I snapped this photo of a photo at the Flops?! exhibition last month at Paris’s Musée des Arts et Metiers. The exhibition explores the importance of failure in design. Which is an important topic, for another day. For now I just want to share how much I love the story of the aérotrain.
The train floats on cushion of air, like a hovercraft. At the time, British Rail was experimenting with similar floating trains, generating forward propulsion using magnets (you can still see the prototype outside Peterborough station, on the left-hand side as you enter the station going north). The French team were trying something different: strapping a gas turbine engine onto the roof. The prototype reached speeds of over 400km/h!
But jet powered floating trains weren’t to be. Despite positive results from early experiments, the existing industrial railway establishment wasn’t going to tolerate this incursion into its territory by the aerospace sector. The aérotrain experiment was cancelled in favour of the now familiar TGV.
But the traces of this audacious experiment remain — the track still runs parallel to the train from Paris to Orléans, an abandoned piece of futuristic infrastructure from the past. But I love these — they are a symbol of the power to imagine something different, even if it didn’t work out that way.