The Virgin Hyperloop XP-2 Pegasus Pod promised to get commuters from New York to Washington in 12 minutes.

National Museum of Transportation

St. Louis, Missouri

If it wasn't for Hitler, there might not be a National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis.

The Aerotrain's flashy styling hid flimsy engineering.

The museum's collection of vehicles began in 1944 when an old mule-drawn streetcar, about to be junked as part of a World War II scrap metal drive, inspired a group of St. Louis preservationists to save it. At the same time, the land where the museum now sits, which has a narrow 19th century railway tunnel, was bypassed by the railroad because it was delaying troop transport trains. The preservationists acquired the land, and the museum opened to the public in 1948.

Both the streetcar and the tunnel can still be seen by visitors. "There's a lot of room to move around," said curator Coby Ellison of the property's 42 acres, all of which are needed because the National Museum of Transportation now has over 50 locomotives. "We tell visitors, 'Walking is also a form of transportation.'"

Boys Scouts frolic next to the museum's World War II C-47A "Gooney Bird" transport airplane.

The museum exhibits a wide variety of vehicles that have moved millions of Americans over the years, but it also has cars and trains that were either ahead of their time, that didn't work as planned, or that simply didn't otherwise survive.

The Chrysler turbine car was a Batmobile ahead of its time.

The Chrysler turbine-powered car of the 1960s is an example; only around 50 were built, and the museum has the only one on public display that can still be driven. "It'll run on anything that's flammable," said Coby, noting that a turbine car in Paris was fueled by perfume, while another in Mexico ran on tequila. Unlike the Batmobile from the 1960s tv series, the turbine car was unexciting to drive, which is one reason why it never caught on. "It doesn't set the floor on fire or anything," said Coby, describing what happens when the car is started for visitors inside the museum. The sound of the exhaust, Coby said, is "a cross between a small jet engine and a vacuum cleaner."

Outdoors, visitors can view one of only two surviving Aerotrains, a failed attempt to lure passengers back to rail travel by building a train that looked like a 1950s automobile. "The last car of the train had tail fins coming off the back of it," said Coby. "The whole thing was cool-looking, but it was built cheap." Despite its stylish streamlining, the train could barely reach highway speeds, and when it did "it just bounced around," said Coby. "It was bad."

Bobby Darin's Da Dia 150 made an appearance at the Oscars.

The museum's most photographed artifact is the Di Dia 150, a one-of-a-kind car-of-the-future that took seven years to build for a Detroit clothing designer; it was later sold to Hollywood pop star Bobby Darin, who drove it to the 1963 Academy Awards. The cherry-red car has bazooka-size front bumper guards, tail fins five feet high, retro-spaceship-style controls, and a swooping plexiglass dome. Each of its four bucket seats has its own ashtray and cigarette lighter. The Di Dia 150, like the turbine car, still runs and, similarly, its appearance is deceiving. "It's a pain to drive," said Coby. "The light refraction off of the plexiglass is such that you really can't see out of it."

Other rarities in the museum collection include a Gyrodyne XRON-1 Rotorcycle, a personal helicopter designed to be dropped to U.S. pilots shot down behind enemy lines; a solar-powered car built by students at nearby Principia College ("They don't even have an engineering department," said an admiring Coby); a streamlined tractor designed to drive through orchards without getting caught in tree branches; and the Black Diamond, a self-contained locomotive with plush seats designed for railroad executives. "It was a 19th century version of a Lear jet," said Coby. "It could also be a fancy way to take your girlfriend on a date."

This Route 66 "no-tell motel" was rebuilt as a museum display.

Perhaps most the surprising artifact in this museum of moveable rarities is the unique Virgin Hyperloop XP-2 Pegasus Pod, a bullet-train-in-a-vacuum that was supposed to get travelers from Washington to New York in 12 minutes at 670 mph. The Pod -- the only one that ever transported passengers (at 107 mph) -- had been showcased at the Smithsonian, and when that exhibition was over, how did it end up here? According to Coby, someone from Virgin called him and said, "I just Googled 'transportation museum' and you were the first one that popped up."

Virgin Hyperloop went out of business in 2023 and the Pegasus Pod is now just another pipe dream, like the turbine car and the Aerotrain. Coby, however, convinced his board of directors that the Pod needed to be in the museum because the museum needed to look to the future as well as to the past. "It sounds crazy," said Coby of the Hyperloop, "but in 50 years who knows?"