Rail Speed Record

In 1966, the New York Central Railroad Company, under President A.E. Perlman, proposed a test of existing rail passenger equipment to determine the feasibility of operating high-speed passenger service between cities up to 300 miles apart. The test site was chosen near Bryan, Ohio, on the world's longest multiple-track straight railroad line, a sixty-seven-mile stretch from Toledo, Ohio, to Butler, Indiana, originally constructed by the Northern Indiana Railroad Company of Ohio, incorporated March 3, 1851. On July 23, 1966, the New York Central Technical Research Department ran the Budd RDC-3 passenger car number M-497, fully instrumented for stress analysis and propelled by two roof-mounted jet aircraft engines. It attained a speed of 183.85 miles per hour, the highest recorded on a railroad in North America at that time and to this day.

Bryan, Ohio · United States