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This train… doesn’t need tracks.
With 56 wheels, this 570 feet long beast would be the longest land vehicle ever built. And it might even have been nuclear-powered.
In the 1950s the US military needed a series of early warning radar systems north of the article circle. Vast equipment and men would need to be transported through unknown hostile terrain – something that even the hardiest trucks would struggle with.
But one brilliant engineer had a solution, a train that could travel overland built from a space-age material – aluminum.
Today we will be looking at perhaps one of the most insane, yet dead ends, in technology – a type of land vehicle that would break records – but never be used.
This is the incredible history of the overland train!
it was called, the LeTourneau TC-497 Overland Train Mark II. It would be able to transport around 150 tons to some of the remote landlocked places in the world. It would have a cabin on board for a six-man crew, with kitchen facilities, and be able to carry an unlimited amount of cars.
And it would be made of the material of the future – aluminum.
But to understand why this train was built, and its mysterious purpose, we need to go back to the beginning…
This story actually begins with a man with a plan – Robert Gilmour LeTourneau.
An adventurous youth, leaving school at 14, saw him studying all sorts of trades including woodcutting, bricklaying, farmhand, miner, and carpenter’s laborer, ending up with a sound engineering background working on car repairs.
But after that dream of being a racecar driver ended, he found himself in debt and needing money,
he went to work as a regrader contractor for the new american highway system.
Seriously this guys early life is totally fascinating and I am not doing it justice.
But it was at this point that he found himself enjoying the mechanical machines used in earthworks, rather than the work itself.
By 1935, he devouted himself to the construction of unquie earthmoving equipment and business boomed.
By the eve of world war 2,
he had multiple factories building custom machines in Illinoi, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and New South Wales – wait thats next to me here in Sydney!
He was so infulentual that during world war 2, he supplied up to 70% of all the earthwork machinines for the US army –
building a small fortune and also educating him about the sheer order power of the military-industrial complex.
Sensing the winds of change, by 1953, LeTourneau sold his earthworks divisin to the westinghouse company for 30 million usd – which is a staggering 318 million dollars today.
Why you might ask? To devote his future and his company to a revolution – the electric wheel drive.
source
Jesus Christ, it’s called a dunny not a laboratory. Miles? Talk about a defector. This is treason. 🖕🏽
Looks like something from Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet, all those big weird futuristic vehicles they had
Isn't every train.. a Land Train? It's on land, no? Trains are on tracks, which are on land, no? So..
Can you please cover The Thunderwell🙏 Nuclear steam piston concept launch system/weapon for launching cargo into orbit, destroying asteroids, lol and aggressive Alien Spaceship! https://youtu.be/VonfewfNNfI 😆👍
— The steam accelerated Jules Verne capsule, which was suggested by the speed of at least 6 times earth’s escape velocity, achieved by the 10-cm thick, 1.2 m diameter steel cover blown off the top of the 152 m shaft of the 0.3 kt Plumbbob-Pascal B underground Nevada test on 27 August 1957. In that test, a 1.5 m thick 2 ton concrete plug immediately over the bomb was pushed up the shaft by the detonation, knocking the welded steel lid upward. This was a preliminary experiment by Dr Robert Brownlee which ultimately aimed to launch spacecraft using the steam pressure from deep shafts filled with water, with a nuclear explosion at the bottom; an improvement of Jules Verne’s cannon-fired projectile described in De la Terre à la Lune, 1865, where steam pressure would give a more survivable gentle acceleration than Verne’s direct impulse from an explosion. Some 90% of the radioactivity would be trapped underground!
Imagine if the Germans in WW2 made a Maus Train
What is the point of a land train?
Um… you might want to actually link your second channel in the channels section so it’s actually featured because currently none of your other channels are featured…
snowpericer on wheels
I would love to drive such a thing for once
The "Overlanders| from the Gerry Anderson "Terrahawks" TV series wa smasher inspired by this, although they tended to have only one or two trailers.
4:46 That looks like similar mechanism to the "walking dragline".
"Primaririrly" 🤣 15:15
its crazy this actually existed and wasnt just a paper project
This is how the rock trained
The story is missing its final part, about further fate of the inventor guy.
This thing is so crazy but so cool. Figure out the money issue, standardized parts, and figure the main power issues, this thing could possibly live again. Imagine this thing solar powered, it'd roll on forever.
Of course, that won't happen ever I'm sure, but its nice to dream
i wonder how much air do the tires take
someone gotta give me a survival game around this thing
dude, i did not know that you made these yourself! this is so cool dude! good for you doing your own renders!
It would be cool if dirty diesel locomotives could be replaced with clean nuclear power…
Not only is it powerfull, it looks frickin awesome
Seems like it would be a Satisfactory Vehicle
Ground is not that flat in real life