On Jun 30, 11:06*pm, jay walsh wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:

Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote:

The US was going to do that, only with railroad cars, for some
proposed missile system. *I don't remember which missile it was, but I
remember the artists's renditions, lifted right from the viewgraphs to
the pages of AvLeak.

Two of them... both Minuteman and MX (Peacekeeper) were considered for
deployment on trains.
Here's the Minuteman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...Conception.png
...and in a gross violation of national security, here's the finned
version of the rail-based Minuteman for your Lionel model train set,
from the early 1960s:
http://www.bodnarchuk.com/vintagetoy...LIONEL_TRAIN_0...

http://www.bodnarchuk.com/vintagetoy...LIONEL_TRAIN_0...

That's the one! *I recalled the whole car as being blue though. *Oh well
it was "mumble" years ago. *Thanks Pat.

Jay Walsh

There used to be a Minuteman train car with engine out at Travis AFB,
don't know if its still there. It wasn't active, don't know if they
were keeping it for a museum or what, last time I was it was in 1974.
So been a while. Nice AF blue color on it.

Compare that with the whole MX fiasco that was a missile in search of
a basing mode. BMO went nuts on that. I used to go to Norton AFB (now
closed) and knew some of the missile guys. I think they actually
tested one of the cars with the break through the dirt and launch bit.
Though most test launches were out of the silos at Vandenburg. We used
to watch them out at Palmdale, there goes another AF bird out to
Kwaj.

Later I worked with guys who had tons of MRV photos out at Kwaj when
re entry vehicles went in. Some of them were really great, coming in
at sunset over the Pacific.

I don't remember who was contractor on the missile system for MX that
was supposed to drive around the desert then hunker down during a
nuclear blast then ride it out. Thing was built so it was a bit
aerodynamic so blast would go over it. There were some Computational
Fluid Dynamics studies that were declassified and shown in the mid 80s
at an AIAA meeting at LAX of how it was to survive a nuclear blast,
might have been Boeing that was contractor on the thing that drove
around. Back when any computer simulation movie was a big deal. Forgot
where they had the super computer that did this short 30 second movie
with all the data looking like mesh crosshatches.

they finally stuck 50 in silos then retired them. After all the
political hassles and years of wrangling on basing modes. Looking back
you wonder if it really happened and people were so upset over it all.
But they were.