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The trainset missile launching car....in real life Locos and rolling stock
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Regular poster 263 posts JWhite Regular poster 263 posts
JWhite

Is this the prototype copying the toy maker?  Back in the bad old days of the Cold War there was a proposal to put the MX missile, an ICBM onto rail cars and run them around the country so that they would be hard (impossible?) for the Soviets to target.  Well the idea actually got some traction and they started the program.

One car was built and today it is at the National Museum of the Air Force located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.

A couple of weeks back I took two of my grandchildren over there to see the museum.  I almost forgot that railcar was there ans it's outdoors and almost everything for the museum is now indoors.  But I couldn't leave without getting some photos of this one of a kind car.
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JWhite Regular poster 263 posts
JWhite

Here are the photos.    

Here are the photos.

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IMG_3493.JPG IMG_3484.JPG 
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Geoff Bunza geoffb MRH Author and Moderator 2,500 posts
Geoff Bunza geoffb

MX Rail Garrison Train

Hi J,

The MX Rail Garrison Train was an experiment in basing the US MX missile system on mixed mobile (rail) and semi-static (shelter) platforms. There are very few photos of the complete train in any form. Here's one version being tested in Pueblo:
blo%20Co.jpg 
And this is a concept picture of the missile car you photographed:
ch%20car.jpg 
The trial was conducted by the Air Force, and was never implemented. Some of the cars went north to Alaska as command cars. Both pics were public info. I thought it would make for an interesting and odd train to model someday.
 
Have fun! 
Best regards,
Geoff Bunza

Geoff Bunza's Blog Index: https://mrhmag.com/blog/geoff-bunza
More Scale Model Animation videos at: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrGeoffB
Home page: http://www.scalemodelanimation.com
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Graeme Nitz OKGraeme Prolific poster 1,695 posts
Graeme Nitz OKGraeme

I have heard a Story...

...maybe apocryphal that in the final report on the dropping of MX Rail Garrison system that "Every time the train was run on the mainline, every railfan in America new where it was!"

There was also the Minuteman Mobility Test Train in the 1960's.

The Russians had a similar system called the RT-23 Moldets which looked more like a passenger train and was actually run in service but withdrawn in 2000.

I wonder how much of the railroad would be left intact after launching the MX missile. I am sure the actual launch car would have been destroyed!

Graeme Nitz

An Aussie living in Owasso OK

K NO W Trains

K NO W Fun

 

There are 10 types of people in this world,

Those that understand Binary and those that Don't!
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Warflight Prolific poster 3,008 posts
Warflight

Nifty!

I could see modeling a train like that...
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Bigelov Regular poster 138 posts
Bigelov

Russian version

Here is a link to the Russian Scale Trains forum thread relating to their BZhRK missile launcher (24 pages of comments in Russian with images and links). They also mention the US car pictured above. And here is the ru.wikipedia page (remember that Google translate is your friend!).

12 of these trains were built and operated 1987-1994. There is a preserved example at the railway museum in St Petersburg.

 

Steve B

TTe - Russia in narrow gauge Bigelov's blog and Flickr albums
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Kurt Thompson Active Member 87 posts
Kurt Thompson

Pictures 4 and 5

If you look at the 4th and 5th pictures Mr. White posted, you'll see the stabilzation bars on the launch car. These would be lowered and the hydraulics would stabilze the car while the missile was being launched. Also the command car was to have MU capabilities so the missile crew could operate the train from the command car in case the engineer and head end crew were incapacitated or any other situation arose where the command crew felt they needed to have complete control of the train.

I remember reading the same article piece about the screcy factor would be lost since the railfan population would be all over any departure of these trains from the main depot (not railroad) or center.

Somewhere on the web is the unclassified report including a diagram of the proposed storage facility. I can't put my hands or pointer on my copy since I'm on the wrong computer.

Kurt

Kurt Thompson

New to 2 rail O scale
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