LRC was designed to run with locomotives, or power cars, at both ends and provide 125 mph (201 km/h) service on non-upgraded railway routes.

On its only regular service route, on the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, where concerns, signalling issues and conflicts with slower-moving freight trains limit this to 100 mph (160 km/h) or less.

Special signage allowed the LRC to run at higher speeds than normal traffic across a great portion of the Corridor when the tilt system was enabled.

[1][2] Even a small amount of force, acting across the length of the human body, creates a moment that can make moving about difficult.

Japan had previously used a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) but decided to lay entirely new standard gauge lines for these services, the Shinkansen.

[4] The Europeans were planning similar systems in several countries, while the UK, and Canada, could not justify such an expense given their passenger numbers.

Great improvement can be made by making the system "active", reading the forces on the cars with sensors and quickly rotating them to the proper angle using hydraulic rams.

Gas turbines have an excellent power-to-weight ratio, perhaps ten times that of a conventional diesel engine, with the downside that they use considerably more fuel at idle.

Designed in the early 1960s by United Aircraft Corp., the TurboTrain used a licensed version of Talgo's passive tilt system and a new turbine-powered locomotive.

The design featured unique doors at either end to allow two trains to be coupled into one longer one, but in practice this proved too much trouble to be worth it.

The car body design was made mostly of aluminum for light weight, and built two inches lower than conventional sets to cut down wind resistance.

To keep the train as a whole as streamlined as possible, the loco body was wrapped very tightly around the engine, at the same height as the cars.

The resulting design was quite small even by modern standards, several feet shorter than the GE Genesis that replaced them in Via service, and thousands of pounds lighter.

The light weight and low wind resistance would allow higher speeds while using less power, improving fuel efficiency.

[10] Despite the older engine design, the LRC was a great advance in the state of the art over the Turbo in every way, offering a smoother ride at the same or faster speeds, with lower capital and operational costs, and the ability to easily change train lengths.

The Canadian Transport Commission studied the problem of offering Corridor service and concluded that "the most profitable strategy to adopt involves maximizing the potential of existing railway facilities through the introduction of new vehicle technology.

Between the axle and the bogie frame was a series of C-shaped steel leaf springs stacked inside each other for the basic suspension, with rubber sheets between the leaves providing some shock absorption.

With Dofasco's successful demonstration of a tilting system, additional contracts were offered to build a prototype train.

Alcan of Montreal won the contract for the aluminum passenger cars and the carbody of the locomotive, while MLW developed the new diesel–electric system.

[18] During this period, CN executives started expressing concerns about the cost of the equipment, while their engineers stated a preference for electrically powered tilting in place of the hydraulic system.

[19][20] With the PAIT funds exhausted in 1972 and the launch customer delaying its orders, the project went into a lengthy hiatus period where little progress was made.

Later that year the consortium learned that the U.S. was considering foreign designs for service with Amtrak, so the contract was revived and the LRC prototype was sent for a six-week period starting in November 1974.

[15] The testing was considered a great success by everyone involved, although Amtrak eventually purchased locally made versions of the Turboliner.

They were built around two aluminum girders running the length of the car, providing them with the high strength needed to meet the more stringent North American crash standards, while still being competitive with similar designs from Europe.

[23] By 1980, the National Research Council published a report noting that the weight had grown so much that service above 100 mph (160 km/h) would cause unacceptable wear on the Corridor, thereby limiting the new LRC to the same speeds of the Turbo it was meant to replace.

In the meantime, in January 1977 Amtrak signed a $10 million lease agreement for two locomotives with five coaches each, with an option to buy the trains at any time, or return them after the two years were up.

The original LRC locomotives were gradually retired after ten to fifteen years of service, although #6905 was used during test runs of the new "Renaissance" cars between Glen Robertson and Ottawa in 2000.

A new capital program announced by the Canadian government in October 2007 includes funding for the refurbishment of Via's remaining LRC cars.

[37] Bombardier have since used updated versions of the LRC carriages and their tilt systems in the Acela electric high-speed trains they developed for Amtrak in the late 1990s (consisting of 26 club cars and 72 passenger cars),[38] the Super Voyager in the United Kingdom[39] and in the experimental Acela-derived JetTrain proposed in the mid-2000s for several corridors in Canada and the United States.

After it was found that it could still operate under its own power, it was decided to not move the locomotive and keep it in its current storage at VIA Rail's Toronto Maintenance Centre in Mimico.