Although looking at the images might suggest a Japanese bullet train, this was actually an experimental German railcar named the Schienenzeppelin—“Zeppelin on Rails”—due to its resemblance to airships. Propelled by an airplane propeller mounted at the rear, it set a speed record in the year it was invented, 1929.
However, the inability to add carriages and other technical issues (such as difficulty reversing, climbing steep sections, or scattering ballast) meant it was not commercially successful and was retired from service in 1939.
The designer of this innovative vehicle was Franz Friedrich Kruckenberg, an engineer born in Uetersen (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany) in 1882 to a family of merchants from Hamburg. He studied naval engineering at the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in Berlin and worked during World War I designing airplanes and Zeppelins. He sought alternatives to these aircraft as he found planes too costly for civilian use due to their maintenance and fuel requirements and deemed airships dangerous, as they were still filled with hydrogen at the time, which was far more flammable than the helium used later.
After the war, Kruckenberg opened an engineering consultancy, where he began mulling over an idea that had been on his mind: to create a suspended monorail inspired by the Russian Aerodrezyna. Known as the Aerowagon, this was a railcar—a self-propelled railway unit with a rear-mounted propeller that allowed it to reach speeds of up to 140 kilometers per hour. Designed by Latvian engineer Valerian Abakovski and built in Germany in 1917, it was intended for Soviet officials to travel across the vast territories of the newly formed USSR.
Abakovski’s Aerowagon was ultimately unsuccessful. Its challenges included excessive noise from the propeller, the danger it posed to passengers, and the turbulence generated by the spinning blades, which scattered the ballast on the tracks.
But none of these issues compared to the accident it suffered in the summer of 1921. While traveling at high speed near Serpukhov, it derailed, killing seven of the 22 passengers returning from the First Congress of the Profintern (Red International of Trade Unions), including Abakovski himself, who was only 25 years old.
Kruckenberg was inspired by Abakovski’s vision. He partnered with another engineer, Hermann Föttinger, to establish Flugbahn-Gesellschaft mbH, aiming to create an improved version of the Aerowagon. Föttinger, born in Nuremberg in 1877, had been the chief designer at the AG Vulcan Stettin shipyard, where he introduced innovative steam turbines and developed the hydraulic coupling, a breakthrough in fluid dynamics, with over 100 patents to his name. Together, in 1930, they built the Schienenzeppelin at the facilities of Deutsche Reichsbahn (the Imperial German Railway Company) in Hanover-Leinhausen.
The vehicle was a 25.85-meter-long and 2.8-meter-tall railcar, with a 19.6-meter wheelbase between its two axles and an aerodynamic design reminiscent of a Zeppelin. Its streamlined appearance, with a curved aluminum frame and canvas covering similar to airplanes, was designed by Curt Stedefeld to minimize weight (no more than 18.6 tons) and maximize capacity, which accommodated 46 people, including the crew. Passengers sat in a spare interior designed by the renowned Bauhaus (a school of architecture, design, crafts, and art founded in 1919).
The Schienenzeppelin was powered by a pair of six-cylinder BMW IV aircraft engines (later replaced by a single twelve-cylinder engine) fueled by at least 87-octane gasoline. With 600 horsepower, compressed air drove a wooden propeller mounted at the rear via a transmission shaft angled seven degrees downward to enhance stability.
Initially, the propeller had four blades, but due to the high fuel consumption of 60 liters per 100 kilometers, it was replaced with a two-blade version deemed better for high speeds.
The first test runs took place on September 25, 1930, on the Kreiensen-Altenbeken railway line. A month later, the Schienenzeppelin was presented to the press with a demonstration on the Hanover-Celle line, where it reached a speed of 182 kilometers per hour. On May 10, 1931, between Plockhorst and Lehrte, with members of the Reichsbahn board from Hanover, including Vice President Fritsche, the vehicle reached 110 km/h within one minute and 150 km/h within two minutes. On its first run, it hit 170 km/h in six minutes, and on its second, it achieved 205 km/h.
It doubled the speeds of existing express trains, prompting the closure of all railway crossings on the test line for safety reasons. This led to its official inauguration on June 21, 1931, between Ludwigslust and Wittenberge on the Berlin-Hamburg route.
