used for propulsion like an aircraft of course.
Abakovsky was Russian: "He was born in Riga on October 5, 1895 in to a Russian family."
These trains would sure add a new level of terror when the morning express train comes barreling through my local station.
Stand clear of the platform edge to avoid being minced.
Big fan from Germany here, nice content, thank you! But try to say "sheenen" instead of "shynen" 😊
Great video! Can you do a video about the Bluebell Railway?
Great joke at the end about the jet engines -- "instead" -- Knocked me over!
Can you imagine how loud those things were?
Maybe you cold do a video about pneumatic rail systems?
Propeller, jet, and rocket driven rail vehicles give up one of the great features of rail transport: the efficiency of propulsion by steel wheels on steel rails. When you apply energy to propel something, by Newton's laws of motion (or Einstein's if you want extreme precision, but the difference is negligible at Earthbound speeds), equal momentum must go into the object being propelled and whatever it is propelling itself against. Momentum goes by the product of mass with velocity (figure in the gamma factor if you want the Einsteinian version, but at all Earthbound speeds that's essentially 1 with a whole bunch of 0s behind the decimal point before anything interesting happens). Energy, on the other hand, goes by the product of mass with the square of velocity.(divided by 2, but that's the same on both sides of the comparison). So if you have a ground vehicle using its wheels to push on the ground, both it and the ground move, but the Earth (or anything massive enough to have a usable gravitational field) is so much more massive than the ground vehicle that even though both the ground and the vehicle gain momentum equal in magnitude (although opposite in direction), essentially all of the energy (barring slipping and/or frictional losses) goes into the vehicle. On the flip side, if you are pushing on air (propeller) and/or exhaust gases (jet or rocket), for any workable size of propeller or jet engine fan or rocket fuel/oxidizer quantity, the mass of what you are pushing away will be much less than that of the vehicle, and so most of the energy will go into the air, jet exhaust, or rocket exhaust. Water transport is in between: For a propeller of usable size, the mass of water moved at any one time is still smaller than the vessel, but not absurdly smaller, and the sheer size of cargo ships allows them to more than make up for this by having a sufficiently greater ratio of volume (cube of linear dimensions) to surface area (square of linear dimensions) that once cruising speed is achieved, frictional losses are even lower than for a train, and a ship never climbs any more than the most gradual of gradients (going up a navigable river) unless in a lock or on a carrier, in which case the reaction is once again against the ground. So for ground transport, the way to go is to have motors spin the wheels (most ground vehicles), have a cable haul the vehicle (elevators, funiculars, and their relatives), or have a linear induction motor push on the linear induction track.
I suspect the biggest actual deal breaker was that propellers are less energy efficient, and the noise coming in as a second. The actual practical advantage is, or was, simplicity, you can drive a propeller directly from an internal combustion engine, steam turbine or electric motor, without gearing, which still is an advantage, but not as big as it has been.
The other issues are manageable. Climbing and low speeds can be solved with variable pitch propellers and or hybrid systems. About safety, propellers doesn't have to be uncovered, or mounted dangerously close to people. With a hybrid system you wouldn't need to spin the propeller at or near stations. And, propellers could be used on a pusher unit which would allow multiple carts, with a propeller in pusher configuration, trains doesn't have to be pulled solely by a locomotive in the front, one of the big advantages of trains actually.
I knew about Bennies Railplane as I live quite near where it was, Milngave. It's actually pronounced Mill Guy. Sorry for correcting you.
I didn't know about the other prop driven trains though, great wee video.
I think the 1920s-1930s were decades that was experimenting with new types technology, some of wich were TOO far ahead it's time!...
Of all the pronunciations of Milngavie I've heard, "Miningave" is a new one! It's actually pronounced "Mill-Guy".
I was just about to say! Far less annoying than some pronounciations I have heard though, Suprised it wasnt the standard Milne Gavie
Kruckenberg used building techniques developed by the Zeppelin works, his rail zeppelin had an aluminium spaceframe structure and a smooth skin of impregnated tarpaulin. It had only two axles of a rather long wheelbase, resulting in a bumpy ride on jointed track, so it would require long mostly straight continuously welded tracks. For shunting it had a little battery-electric motor and one of the axles could be steered with a steering wheel on curvy tracks in stations and depots.
