
The US Army's earth-shaking, off-road land trains - tomohawk
https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645/the-incredible-story-of-the-us-armys-earth-shaking-off-road-land-trains
======
jcrawfordor
Another unusual type of vehicle designed for arctic transport applications is
the Rolligon: [https://jalopnik.com/weird-tech-friday-the-rolligon-for-
when...](https://jalopnik.com/weird-tech-friday-the-rolligon-for-when-you-
want-to-r-1724171889)

Rolligon-type vehicles (mostly not under the Rolligon name today) are still
used in mine and oilfield applications in the Canadian and Alaskan arctic.
This is often motivated less by their snow/ice capability (which is similar to
tracked vehicles), than by environmental regulations which specify a maximum
ground pressure exerted by vehicles to prevent excessive damage to plant life.
There's a whole world of "low ground pressure" vehicles for this reason,
although in non-arctic situations they usually achieve this by use of
exceptionally wide rubber tracks.

~~~
D_Alex
Speaking of "low ground pressure' vehicles: if you have not seen it before,
take a look at the Sherp!

[https://sherpatv.com/](https://sherpatv.com/)

~~~
fit2rule
This is the only vehicle, besides a cruising yacht, that I truly desire to
own.

My dream of journeying the worlds' swamps and river systems with a Sherpa is a
tough one to shake. If only they'd made a fusion-powered version, hehe ..

------
monkeycantype
I'm so glad this was made and worked, does anyone else find themselves haunted
by the dumb failed utopian projects of the past? That somehow stupid
engineering of the past sits in your imagination beside the dumb software
development in shitty languages of your personal history? - What's that
employer? you want a contract management system entirely in microsoft word
macros - and it has to produce a scrollable map of government infrastructure,
and it's 1995, and this is all in word, is there a database?, no?, no
database, all in the word template - sure why the hell not, I guess you're
paying and no doubt I will experience immense person satisfaction wasting my
youth in your strange beige office attempting and repeatedly failing to
realise this hideous monstrosity and cherish the downward spiral of shame and
self recrimination. excellent!

Thank you snow train - finally I can relinquish the weird melancholy I've
always got thinking about the Antarctic snow cruiser:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Snow_Cruiser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Snow_Cruiser)

~~~
Animats
This was only a tiny part of US air defenses in the 1950s and 1960s. This was
for building the Distant Early Warning line of radar stations, geodesic domes
in arctic climate. They were built, they worked, and many, though abandoned,
are still standing.

And that was just the outer warning line. The Mid-Canada Line and the Pine
Tree Line were further in. Texas Towers were built out in the ocean with even
more radars. There were interceptor bases all over the US and Canada. Anti-
aircraft missiles and guns were staffed 24/7\. The SAGE computer systems and
Missile Master were built to coordinate this. Cheyenne Mountain was built as
headquarters.

~~~
kev009
And nuclear hardened coaxial cables and the TD microwave system and
communications satellites and fiber optic and...

I feel like millennial and future generations need a compact guide to what the
GI and Silent generations actually accomplished.

~~~
posguy
Look at the state of our communications infrastructure today. These "modern"
coax networks have no redundancy and so so reliability (eg: Comcast's Node+0
nodes occasionally have their IP stack fall over, requiring a reboot).

The remaining baby bells are baby bankrupt after years of pillaging their
territory to pay for acquisitions and investor dividends (see recent Frontier
bankruptcy and fire sale of Pacific NW territory to Ziply Fiber) and the
infrastructure they do have is almost entirely running atop legacy hardware
designed in the 1980s.

~~~
jcrawfordor
The coax networks that GP refers to have nothing to do with cable television
(except that television syndication links were carried over them). GP is
referring to the AT&T L-series carriers which carried telephone calls (and
later digital voice link equivalents) over multiple bundled coaxial pairs.

The L-carrier infrastructure was built to remarkable standards of durability
and reliability, in part because much of the system (particularly L-3I and
L-4) were built as part of federal C3I contracts and were hardened against
limited nuclear strikes, but also because of AT&T/WECo's general culture of
obsession with reliability. Station equipment would be entirely duplicated for
redundancy, nearly all equipment stations were manned to allow for quick
repair (and 'maintenance patrols' inspected remote en-route repeaters as often
as daily), and the system was designed for network-level redundancy through
rerouting and the preparation of 'alternate control points' to allow continued
operation even in the case of complete isolation of parts of the network.

The L-carrier system fell out of use when it was replaced by fiber-optic
technology (which AT&T initially referred to as "lightguide", perhaps due to
it coming hot on the tails of their work on waveguide carriers such as WT4
which were essentially microwave radio through a metal duct).

