British / European Rolling stock operating in North America?

The other day I was reading about the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railway which has (or had) operated Swedish-built passenger coaches for their excursion trains in central Maine.

That got me thinking...Are there any other examples of European or British equipment operating on the western side of the pond? The only other example that immediately comes to mind are VIA's Renaissance Coaches.

From the UK, LNER Flying Scotsman toured the US in 1969 and 1970, LMS Duchess of Hamilton was the Baltimore and Ohio in 1939 from Baltimore to Washington around the same time as the World's fair, and GNR 11247 (LNER J52) was at Railfair 1991 at Sacramento (I am also planning on doing a video on this locomotive on youtube). There was also a variety of international/European locomotives at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, such as an Italian ETR 200 and British reefer car (https://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/worlds ... _day_1.htm).

Now there used to be a heritage railroad in northern Michigan known as the Boyne City Railroad, which used a British 0-6-0 tank engine, Flying Duchess, with two British Rail Mark 1 coaches (http://www.railroadmichigan.com/boynecity.html). The coaches are on static display in Standish, MI, and the engine is preserved and repainted in Lagrange, KY, close to the virtual railfan camera, but cannot be seen from there.

Lastly, Ottawa's O-Train uses Bombardier Talent multiple units for their service, Ontario Northern used to have RAm/DE train sets from the Trans Europ Express from the Netherlands and Switzerland, and finally the Train de Charlevoix uses thre DB class 628.1s from Germany which are still in use.

The Boothbay Railway village has 2 foot gauge locomotives, German origin as I recall.

While the original poster indicated operating, one reply named some items from the past. Not that far back the D&RGW had K-M diesel hydraulics in freight service and Ontario Northern had the Northlander equipment which I think were TEE trains in Europe. B&M got the Leyland railbus which was used for a time between Lowell and Concord, NH, damaged in an xing collision and then repurposed to some B & M use. It also had a Mercedes Unimog.

The Unimog had a unit number in the work equipment series.

While the MBTA was dissing the B & M Budd RDC fleet, it obtained a self-propelled Fiat rail car and used it for a time.

Not sure if they're still running, but didn't VIA have a whole fleet of sleeping (and maybe other type) cars that the had bought from British Rail?
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U.S. regulations call for much greater crush strength in passenger equipment than British or European (which involves more structure, and so a serious weight penalty). So not much European passenger rolling stock is used in the U.S.: my guess is that the VIA and Ontario Northland trains would have been a lot harder to get past U.S. regulators.
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As for locomotives... CN, I think, acquired one German-built switch engine: an 0-6-0 diesel hydraulic. It didn't last long.
A Romanian rolling stock company, FAUR, back in the 1970s or 1980s tried to get into the American locomotive market with a 1200 (or so) h.p. BB diesel hydraulic switcher, called the "Quarter Horse." It worked for a while (maybe after some demonstrations elsewhere) for the Washington Terminal. I think the WT's Also RS-1 units outlasted it.

From George Elwood's invaluable "Fallen Flags" rail image site:
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/misc-f/faur125-107dsa.jpg
A Romanian diesel, demonstrating on the DTI in 1975.

Wales Light Railway in Silverhill Alabama uses Welsh narrow gauge locomotives.

There is also the British Leyland Pacer Railbus which tested on SEPTA, MBTA, and even Amtrak for the Northeast Corridor. This railbus is currently preserved at the Connecticut Trolley Museum.

The original Amtrak RTG Turboliners came from France. I rode one in the mid-west and I remember the armrest ashtrays had SNCF stamped in them. I believe they even retained their Hook and Screw couplers between the cars with ARR couplers at each end. None were saved but I believe one still sits in a mid-west scrap yard.

In the mid 70's two European electrics tested on the corridor. One was from France SNCF 21003 as Amtrak X996. The other was an SJ electric (can't find the SJ number) that ran as Amtrak X995. The SJ unit was judged to be the better of the two with the AEM7 being the result.

In the early 90's two European high speed train-sets were tested on the NEC. One was a Deutsche Bahn (DB) ICE 1 train-set and the other was an SJ X2000 train-set. The German ICE train used the German philosophy of MORE POWER to accelerate out of curves faster while the SJ X2000 had an active tilt system. The train that resulted (the ACELA 1) was a combination of the two.

The original Toronto subway cars were built in the UK.

Technically the Bombardier ALP-46 was based on the German DB class 101, but I'm not sure if that would count as foreign equipment in the U.S.

In Light Rail applications there is quite a lot of European based designs, in heavy rail the new Stadler EMUs for Caltrain are based on their "Kiss" bilevels as used by Swiss federal Railways with a variation for both high-level and low-level doors.

I don't know the current status of the equipment (post shutdown) but the Hull-Wakefield Steam Train in Quebec used Swedish equipment from the same surplus stock sale as the B&ML had.

In Mexico Volkswagen had a three axle German switch engine at the Pueblo assembly plant. Think that the drive wheels were connected similar to a steam engine.

RRspatch wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 2:42 am The original Amtrak RTG Turboliners came from France. I rode one in the mid-west and I remember the armrest ashtrays had SNCF stamped in them. I believe they even retained their Hook and Screw couplers between the cars with ARR couplers at each end. None were saved but I believe one still sits in a mid-west scrap yard.

It's actually abandoned on a farm in southern Indiana. Has its own Facebook group.