Viaduc de l'aérotrain, Railway test bridge between Saran and Ruan, France
The Viaduc de l'aérotrain is a disused test track in the Loiret department that runs for 18 kilometers between Saran and Ruan. The structure consists of 900 reinforced concrete pillars carrying an inverted T-shaped rail about 10 meters (33 feet) above the surrounding farmland.
The test track opened in September 1969 to trial Jean Bertin's Aerotrain, an innovative hovercraft designed for high-speed ground transport. A prototype reached 430 kilometers per hour (267 miles per hour) here in March 1974 before the project was abandoned in favor of the TGV system.
The engineering structure represents French technological research in high-speed transportation during the post-war industrial development of the 1960s.
The viaduct runs parallel to National Road 20 and the Paris-Bordeaux railway line through several towns north of Orléans. A gap of 120 meters (394 feet) in the structure was created in 2007 during the construction of the A19 motorway that cuts through it.
The long line of concrete pillars cuts through the flat Beauce countryside like an industrial ribbon and can be seen from a great distance. Some of the original Aerotrain prototypes are now preserved at the Le Bourget air and space museum near Paris.
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