What Happened To The Army's Overland Train?

From Forgotten Machines · 00:21:39

Show by Forgotten Machines

LeTourneau's Overland Train Mark II was a 572-foot land train built for the United States Army in Longview, Texas, and accepted in February 1962: a control car, two power cars and ten trailers on 54 driven wheels, with four gas turbines making the current.Narrated with an AI voice. Written with AI help, fact-checked by the channel's editor.How this was made- Research and script. Written with the help of an AI model (Claude, made by Anthropic), working from the sources listed below. Each factual claim is checked against those sources, and against a second source where one exists, in two separate AI fact-check passes and then by the channel's editor. Where sources disagree, the narration says so and gives each side.- Narration. A synthetic voice from ElevenLabs' built-in voice set. It does not imitate anyone in the story.- Approval. The channel's editor approves every episode before it is published.- This episode is the full narration of the video of the same story. The video, with the archival photographs and their credits, is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DMhReQ8E6mQ- Corrections. If you find an error, please comment with a source on the YouTube video. Corrections are listed in its pinned comment.Chapters0:00 A cab with no train, Yuma, Arizona1:40 The man from Longview3:17 Snow first: the Tournatrain, the Sno-Freighter and the Sno-Train6:17 Building the Mark II, 1958 to 196210:18 Project OTTER, 1961 to 196314:32 The helicopter, the money and the machine17:44 The verdict, and what is leftWhere sources disagree: the full list is in the pinned comment on the YouTube video.Sources (the first five; all are listed on the YouTube video)1. David Doyle, "A look at the Overland Train," Military Trader, March 12, 2025. https://www.militarytrader.com/mv-101/a-look-at-the-overland-train2. Peter Holderith, "The Incredible Story of the US Army's Earth-Shaking, Off-Road Land Trains," The Drive, May 25, 2020 (updated May 29, 2020). https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645/the-incredible-story-of-the-us-armys-earth-shaking-off-road-land-trains3. "Turbine-Powered 150-tonner," Commercial Motor, March 9, 1962, p. 53 (Commercial Motor online archive). https://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/9th-march-1962/53/turbine-powered-150-tonner4. Mark Schauer, "Popular science and technology YouTuber visits Yuma Proving Ground," U.S. Army, January 26, 2023. https://www.army.mil/article/263508/5. John H. Shamburger and Charles R. Kolb, "Project OTTER (Overland Train Terrain Evaluation Research), Pretest Report," Technical Report No. 3-588, Report 1, U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, December 1961 (DTIC AD0402257). https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0402257.pdfThe remaining sources are in the description and replies under the pinned comment on the YouTube video.

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