It looks as if it was inspired by the original character design for Lara Croft. Peculiar but I don't know about ugly. The only train design that made me recoil, and I mean a real, "argh my eyes" reaction, was the first time I saw a class 70.
I love the high speed Talgos, not to everyone's taste but they are a wonderful piece of engineering, the beak serves a purpose to lower sound pollution, and is the reason for the train's affectionate name in Spain, 'Pato' or duck, (it's lower speed cousin is known as 'Patito' or little duck). The Avlo branding and paint scheme is too garish for my liking though, I don't think it would look particularly good on any train, but with the advent of rail privatisation across Europe, garish liveries are here to stay I guess.
These are both up there as some of the ugliest trains I've seen but Blacknred81 post is the ugliest I don't even like the livery on that one.
Japan seems to like long noses... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...n.jpg#/media/File:JGR_C5343_hauling_train.jpg
When a high speed train enters a tunnel the sudden constriction of the air flow around it can cause a shockwave through the tunnel resulting in a loud report like a sonic boom at the tunnel exit- a problem if anyone lives nearby. The long noses help dissipate this and in Japan the designs were inspired by kingfishers. One of the engineers was a bird watcher and realised that kingfishers must experienced jarring aero/hydrodynamic effects when they hit the water at speed which their beaks were ideally shaped to minimize.
I don't really like those new designs. From an aesthetic stand point I think the 700 and 500 series were the best looking japanese high speed trains ever.
I see a pattern emerging Call me old-fashioned, but I‘m more partial to the 0 or 200 series visually speaking though the aggresivness of the 100 series is also somewhat appealing
Modified version of WAP-5 Locomotive, which is widely used throughout India. This is a modified version. looks quite ugly!
A lot of the Talgo designs look atrocious but they are very clever trains. They design their carriages so they all support each other and most only have one bogie or even just one axle. Most impressively, some of their axle designs can also change gauge on the move for the various different gauges track in Spain.
Got to hand it to you. The different headlights/nose assembly on the VIA and Brightline ones actually make it look quite decent. Shame that Amtrak didn‘t go with that.
For ugliest British steam locomotive I'd like to nominate Bullied's Q1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_..._Class_geograph-2979665-by-Ben-Brooksbank.jpg (Photo' linked from Wikipedia. Edit- which didn't work for some reason so it's just a link.) Yes it's a wartime austerity loco' built with economy and ease of maintenance in mind but so were Riddle's designs and and they're quite handsome. The Q1 looks like Bullied made it as ugly as he could then dropped it. Hell of a loco' though.
I'll politely disagree! I quite like the 'stripped down' look. It's a product of its time too and you can't ignore the historical significance. Aesthetics weren't even on the drawing board, it's all down to purely function and nothing else! And for that it's the 'essence' of steam and nothing more. There's, personally, way uglier out there. GWR 10 wheeler for example, like someone faxed a bad pic of City of Truro and said copy that!
Yikes! She's certainly not out of place in this discussion. I get the impression that it was designed by people in at least two different workshops who didn't compare notes and the tender's a bit of an afterthought isn't it? The Q1 at least has an homogeneity about it.
What on earth is that? It's like someone in a wind tunnel described a City Class loco over the telephone.
It was the Kruger class which weren't very successful, they were intended for freight and had a very short life, they were an experiment I think. I think they were replaced by the Aberdare, Caledonia Works have produced an Aberdare for TS1. It is still nicer looking than a class 66!
That one in your opening post looks almost like it should be a in a modern version of Thomas the Tank Engine. It certainly looks ungainly, I am sure someone loves it! A modern horror themed one where a class of diesel takes over an island and ousts all the others into museums or scrapyards, oh.,.......
IDK, they have the same layout as the state owned Amtrak ones, which I believe is also the same on the ACE and Coaster trains as well. On another side note, EMD's GM6C and its cousin GM10B are pretty ugly as well....
There are ways to pull off the 'duckbill' design, but Talgo haven't got there yet. Why they had to call it the WAP I don't know.
Lol, this was before Cardi B Also, WAP= Wide AC Passenger locomotive and the "5" indicates what model it is.
Also I think with SC-44 chargers it the livery that also makes the headlights stand out on the Amtrak liveries hence making it uglyer
Talgo 350 aka El pato. The iconic Spanish high speed train. Most of high-speed trains are fancy, like ICE, TGV or Shinkansen, but this is an exception. El pato, which means a duck, is very representational name for this train.
Shinkansen trains are one of the best looking trains ever, in my opinion, but this train looks very ugly because it don't have a windscreen.