Of course, this raises the question of why this infrastructure is so much more
reliable than cable television seems to be. I would suggest three
explanations. First, AT&T, Bell Labs, WECo, and the rest of the Ma Bell crowd
held reliability as an extremely high value, at both a cultural and
requirements level. This is exemplified by now legendary Bell system feats
such as moving exchange office buildings with operators still working inside
(and dragging long tether cables) in order to avoid a service interruption.
Second, AT&T long held major defense contracts with significant reliability
requirements (against both natural conditions and enemy attack), and as a
matter of cost savings these contracts were met using infrastructure shared
with civilian services. In general, the non-Bell system modern internet
carriers have not held this type of business on such a large scale, in part
because they postdate the cold war and in part because AT&T, CenturyLink, and
other Bell alums are more interested in federal contracts.

Third, cable television has historically been both more competitive and less
critical in popular opinion than telephone service, and so reliability has
simply not been a high business priority for these operators. For the Bell
system any service interruption could be a major scandal, and this is still to
some extent true today of telephone service (see any 911 interruption
incident). On the other hand the cable companies descended from offering a
service which was viewed as a non-critical luxury. Consumer and regulator
behavior seems to have just not caught up to the internet era in this regard.

And yes, it is quite true that many of the Bell system alums are struggling
today. On the other hand, CenturyLink is quite viable as a business and shows
few signs of slowing. They are even arguably relatively innovation-forward as
an ISP as evidenced by their having one of the larger gigabit GPON footprints
in the US, as well as emphasizing no-contract "price for life" service in many
markets where they compete with cable carriers. But yes, ultimately most of
the Bell system has been dismantled in the interest of cost savings, and has
been replaced by a sort of shambling wisp of its former self. Many feel that
the writing was on the wall as soon as the breakup occurred, a move which was
in good part aimed at reducing consumer prices, and did so, but partially at
the cost of radically reduced investment in infrastructure. There is tradeoff
between affordability and reliability, and the telecom industry seems to
always cling to one of two extremes.

~~~
Spooky23
Part of their monopoly was regulation. Those reliability requirements were
mandated by state utility boards and the FCC. The engineering culture was the
tail that wagged the dog.

~~~
jcrawfordor
Yes, and I think it's an important example of "reason number three" that while
cable television operators are subject to public utility regulation in most
states they are _not_ subject to nearly as stringent quality-of-service
requirements as the telephone operators. You can complain to your PRC or
equivalent body about nearly any interruption of telephone service, but when
it comes to your cable you're largely on your own.

~~~
Spooky23
Very true.

In my experience in New York, Verizon basically uses the public service
commission as a level-1 helpdesk -- they take referrals incredibly seriously.
I had an issue with Verizon equipment infested with bees -- and they literally
rolled trucks within 30 minutes of getting a referral from the regulator, a
pole and a bunch of equipment was replaced within 24 hours.

With TWC/Spectrum, unless they do something grossly incompetent or unsafe, the
regulator is more like another party nagging them.

------
rjrodger
I wonder did this somehow inspire The Amtrak Wars[0]?

(Probably not, but I'm loving the `strange(truth) > strange(fiction)`)

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amtrak_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amtrak_Wars)

~~~
bwldrbst
First thing I thought of! Especially the picture in the header.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Seconded. Perhaps the series is less obscure than I'd imagined.

------
avmich
Heard a legend that when USSR planned the manned Moon program, one of ideas
for how to bring a humongous rocket to Baikonur was manufacture it in Moscow,
then move by rivers to Caspian Sea and then move over land east, to the launch
pads. For that purpose USSR started to construct a pretty big off-road vehicle
- rather similar to what's pictured here, but dropped the project, as N-1 was
decided to be built on Baikonur itself. Remnants of the vehicle surfaced
somewhere on the Web...

Wonder if somebody could confirm or disprove this :) .

~~~
orbital-decay
Yes, the diesel-electric ZiL-135Sh. [1][2] 120t payload, zero-turn radius. The
prototype looks deceptively small, those are motorized Il-18 landing gears,
and the payload was supposed to go on top of them. The full-scale vehicle was
being tested but there are no photos left, apparently.

[1] [http://www.gruzovikpress.ru/article/6377-zil-135sh-
transport...](http://www.gruzovikpress.ru/article/6377-zil-135sh-transporter-
tyajelovoz-dlya-transportirovki-krupnogabaritnyh-blokov-raketonositeley-
zemnaya-sostavlyayushchaya-lunnoy-programmy/) (in Russian)

[2] [https://truck-auto.info/zil/304-135sh.html](https://truck-
auto.info/zil/304-135sh.html) (less info, some more photos of the prototype
with the wheels turned 90)

~~~
D_Alex
So, in my industry, moving 10,000 tonne loads is routine(-ish).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wp41alE8Mg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wp41alE8Mg)

~~~
orbital-decay
Yeah, it was supposed to look similar but obviously non-modular and with less
wheels. It was USSR in 1967, nothing like that was available, so they had to
improvise. More like a wheeled version of NASA crawler-transporter designed to
cover fairly long distances across Kazakh Steppes.

------
chkaloon
Cool. But I wonder about this stat: 63 manned stations, "would need about 500
tons of materials to create all of these stations"

500 tons seems WAY low.

