Popped up in my feed. ACE. Along with the Ekranoplan this has to be some real-life -Thunderbirds shizz? Any more such real-life Gerry Andersonesque behemoths worth exploring?

T

A decent watch:

Tourism Soviet style!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRRy6t5K3R4

Clive Cussler’s “Atlantis Found” is a real laugh and features the snow cruiser and a good description of what driving it might be like.

As a book it’s predictable, one-dimensional, shallow, implausible, and pretty much junk food for the mind. It’s also one of my favorite reads. 🙂

Along with the Ekranoplan this has to be some real-life -Thunderbirds shizz?

There’s a key difference though, the Ekranoplans actually worked!

^ 🤣

Yes the Snow Cruiser was a total failure and utterly bonkers. It reminds me of something unlikely and futuristic that I would see cutaway diagrams of in dad’s ‘Eagle’ annuals.

‘In the near-future we might journey on giant Snow-Cruisers to Undersea Permaglass Domed-Cities submerged a mile below the Antarctic Sea Ice, wearing gossamer-thin space-foil boiler-suits’

Well according to Wikipedia it’s still out there somewhere!

As an aside a lot of the vehicles that featured in Thunderbirds were based on the track layout of the Vickers Vigor bulldozer…

Surprised no-one has mentioned LeTourneau. And it was electric (sort of).

Yeeessss!!! That’s what I was trying to think of but couldn’t remember what it was called!

There’s a LeTourneau LCC-1 snow train at the Yukon Transport Museum. Not quite as whacky as the one above, but pretty Thunderbirds.