1967 GMC Railbus #1712Ok. I know this is a bus and these photos are supposed to be of railroading but if you give me half a chance to explain my reasoning, you will see why I put it in.
The '67 GMC Railbus was a concept-design for the Connecticut Company (CT Transit). Its chassis was that of a regular city bus with hi-rail wheels installed by Fairmont in 1968. The inspiration behind it was to utilize existing rail lines for mass transit and then to switch over to the street where the rails terminated to bypass rush hour traffic entering Hartford (CT). One area most considered was Rockville/Vernon where rail existed all the way into the City of Hartford proper. Prototype testing, occuring at the CT Trolley Museum, however, found that it didn’t meet the demands of CT Transit. It was too light to move through snow cover very well and it took too long and too much effort to change over from street to rails and vice versa. To make matters worse, the rail union insisted that the bus was a train when it operated on the rails and demanded it have a seven-person crew while on the rails. The Connecticut Company deamed the project a failure and 1712 along with the other 5 Railbuses were put into regular street service.
Photographed by Timothy Lesniak, July, 2006.
Added to the photo archive by Timothy Lesniak, September 18, 2006.
Railroad: Connecticut Trolley Museum.
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