The Aérotrain: A French Train Ahead Of Its Time That Never Left The Station – SlashGear

The Aerotrain is more similar to an aircraft, or the Russian Ekranoplan than your average Amtrak locomotive. It utilized the aeronautical principle known as “the ground effect” to essentially glide on air. When an object flies very close to the ground at a high enough speed, air gathers under the craft and pushes upward, providing a limited amount of lift. After a series of small-scale models, Bertin’s Aerotrain full-size prototype looked a little like a bus with a propellor on the back combined with the Disney monorail. It reportedly was able to reach 214 miles per hour in 1966 along a stretch of elevated track. The propellor was ditched in favor of a turbine engine. Using the new powerplant, it could hit 262 miles per hour, a little faster than the electric Rimac Nevera hypercar. 

Tests proved that the concept was viable and could work. But as with many big public works projects, a fair amount of politics was involved. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing became the President of France in 1974 and oversaw the cancellation of the project in favor of France’s other ongoing high-speed rail project, the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse or “high-speed train” in French), a series of electric trains which still operate today and cruises at about 198 miles per hour.