It was meant to change the game completely. A hugely ambitious high speed rail network that would connect many of France’s biggest cities, its bleeding edge technology would be the envy of the world.
It looked good on paper. Off the page? It was a disaster of rather hefty scale that was abandoned and left to rot.
China recently unveiled its ‘floating’ T-Flight train, which uses magnetic levitation (maglev) technology and is expected to reach speeds of 1,243mph – twice that of a Boeing 737 plane. But it’s not the first time engineers have tried to reinvent the train wheel.
The ‘Aérotrain’ was exciting as a concept. A hybrid method of public transport somewhere between a plane and a train, had the French government pulled it off there’s a very good chance the entire world would be using the technology today. But, alas, the project derailed. ‘Merde’, as they say in the country where the Aérotrain was born (and died).
Early plans made the Aérotrain look fanciful. When lead engineer and designer Jean Bertin conceptualised the thing, it looked like something half-remembered from an old sci-fi comic.
It was, after all, a wheelless train that levitated off the track and was capable of speeds of up to 270 mph. A fanciful idea indeed.
Yet Bertin knew it was entirely possible. The Burgundy-born inventor filed the patent in 1962, but had been working on the idea for five years before that.
The newly-invented Tracked Air Cushion Vehicle (TACV) would travel on a large air cushion fixed on top of a vast network of T-shaped concrete tracks. Propulsion would come courtesy of a massive aircraft engine.
Concept finalised and model prototypes built, all Bretin needed was someone to agree to let him build the hovertrain network at a cost of millions and millions (and millions) of Francs.
His newly set up Société d’étude de l’Aérotrain went beret in hand to all the rail networks in France. Eventually, the DATAR group (The Inter-ministerial Delegation of Land Planning and Regional Attractiveness) gave him two million Francs to play with. It was enough to build a true prototype and test the concept fully.
The team immediately set about creating Aérotrain 01, a half-scale model with a 260 horsepower aircraft motor. A test track was constructed in the suburbs of southern Paris and the model was soon able to achieve 125 mph.
By this point it was 1966. A year later, with further funding, a more aerodynamic prototype was constructed that achieved 260 mph on a four mile test track. The project then needed to be scaled up. Things were going incredibly well.
More tests were carried out, refinements were made and everything looked set for the Aérotrain to change how French people travelled around their homeland. The new technology was ready to usher in a rail revolution. But then things started to go rather horribly wrong.
With an 11 mile track built just north of Orléans in the Centre-Val de Loire region in north-central France, Aérotrain was becoming a reality. Money had been spent and promises made.
However, The 1973 Oil Crisis came along and dreams of a high speed network of hovertrains propelled by giant gas-burning aircraft engines started to sound more like waking nightmares.
In spite of this not inconsiderable setback, Aerotrain was awarded the contract in 1974 to construct lines connecting Paris’ La Defence business district to the newly established town of Cergy-Pontoise.
The next – killer – problem? New French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing saw no future in giant fuel-burning hovertrains and quickly cut funding, preferring to invest in a rival project, the TGV (France’s intercity high-speed rail service).
TGV wasn’t as exciting, but – crucially – it was able to pivot its technology to being able to run on electricity. It was curtains for the Aérotrain. After some 25 years of work and untold millions spent on the project, it was officially cancelled in 1974.
Jean Bertin died the following year. The romantic might assume he did so out of a broken heart. While his heart may well have been broken, it was brain cancer that took him. He would never see his brainchild revolutionise public transport. He did, though, live long enough to see it turn into un grand éléphant blanc.
Thankfully, Bertin never had to watch his test tracks battered by the elements and begin to crumble, the giant – now useless – graffiti-tagged concrete beams blighting the otherwise picturesque Gallic landscape.
It’s not an entirely sad story, though. A version of Monsieur Bertin’s dream may still be realised yet. Recently, a firm named – ever-so-slightly childishly – ‘Spacetrain’ has declared intentions to bring the project back to life near where the former test track is situated.
Spacetrain was launched in 2017 and claims to be able to make use of the air cushion technology of the Aérotrain, only with its trains being powered by hydrogen fuel cells instead and able to run at an impressive 310 mph.
Here’s hoping that Spacetrain can do it for Jean and make the breakthrough that Aérotrain couldn’t quite manage.
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