The prototype, equipped with an aircraft motor by BMW, was tested with two and four blade propellers and reached up to 230 km/h, breaking the world speed record set earlier by an electric unit in 1901. That held until the French experiments with electric high speed trains in 1955.
After the tests the unit was rebuilt and received a new front end with a powered bogie to test hydrodynamic transmission. The propeller and motor at the rear end were removed. A few more tests were done and once the war had started, the aluminium was required for aircraft building. I'm not aware of any component of the unit being preserved. One half had Bauhaus-style steel tube armchairs, the other half was set up as a laboratory with measuring equipment.
Franz Kruckenberg developed a diesel-hydraulic unit "137 155" in 1938, which reached 215 km/h in a test but wasn't repaired after an axle broke in 1939. The war stopped all further development of high speed trains. Some fragments of it are preserved in Dresden.
Post-war Kruckenberg was involved in the VT10 (which didn't make it past the prototype stage and, even though it entered regular service, was retired soon thereafter due to a number of flaws) and VT11 (the famous TEE unit of 1957, used in different services until 1988 and briefly revived in 1990). Of those a number of vehicles are preserved at different locations but none are operational.
the music is perfect
Why push against air - which is very soft - when you can get traction on nice firm rails?
The same reason why supersonic cars to break the land speed record used jet engines to push against the "soft" air instead of transferring power via friction through the wheels.
Hugo's origin story
The Bad Piggies music in the background feels EXTREMELY fitting in this context.
Despite having also watched your "Why monorails are bad as public transport" video, I really like the look of the George Bennie railplane system.
5:10 the Germans didn't adopt the design, but the Japanese did for the Shinkansen. :3c
"Schienenzeppelin" is pronounced "Sheenun-tseppelleen". In general: "ie" in German is always like "ee" in English, and "ei" in German is always like "eye" in English.
The biggest disadvantage I see of this comes down to physics. To go forward you have to push on something, Newton's third law. The greater the mass you are pushing back, the more of your power goes into pushing yourself forward and less into pushing something else back. A propeller is blowing air back, making a lot of wind that is wasted energy, while driving the wheels is pushing against the entire Earth, so nothing wasted moving anything else. Airplanes have no choice but to use air, but trains (and cars) can use wheel drive, and boats/ships are more efficient using a propeller in the far denser water. There's also the drawback of noise, along with the mentioned safety issues. The only advantage I can see of a propeller over using that same engine to drive the wheels is that a propeller can be direct drive (though that also means no reverse unless the propeller is reversible, which none of these appear to be), while wheel-drive requires a transmission of some sort that is often much more complicated and less reliable. Transmissions that could work at all speeds and handle the power involved with trains were a difficult challenge in the timeframe of these experiments, so I can see the appeal of simply sticking a propeller on it. Even some cars tried this for the same reason. But over time the transmission issue was sorted out, in most cases using a generator and electric motors to serve that function.
Quick note on the pronounciation of the word "Schienenzeppelin":
"ie" is pronounced more like the "ee" in the english word "sheen"
So the correct pronouciation would be something like "sheenan-zeppelin"
Otherwise a great and informative video!
this is incredible
I wonder if the George Bennie vision of stacked rail transport was any inspiration for the stacked railways in Robert Hugh Benson's apocalyptic book "Lord of the World". In it, air travel is still considered to be in zeppelins, and there are three levels of rail traffic: personal rails are the slowest, followed by public transit, followed by official transit.
It's a compelling book for other reasons, even if the technological vision shows its age.
“The idea never really took off”
Yeah because it had no wings! Wakka-wakka! **Proceeds to be buried by tomatoes**
3:00 - 3:37 Monorail! Monorail! MONO- RAAAAAIIILL!
I hear those things are awfully loud
"Johnny on the Monorail", a song by the Buggles.
I guess the combination of slightly more common sense of the time due to most mechanical things being dangerous at the time, plus the large amount of noise generated by the straight piped engines and the propeller itself led to no one getting too close, and probably the lack of wide spread use meant that the one numpty who would usually be the cause for safety warning signs had not had a chance to drop his or her item closeby and then bend down obliviously to pick it up
He he plane-train go brrrrrrrrrr
the bad piggies music is so fitting
The place name for the lifted monorail is pronounced "Mill-guy" not "mill-n-gave". Its a stupid name but FYI.
