The Incredible Story of the US Army's Earth-Shaking, Off-Road Land Trains Oh, your pickup has a lift? That's cute. https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645/...ad-land-trains
My goodness we use to be great, producer of giant men, machines and dreams and now...not so much. We produce social media. LOL!
more photos here The Gigantic 180 Meter Long US Army Land Trains Of The 1950s The Mammoth Land Trains of the US Army Were too Big to be True! The Army - of it is worth doing, they will overdo it../...
Hm. The Rolligon was also popular, but didn't like rock all that well. Snow and ice? Stand aside, I'm rolling.
That big bastard still exists, you can see it about 6 miles out of Fairbanks Ak, near the little post stop of Fox! Pretty impressive to see, even today!
The mines were experimenting with these shortly before I retired from the industry. They had been using the Diesel - electric with the wheelmotor concept on their standard haulage equipment for years. It is much easier on fuel and not subject to as many mechanical breakdowns. In the mid-90s with the advent of computer technology, the older DC wheelmotor systems, which often ended up with brush and commutator problems and produced maintenance migraines, were replaced with AC driven wheelmotors controlled with on board variable frequency drives. Gone were the carbon brushes and the copper commutators with their flashover problems and their out-of-round issues.
the US military had to set up the DEW line across the artic for radar missile warnings >>> these trains delivered the building supplies ....
Yup Spent a few years in Alaska at the 11 TCW managing the logistics to those sites. Flown in on DC-6s, C-130, C-12, King Airs and a couple of really sketchy schedule 121 carriers. I have no desire to return to any.
Holy cow! Before mining I used to work on DC6s and C118s converting them to lightened cargo configurations for flying loads of salmon from Alaska to Washington State. Can't believe anyone actually had the cohones to fly in them.
Northern Air Cargo still flys DC4s and DC6s around Alaska, every summer... I know where there is a DC6 stuck in beach sand cause they didn’t get it loaded in time, and the tide came in and it sunk in up to the struts above the landing gear... Still there 20 years later, minus everything worth stealing...
