Oh I could SO do a drone car in large scale - hmm, guess I better get started on planning for the outdoor layout this spring… There are several R/C quads smaller than the palm of your hand, which could be fitted in a G scale boxcar or on a G scale flat.
–Randy
Yeah, I was kind of a space cadet when I was younger, so I had the rocket launcher and exploding boxcar, too. I could hit the target most of the time.
Back when they were actually serious about these, one of the late-night comedians out of New York suggested that they should put the missiles on NYC subway trains, and shoot them through manholes in the pavement. The idea was that if the Transit Authority didn’t know where its trains were, how could the Russians?
Another entertaining but futile endeavour involving trains. The Russians did have a solution for that, though…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
Here’s where a railroad might get into the mix. At 27 tons, the tsar bomb could barely be lifted by an aircraft. But they can make thermonucelar weapons as large as thought necessary. They envisioned the biggest ones would be delivered by ship. A railroad could serve nicely, but I don’t think using a train as a delivery vehicle was ever seriously considered. Plus there’s the matter of the gauge change, which was originally intended to keep Europe out of Russia. In the Cold War, it became a barrier that could have held the Russians back. So railroads do figure even in the nuclear age.
I remember having the O-27 ballistic missile car, where the missile would launch straight up and return via parachute. I also had the satellite car where the “solar cells” acted as rotor blades.
As for the Tsar Bomba, basic properties of the atmosphere put a limit how large of an effective blast radius can be produced. The mass of a vertical column of air from sea level to space is equivalent to 5 miles of air at sea level pressure, and for ery high yields, path of last resistance is blowing the covering atmosphere into space.
True, blast was somewhat limited by that issue. But a 5 mile wide hole in Manhattan could ruin a lot of people’s day. But thinking only in terms of blast effects is really barking up the wrong tree. The big issue was fallout. The second US thermonuclear test in 1954 of what was effectively a deliverable weapon (the first test, IVY MIKE, was a proof of concept configuration too large to fly), CASTLE BRAVO, produced 7,000 square miles of lethal levels of fallout from only 15 megatons yield. With a map of its plume superimposed on the assumed primary target, Washington DC, this deadly fallout could reach New York City. That’s from just one modest sized hydrogen bomb.
That’s important, because nuclear strategy is not really about the dangers posed by one bomb. It’s the cumulative radiation of thousands of bombs that’s the real issue. If used in the sort of mass exchange most envisioned the Cold War ending in, the combined effects of thousands of megatons of fallout would make those subways very useful as fallout shelters.
Speaking of fallout shelters, I wonder if anyone has ever repurposed a home fallout shelter as a layout room? That’s technically the case with the Illini Railroad Club’s layout, which is in the basement of a dorm which undoubtedly was marked as shelter space back in the early 60s. Until very recently, most campus buildings retained the signage and many still had a smattering of supplies. A friend who worked at the library (the largest number of volumes in a library at a public institution, BTW, and exceeded only by Harvard and Yale IIRC) managed to procure for me one of the CD water barrels that could be recycled into a toilet when emptied when they were cleaning out some of those old spaces to remodel. he knew I collect such artifacts as part of my research. But the biggest deal when it comes to fallout shelters on campus is the Undergrad Library, which is almost wholly under ground except the entrance at the top. It was designed and built in the
I think there was a cartoon in Model Railroader.
Wow, I’d sure like to locate which issue that was. [bow]
Still looking for that one, but I DID find a news item in the May 1962 issue where a reader reported seeing an article in Newsweek about a box car being used as the internal form for a concrete fallout shelter.
And I found an announcement about a place in New jersey where they have model trains, Santa, vintage computers, AND a restored bomb shelter on display. The trains aren’t in the bomb shelter - in there they show some of the classic 50’s and 60’s “duck and cover” type movies.
–Randy
July 1985 Bull Session has an item on a guy who built his model railroad in a bomb shelter.
No luck on locating the cartoon.
–Randy
Thanks, Randy. I’d say 1985 was a little early to think you might not need that during the Cold War, but you gotta keep your priorities straight.[;)]
Sounds to me like what Amazon wants to do. Now we have to decide if the delivery is socks from Aunt Millie or a thermonuclear device.
Considering the relative size/weight of the two, it should be easy to tell.
Reference the Tsar Bomba (The one actually exploded was the Tsarina Bomba - only 50 megatons) this was another Russian, “Ours is bigger than yours,” exercise. Since the square-cube rule applies to explosives of any kind, a single US ICBM with ‘mirv’ warheads would have done more damage - and more targeted damage - than that thing from the country that gave us the 4-14-4.
Chuck (Retired USAF modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Is this Car at the Wright-Patterson A.F.B Museum in Ohio?
The SAC Base in my Hometown, was scheduled to have been one of the bases in CONUS to host such a Unit.
A extensive rail connection was planned, with two(2) carriers, seperated around 10 miles from interchange points.
The squadron was to have been located in the base reservation area, near the vast complex munitions storeage areas.
As I recall, the Department of Air Force was looking at using custom manufactured 4 axle EMD & GE roadswitchers.
The car in the picture, reminds me of the specially modified heavy weight passenger cars, that the Air Force used through the early 1980’s for B-52 training simulators and early warning communications systems.
Remember them well and the local base had a GE 65 ton Center Cab, in Air Force Blue and White Star, as the base switcher on mainside and usually a Army GE at the “other base”, munitions storeage at the reservation area. Two seperate lines, did not physically connected.
Yes, that’s the one stuffed and mounted at Wright-Pat. I think that’s the only one on public display. There may be more remnants in Utah, but I think most if not all went to the scrapper.
Well, a little maybe. No span bolsters under those SAC simulator cars. And they didn’t represent much of an attractive target. If you weren’t done practicing and simulating be the time the balloon went up, it wouldn’t much matter.