What Happened To The INCREDIBLE Land Train?

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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.

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