~~~
jcranmer
I think they dropped a 1,000 from it, so it should have said "need about
500,000 tons."

------
moneytide1
This reminds me of the Speed Racer movie where one of the competitors in the
race drove a land train made of pure gold.

Not sure what the plot was but they were the villan trying to hide the gold.
Speed Racer had to use his steering-wheel-radial-menu to summon equipment
embedded in his aerodymanic car (up against this extraordinarily heavy
freighter with lots a drag).

~~~
JKCalhoun
I just posted about that and then saw your comment. See:
[https://youtu.be/EgSk7yEheLo](https://youtu.be/EgSk7yEheLo)

What kind of professional auto race allows a car the length and size of a
train? Love that they green-lighted (greenlit?) that script.

~~~
moneytide1
Haha thank you for this. I was cracking up at so many things - 1500 HP per
wheel as told to the inspector LOL. 500 mph on any kind of road. Over the top
in so many ways, love it.

The signature sound it made when it was imposing in a scene resonates with me
in such a deep, nostalgic way.

------
grendelt
R.G. LeTourneau also built LeTourneau College to train his workforce. It's
evolved into LeTourneau University, my alma mater. www.letu.edu

~~~
JackMorgan
Whoa a fellow Letu grad in the wild! My wife and I graduated back when it was
top flight school in the nation 2009. Beat out Embry Riddle and the Air Force
Academy that year. She wasn't on the Sting team though, just a regular
student. I worked for IT for a year before we moved off into the wild world.

When did you graduate? Are you into programming?

------
chrisco255
Article is worth it just to watch the video of the land-train on the
interstate in the 50s / early 60s, with all the classic cars maneuvering
around it.

------
afterburner
Oh, so I guess a real machine inspired this?

[https://i.imgur.com/Apnf1qN.png](https://i.imgur.com/Apnf1qN.png)

------
fit2rule
From the linked article, a juicy tidbit:

\----

"Jungle Destroyer

The Morrow Project purchased two of these as driver training vehicles, and for
heavy load carrying -- though also because the manufacturer had them "lying
around" \-- SAC had tested them in the late 1950s for clearing crashed bombers
from runways in a hurry. The same width as the Overland Train (5.25 meters),
these are 17.5 meters long and 5 meters tall (over the blade-lifting arm) --
3.4 meters from the ground to the cargo deck. Weighing 50 tons unloaded, they
can carry 95 tons of cargo. Similarly to the Control Car of the Overland
Train, the four rear wheels are not steered; all shock-absorbing is from the
low pressure tires.

When purchased by the Project, these were powered by a 600 HP Cummins diesel,
driving an electrical generator; the Project removed the diesel engine and
generator, and installed a fusion reactor. "

\----

.. ummm .. what? A fusion reactor? Like, nuclear powered jungle destroyer?
That is bonkers.

Glad these things didn't make it out of the Armys' toy box. Imagine what the
world would be like if we had fusion-powered jungle destroyers on the market
..

EDIT: This picture is a sad end to this story:

[http://golddaughters.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/05/museum_4...](http://golddaughters.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/05/museum_4836.jpg)

Somehow it doesn't look so huge!

~~~
mkl
That seems to be from a different article:
[http://asmrb.pbworks.com/w/page/53070717/Morrow%20Project%20...](http://asmrb.pbworks.com/w/page/53070717/Morrow%20Project%20Overland%20Train)

And, as the casual mentions of fusion reactors suggest, it is fiction:
[http://asmrb.pbworks.com/w/page/9958836/FrontPage](http://asmrb.pbworks.com/w/page/9958836/FrontPage)

~~~
fit2rule
Well, it was linked in the original article directly, which used that page as
a source reference for a lot of things, so .. if there is fiction, its
sprinkled throughout the original source material.

~~~
mkl
Hm, maybe the thedrive.com article has been changed since then. I can only
find one link to that page, in the final paragraph.

~~~
fit2rule
Its the link in the sentence "In the end, the TC-497 was also abandoned." \-
that I followed... interesting that they'd use an ARG as a reference on it ..

------
dheera
In Australia there are apparently civilian equivalents of this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iFkKRh5kcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iFkKRh5kcM)

~~~
antoncohen
There are a couple Australian TV shows about these trucks and truckers:
Outback Truckers (on Netflix in the US) and MegaTruckers.

