OK, I'm going to try this again, after losing the entire post in the TMP maintenance session…
Actually, Wikipedia indicates that it was the war in Vietnam firing up, rather than the Cold War ending, that led to the end of the program:
link
DTIC has a couple of test-related reports from 1964 and 1965, but none later, so that fits.
The Wiki article would indicate that it's the LCC-1 in Fairbanks, and the Mark II at Yuma. I can try to get down the road to Yuma one of these datys, and take more pictures. The museum archive may have more photos, too; in the meantime…
This item is from a dead page, but it was cached:
__________
TECHNOLOGY HISTORY: The Overland Train
America in the two decades after the end of World War II was a different place than it is now. The US ended the conflict stronger than ever, while the major competitors had all but bled to death, and many Americans could feel without any self-consciousness that their nation was a "colossus astride the globe". They thought in big terms and took on projects of unbelievable scale. Some, like the Apollo manned Moon program, they astoundingly pulled off. Not too surprisingly, many others didn't work out so well.
As a case in point, consider the US Army's Overland Train Mark II, almost without doubt the biggest off-road vehicle ever built. It consisted of an oversized three-axle / six wheel control rig, linked to twelve four-wheel cars in a train. It was twice as wide as an ordinary highway freight hauler rig, with a length of 175 meters (572 feet), and with 54 tires all 3 meters tall and 1.2 meters wide (10 x 4 feet). The control rig did not pull the cars. They were all self-powered, with each wheel driven by its own electric motor. The maximum speed of the entire rig was 32 KPH (20 MPH). It looked like something Luke Skywalker might have encountered in the deserts of the planet Tatooine.
The Overland Train was built by the Robert G. LeTourneau Company of Longview, Texas. LeTourneau began his career as an earth-moving contractor, working on large civil engineering projects. In 1924 he went into the business of building his own earth moving machinery. His business turned into an international success. At first, his earth-moving machines used steel wheels on the job, with interchangeable rubber wheels for highway transit. More or less by accident, LeTourneau discovered that the rubber wheels were actually more effective all around. He then started to think about fitting electric motors in each wheel.
World War II came along and the LeTourneau company went into full gear building heavy earth moving equipment for the military. It is estimated that two-thirds of the earth movers built by the US during the war was manufactured by LeTourneau; it is worthwhile to remember in this context that General Dwight Eisenhower said the bulldozer was one of the four primary tools for winning the war, along with the landing craft, the 6x6 truck, and the Douglas DC-3 transport aircraft. The idea of developing earth moving machines with self-powered wheels had to be put aside for the time being.
In 1953, LeTourneau sold off most of his operation to Westinghouse Air Brake. He retained two factories, but the sale agreement restricted him from building earthmoving machinery in competition with Westinghouse for five years. He turned to development of such items as log stackers and missile transporters. When he heard that the US Army was interested in obtaining a large ground transport to resupply the radar stations of the Distant Early Warning Network in the far north, he got in touch with the Army and discussed ideas.
The US Army Transportation Command came up with specifications, and in 1955 the LeTourneau plant in Longview, Texas, produced the "LCC-1" prototype to meet them. It consisted of a four-wheel control vehicle linked to three four-wheel cars, with a total length of 53 meters (174 feet). All the sixteen 3 x 1.2 meter (10 x 4 feet) wheels were self-powered. The control vehicle had two articulated compartments, including a heated driving / living compartment in front that could accommodate three crew, and a rear engineering compartment with a 450 kW (600 HP) diesel engine, electric generators, fuel tank, plus a crane to help deal with wheel changes and linking or unlinking cars.
The LCC-1 was evaluated on sand dunes and snowdrifts, and shipped to Greenland for severe arctic testing as the "Sno Train". All went well, paving the way for development of the Overland Train Mark II. Its general configuration was along the lines of the LCC-1, but along with an improved control car, with accommodations for six crew, it had ten cargo cars and two power generator cars fitted with gas turbine engines. It could be handled by a single driver, with the cars all following the control vehicle to turn when they came to the same spot.
The Overland Train was evaluated intensively in the early 1960s. It did well in the evaluations, but then the Army got cold feet. Money was short, the Overland Train promised to be expensive, and the Army didn't have a cadre of mechanics who could maintain the thing properly. The program was abandoned. Apparently most or all of the hardware was junked. LeTourneau still builds giant machines with individually driven wheels, but nothing exactly on the scale of the Overland Train.
"Big Wheels" by Charles W. Eberling, INVENTION & TECHNOLOGY, Winter 2001, 28:31.
__________
See Photo #10 and accompanying comment for a period color photo of the LCC-1:
link
This Russian site has some photos not seen elsewere (and some misidentified photos):
link
The cool rear shot is attributed to bigfoot4x4.com, but I can't find it on the current version of the Bigfoot site.
Two threads with lots of Gucci photos (including period ones) here:
link
link
This movie clip won't display for me, but as you're a digital video whiz now, I'm sure you'll figure it out:
link
And here's the Mark II (top) and the Sno-Freighter, with one of the posts further down including a link to an eBay auction for an original LeTourneau Sno-Freighter brochure:
link
Yeah, you got me going. I'm interested in this especially because every now and then we're involved in moving pieces of LeTourneau equipment.
Allen
tries a stucco repair product to contour his bases.
