Soviet plan to build twin-barrelled, streamlined amphibious monorail
The July, 1934 ish of Popular Science reported on this wonderful plan to exploit Soviet Turkestan by means of twin-barrelled, streamlined amphibious monorails to "whiz above desert sands on an overhead rail, or plunge into the water to ford a river."
Link
A single overhead rail on concrete standards could be erected at low cost along these routes, engineers estimate. Air-propelled cars with twin, cigar-shaped hulls could straddle the track and glide along it, at speeds reaching 180 miles an hour, according to calculations based on tests of models at Moscow. The cars would be equipped with Diesel-electric drive, and each one would carry forty passengers or an equivalent freight load. Where the longest of the projected routes crosses the river Amu-Daria, a mile and a quarter wide, it is proposed that amphibian cars be used. On arriving at the shore the cars would leave the overhead rail and cross the river as a boat. Soviet engineers are reported already surveying the route.
the latest
latest episodes
"Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!"
Sonny,
You just made me dig through my dvd's to find Oh Brother Where art thou. Just so I could LISTEN to it while boingboinging.
Well done.
Here's how far ideas like that got. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/06/pedal-vehicle-for-tr.html
speaking of which, there's a dangerously similar comment on that posting to yours sonny.
Yes, I've been biding my time for the next monorail post so as I could be first.
The "oh brother where art thou" link was days(eons) ago...glad it got thru.
As awesome as that is, the best Soviet transportation solution is still the Ekranoplan.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekranoplane for a good picture and http://www.se-technology.com/wig/html/main.php?open=showpic&code=&pic=406 for a good picture of a different model (I think that one is a lun-class).
I think it could only work in countries big enough and with harsh terrain to cross.
The idea of not breaking up your journey (train - boat - train) is great but, it would be a waste of time in the UK.
Imagine the cool things we could have had if we hadn't spend all that money on bombs.
Actually, we have a lot of cool things technology-wise as a spin off because we do (spend a lot of money on bombs, etc.)...NASA's data gathering was also useful for perfecting ICBMs; indeed that was one of the main (if hidden) purposes of the space program, all romantic fanfare aside.
Ekroplane = a real life Star Wars Landspeeder! Cool!
So you're saying that if we decided to spend more money on domestic technology, agriculture, transportation, and less on bombs, we would have less cool technology? How so?
Hey wasn't there something like that, in the game Myst from a while back?
In Soviet Russia, monorail rides you!
(which sounds unexpectedly sexy)
They have them in Ogdenville and North Haverbrook!
...jet-powered monkey-navigated...it goes on like this.
Oh, sorry.
The ring came off my pudding can!
"if we decided to spend more money on domestic technology,... and less on bombs, we would have less cool technology? How so?"
I'm afraid surveys of the history of tech reveals this to be the case. The biggest problem is that funding sources of non-military tech is short-sighted by nature and always has been. Investment standard is (historically) profit in an annual food crop. Military investment has been a reliable longer term investment. What isn't for "domestic" defense can still be sold to other countries. Some may have thought modern post-cold war tech might be different, but...