During that journey, on the Karstädt-Perleberg stretch, it reached 230 km/h, breaking the 210 km/h record held since 1903 by the AEG-Drehstrom-Schnellbahnwagen on the Marienfelde-Zossen line. No other train would match it until 1954, and it still holds the record for gasoline-powered railway vehicles. For four days following this achievement, until June 25, the train was displayed to the public at what would later become the S-Bahn Olympiastadion.
In 1932, Kruckenberg devised a new project: an improved version of the Schienenzeppelin. This redesign involved cutting off the front just behind the front wheels to add a bogie (a set of two axles), as later implemented between 1934 and 1938 in the SVT 137 155 (a diesel-hydraulic motorized car he also designed), while keeping the rear axle unchanged. It still used an aircraft engine, but now power transmission was hydraulic, thanks to two Föttinger converters mounted on the new bogie, allowing the vehicle to operate in both directions.
The general appearance changed; instead of a propeller, it featured a pointed cowling. However, speed was reduced, and the maximum recorded in early 1933 was 180 km/h. A year later, a second overhaul equipped it with a Maybach GO 5 diesel engine. By then, however, the directors of Deutsche Reichsbahn, influenced by the rising prominence of Nazism, were shifting their focus to other alternatives, such as the aforementioned SVT 137 155 or the DRG Class SVT 877. The latter, popularly known as the Fliegender Hamburger (Flying Hamburger), was a diesel train with two carriages that entered service in 1933, covering the Berlin-Hamburg route at an average speed of 124 km/h.
The disadvantages of the Schienenzeppelin outweighed its remarkable speed. As noted earlier, the propeller was both an asset and a drawback: it scattered the track ballast, prevented adding carriages for more passengers, and made reversing impossible, requiring turntables or, worse, triangular track configurations—if available—that necessitated slow and cumbersome maneuvers. It also struggled on slopes due to flow separation issues when maximum power was applied (auxiliary batteries were needed). Furthermore, the spinning blades posed a danger to passengers waiting on station platforms.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Reichsbahn began conducting its own high-speed railcar research to reduce dependence on Kruckenberg’s company, as demonstrated by the success of the Fliegender Hamburger. Consequently, in the summer of 1934, it purchased the Schienenzeppelin for 10,000 Reichsmarks. Although executives claimed they intended to continue testing the vehicle long-term, they never did.
Instead, the train was left parked at the Berlin-Tempelhof workshop, where it languished, semi-forgotten, until spring 1939, when the Ministry of Transport ordered it to be moved to make room for conventional coal-powered trains.
Six months later, exposure to the elements had left it in such poor condition that it could no longer be restored, even for a museum. Additionally, with the outbreak of World War II, Germany needed its aluminum for the Luftwaffe. As a result, the Schienenzeppelin was dismantled. Although Kruckenberg had joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1937, he was unable—or perhaps unwilling—to prevent this. By then, he was fully committed to the SVT 137 155, which laid the groundwork for the articulated trains of the 1950s, including the VT 10 series (the daytime Senator and nighttime Komet), the VT 11 (Trans-Europ-Express), and the VT 18 developed in East Germany, whose aerodynamic design was reminiscent of the Schienenzeppelin.
Kruckenberg passed away in 1965, leaving unfinished a project to connect major European cities with an elevated rail system propelled by a propeller, where the cars would have a capacity of 80 passengers and reach speeds of 300 km/h. The Schienenzeppelin lived on only as a wooden model sold in 1932 by the toy brand Matador.
Nevertheless, it could be considered an ancestor of the American M-497 Black Beetle (a jet-powered railcar tested in 1966 that reached 296 km/h but was deemed commercially unviable) and the Soviet SVL turbojet train (which achieved 411.5 km/h in 1970, with its front section now displayed at a factory in Tver, Russia).
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on November 29, 2024: Schienenzeppelin, el extraño tren experimental alemán impulsado por una hélice que tuvo el récord de velocidad hasta 1954
SOURCES
Brian Solomon, Streamliners. Locomotives and trains in the age of speed and style
Tabea Tietz, Mixing Up a Plane with a Train – Franz Kruckenberg’s Schienenzeppelin
Julian von Heyl, Der Schienenzeppelin von Franz Kruckenberg
Peter Orosz, Is it a plane? Is it a train? No, it’s a prop-driven V12 locomotive!
Rob Arndt, Franz Kruchenberg Schienenzeppelin
Wikipedia, Schienenzeppelin
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