Minuteman Mobility Test Train
A Minuteman Mobility Test Train was a railway train which carried LGM-30 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles for the United States Air Force. It tested Strategic Air Command's deployment of planned trains for launching the ICBMs. Moving the ICBMs by rail might reduce their vulnerability to Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces attack. At the time, the trains had the heaviest railroad cars used on regular rail routes, and rail sidings were surveyed during the trains' 1960 Operation Big Star (surveyed sites were subsequently used in 1961 by RBS Express, different SAC trains for evaluating bomber accuracy.) Operation Big Star Operation Big Star was a series of US military exercises using 4 trains (of 6 planned) from the Hill Air Force Base rail terminal over "21 railroads in the Northwest and Midwest" during summer 1960. The US Air Force Ballistic Missile Division conducted the tests while SAC had operational control of the trains with a "SAC task force" in Utah and on the train, ...
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Railway Train
In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often known simply as "engines"), though some are self-propelled, such as multiple units. Passengers and cargo are carried in railroad cars, also known as wagons. Trains are designed to a certain gauge, or distance between rails. Most trains operate on steel tracks with steel wheels, the low friction of which makes them more efficient than other forms of transport. Trains have their roots in wagonways, which used railway tracks and were Horsecar, powered by horses or Cable railway, pulled by cables. Following the invention of the steam locomotive in the United Kingdom in 1804, trains rapidly spread around the world, allowing freight and passengers to move over land faster and cheaper than ever possible before. Rapid transit and trams were first buil ...
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