------
altacc
It's interesting that it featured regenerative electric braking. Whilst
regenerative braking is an old idea, I couldn't find an earlier example of
this applied to electric regeneration. It seems the first mention of this in a
car is 1967's AMC Amitron concept but this industrial use predates that by
over a decade.

~~~
jzwinck
Some diesel electric trains had regenerative braking in the 1930s.

------
lukejduncan
Pet Peeve: they break the back button on the browser

~~~
falcolas
Not just a little broken; I’m literally unable to use the back button to leave
the site. I had to use the long press feature to leave the site.

Firefox mobile

~~~
aembleton
Works for me on Firefox for Android, but uBO is blocking 27 items.

------
saalweachter
Before reading the article I was planning to complain that a tractor pulling a
few wagons in a, well, train does not an off-road train make.

But after reading the article, you know what, I’m willing to concede it’s an
off-road train.

------
ChuckMcM
I remember seeing a documentary about this vehicle as a kid. Everything about
it just seemed so oversized. I had not realized it was the heavy lift
helicopters that eventually outmoded it. Kind of sad, since it can be handy to
have the logistic capability to move thousands of tons when you can't fly.

It also got me wondering about what a Tesla version of this would look like
:-)

~~~
drivebycomment
The closest I can think of for "a Tesla version":

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a28748306/worlds-
largest-electric-vehicle-dump-truck/)

------
RangerScience
I am reminded of the Burning Man 747 in terms of "things that could be done
with this".

------
monkeycantype
snowrunner mod please ([https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-
US/product/snowrunner/hom...](https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-
US/product/snowrunner/home))

~~~
gerberus
Haha, I was thinking the same thing

------
MrZongle2
I wonder if we might see something like this operate on Mars one day, to haul
cargo from landing areas to inhabited areas (or mining operations). These were
apparently doomed by heavy-lift helicopters, which likely won't be an option
in the thinner atmosphere _there_.

------
tumetab1
I imagine this would make more sense now with electric motors and a diesel
generator. You would get a massive cargo transport and also a diesel generator
at the same time.

Still an helicopter might be more better, it just seems a nice thing to
imagine, a beast like this moving around in these days.

~~~
avhon1
The LeTourneau land trains _were_ diesel-electric. What are you imagining
being different?

~~~
tumetab1
I must have confused a few parts. I read in one somewhere in the article being
gas powered.

------
ryanwinchester
My dad worked on one of the radar stations on the dew line in Canada. He's got
some cool photos. Like photos of a Polar Bear looking in the windows of his
cabin.

------
jokoon
Off road, maybe, but it's still required to scout the terrain and find a
proper itinerary, and possible bulldoze dirt or cut some trees.

------
Synaesthesia
Strikes me as wasteful and pointless, like a lot of military projects.

------
battery_cowboy
I wish we had a world with zepplins ferrying people around, land trains with
several gas turbine engines, and nuclear powered aircraft. I'm bored of the
same Material design web sites, phones that look the same, every apartment is
the same, etc. I want imagination and crazy ideas to rule the world.

~~~
officemonkey
There used to be steam-powered and battery-powered cars in the early 20th
Century. There was an Edison-Westinghouse war in electricity distribution.

Typically, a consensus is reached based on technical and economic limitations.

For example, nuclear-powered aircraft? You need shielding to protect the human
crew. You also need a reactor that can survive a crash. That's why they use
nuclear fuel for unmanned probes. There are no humans to protect, and it's a
one-way trip.

~~~
catalogia
It's my understanding that if not for the development of ICBMs, the US might
have created cruise missiles powered by unshielded nuclear reactors. They got
as far as running a prototype engine for five minutes, but the whole project
became pointless when it became clear ICBMs would work.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto)

Russia has seemingly been developing this same sort of technology in recent
years. Presumably this is in response to anti-ballistic missile technology
calling into question the future effectiveness of ICBMs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik)

------
jiveturkey
WARNING: back button hijack. now on my blacklist.

non-user-hostile link:
[https://outline.com/PUh9a5](https://outline.com/PUh9a5)

~~~
briandear
Really? A “warning?” A warning is appropriate for malware, but a faulty UX?
That’s a bit extreme.

Back button works fine on Safari for iOS.

------
jldugger
> visible from space on Google Maps.

Note that google maps imagery is generally taken from airplanes not
satellites.

~~~
stonogo
Except the imagery they link to is actual satellite imagery from Maxar, a
space company that sells orbital Earth observation imagery.

