GMD produced four of the little creatures, the first two equipped with Detroit Diesel 110 diesel engines producing a combined 600 hp. Production ran from December 1955 to to October 1959. The first, No. 1001, hung around GMD’s London (Ontario) plant as the company’s switcher. It was eventually retired and is now in the hands of a private collector. The second became a demonstrator, wandering as far away as Brazil before it was ultimately cut up.
A few years later, another pair was built, this time with Detroit Diesel 71 engines churning out 800 hp. The first of these became a true boomer and operated on numerous industrial operations in Canada and the U.S. It’s still intact and was last reported as the property of a Canadian oil company. The fourth became the property of a construction company and worked the majority of its service life in Pakistan.
Chuck Jordan, who eventually became GM’s VP of Design in 1986, was in charge of special product design at GM in the early 50’s. He supervised styling of GM’s “Aerotrain,” an experiment in lite weight, turbine powered passenger trains. He would have been around when the posted mule was made, and I suspect he had a hand in it’s design. It’s clear whoever styled this critter wanted it to be as pleasing to the eye as could be hoped for, given its nature.
ReplyDeleteOppssseee… It’s come to my attention that the GM Aerotrain I made reference to was not powered by a turbine engine. Energy came from an off the shelf diesel used in a switcher the company made. My best guess is I confused the Aerotrain with Canadian Nationals Turbo Train (60’s), which in fact was powered by a gas turbine. I’ll submit to thirty lashes if you promise to make them soft.
ReplyDeleteI didn't take the bait and look into it, so, lashes avoided. I already posted about the Aerotrain about 10 years ago, and posted about Jordan about 4 years ago, so, I'm good on both scores.
DeleteFrankly, there are some days when I'm so inspired by other stuff already, that no matter who comments about what, I'm not changing from what I'm already looking up, and dang it if most things I want to look into don't take hours apiece, even if I don't post anything about them.
Some days, I'm looking at outboards and boats, some days, news. Some other day it's whatever is going on in trucking, racing, tires, art, photography, ATVs, tractors, dozers, etc. Never enough hours in the day.
So, it would be cool if you simply made my life easy and made your own website I cool kick back and peruse.