For a 1929 design, that monorail unit looks decades ahead.
"of it's time!!" I finished your sentence for you
A vehicle propelled by the reaction principle (propeller, jet, rocket) is less efficient than a vehicle with powered wheels, because the mass of air (or combustion gas for the rocket) blown in the reverse direction to the vehicle's movement carries kinetic energy away with it.
The perfect outro music doesn’t exi-
I can't believe some railfans don't know these exist! Either way, nice video as always.
You butchered all foreign pronounciations as usual, but I can't expect any different from a Brit.
Surely the logical line of development would go from propeller to turbo prop to jet and then rocket.
Valerian Abakovsky was neither Russian nor Latvian. He was Soviet. Simple as that!
Jet engines? That's silly. Ramjets are the way to go!!
Ok we need Train Of Thought to make a second aviation themed channel and call it Plane Of Thought!
In thumbnail there's the angry mustace man cool even Welsh coal saw this
Bad piggies music is a nice touch lol
so valerian was trying to seize the means of propulsion?
I don't know if you do video suggestions but can you do a video on the BR 00001 diesel prototype
I would imagine the lack of ability to connect to other rolling stock and the exposed propeller would be fairly easy issues to fix.
Sure but it's unlikely it could pull any significant weight.
@@Mike-me3sp True but not having coupler is also an issue of not being able to tow the thing if it breaks down.
Ha, this is very true. However if I were building such a crazy thing I'd want to save as much weight as possible and a coupler arrangement would factor into that. If it needed a tow I'd say 'make sure you bring some chains' lol.
I like how we are on a series of ideas that had potential but major flaws and/or events of the world prevented them from becoming a mainstay in transport history.
Anyone think the Hyperloop will be another one? 🤔
the monorail above an ordinary line honestly makes the most sense of the lot
Just build additional track on the ground
@@Ganliard takes up more room and brings in all the issues mentioned regarding safety around the prop and holding the train to the rails. Having it hung in the air via a monorail eliminates those two issues and allows for a more confined setup
Super expensive.
@@redtobertshateshandles RIDICULOUSLY expensive...
@@lalnablehector1285 Or just you know
Simple monorail serve well. It's 2023 anyway, people already well know aero-based driver isn't as efficient as direct drive from wheel
Can already see the main drawback.
Any gradient at all will halt them.
The propeller train has a propeller on it nose and on its head as you can see from the train shape it's a narrow machete with the hump back of noterdam this was the same shape that was on the mole seacumber skimask situation
Darks spots on the Sun
What's Ai going to think of now?
The Opel car company had a program called the Opel-RAK program and in it there was a solid rocket powered train.
i feel like it would most definately be more effective to just drive the wheels directly from the aircraft engine
If anything's going to make you take notice of the 'don't stand too close to the edge of the platform' rule, it's this.
When you said plane powered I thought you would include the GTEL Turbine “Big Blow”
Was that propeller-driven?
I appreciate the bad piggies music playing in the back ground
One benefit of the prop train is that there's no wheel slip
Can you make a video about jet-propelled trains?
3:49 I have this train as a Märklin model
Yeah, in old times, people are crazy to make weird and dangerous solutions, which is clearly big no-no for most people.
In the end, it's just to make some speed record. That is it.
Now that somebody said it all I can hear is the bad piggies music
Funny they would put props on the one that hangs. Because it uses electricity, they could just put electric motors with directly driven wheels on top of the rail.
I should imagine being anywhere near a propeller driven train presented the danger of being sand blasted by grit blown up from the ground. Also the noise level must have been horrendous.
Let's not forget that pre-WWII propellers were not as efficient as modern-day props. While a propeller could drive a train without a transmission, directly attaching the engine to the wheels will always be more efficient than using a propeller.
Shouldn't the title be, "Why they never took off"?
Get out
Valerian abakovsky was Russian, he was born in what is now Latvia but part of the empire then. He was also a communist too. The name should probably have tipped you off.
3:19 That looks "too modern" for the 30's!
can only imagine in an alternate universe "Get to the Train" instead of the choppa
Very good attempt at saying Milngavie it’s actually said mil’guy’v