Who’d have thunk that the little town of Bethlehem — Georgia, that is — would lead the world in manufacturing electric trains?
OK. So, we’re not talking about the high-speed rail or flashy streetcars: They’re actually the off-track, miniature variety tailored to tots, which tend to circulate a bit more this time of year.
But the thriving business of Bethlehem-based True American Classics provides a bit of Little-Engine-That-Could inspiration in a state where clean transportation typically doesn’t get out of the station. So long as a train is on order and under construction, the two-year-old start-up in the tiny town just west of Athens is keeping 37 Georgians at work, according to True American Classics’ David Martin.
We stumbled across Martin and one of his 10-horsepower BellaTori trains over Thanksgiving weekend at Atlantic Station.
The locomotive is powered by a fairly standard “industrial tug” setup: eight six-volt batteries capable of pulling a 5,000-pound load for at least eight hours. But Martin stressed that he’s looking forward to advances in lithium-ion and other battery technologies.
“In any business today, you can’t be too satisfied with being conventional, because that won’t last too long,” he said. “If you need to spend something like 20 percent more to get five or 10 times the pulling power, well, why wouldn’t you do that?”
He also insists that the engine’s “Powered with Green Technologies” label isn’t just marketing. The cars use vinyl composition tile (VCT) flooring rather than wood, partly because of the environmental benefits, and he says a “new product” will use bamboo on a new product they’re planning (he declines “to let the cat out of the bag” on exactly what that product will be).
“At this particular point in history, we just have to be environmentally aware,” he said. “You have just got to cut as much energy use as you can.”
Martin and a friend, Earnest Lee of Bethlehem, who’s actually the company’s principal, have worked off-and-on together since the late 1990s, building and marketing “interactive amusements” (things like rock-climbing walls). After a Canadian company’s electric off-road electric train, which Lee’s company was distributing, rose in price to more than $60,000, the two men set about designing their own version.
“We had three objectives,” Martin says. “We wanted it to be a better product, we wanted it to be built entirely in the United States, and we wanted it to be 25 percent less expensive.”
He says they’ve met all three objectives. The built-in-America theme led Lee and him to research the country’s rich locomotive history. They settled on very realistic design that evokes the famous “4-4-0″ steam engine — the “American type” familiar to anyone who’s ever watched a Western.
Then, they contracted with an Atlanta company to build the battery, motor and flatbed for the locomotive. An engineer’s shop in Bethlehem completes the “tug,” a separate workshop assembles the cars, and so on — all the work is contracted out in Georgia.
Martin says True American Classics has eclipsed its Canadian competitor to become the world’s leading manufacturer of off-track electrics of this type. The company has sold 52 trains (listing at around $45,000). One shipped out to Japan last week. Others have been exported to Peru and Dubai.
Closer to home: The BellaTori at Atlantic Station will be making its rounds nearly every day, weather permitting, noon to 8 p.m. from now until Christmas.
