I came across an interesting photo on the Internet, I had to climb through the archives …
Such a super train was illustrated by Doug Rolfe in 1948 in the April issue of Mechanix Illustrated. Science fiction, you say, has not become reality.
Drawing from Mechanix Illustrated.
But, it is interesting that the "jet" train mentioned in the article had a prototype. The model of such a train was the army "sleigh", which was tested in the same year at the Murok airbase by Northrop Aircraft Co. With five solid-propellant missiles on board, they raced on a standard gauge railway at 1,019 miles per hour (1,639.57 km / h), which is much faster than the speed of sound (let me remind you - 1224 km / h in the air under normal conditions) …
Those are the record-breaking sledges. Unique shot …
The sled was originally designed to help aircraft design and build engineers and technicians break the 750 mph sound barrier and test air models at supersonic speeds. However, before the sled fell off the tracks and flew into the desert, it set a world land speed record and paved the way for a transportation revolution … which never happened.
Promotional video:
Part * suspension * - * skids * on graphite grease.
And the technology still received further development, and this led to the fact that today such "rocket sleds" are considered the fastest land vehicles. On April 30, 2003, at Holloman airbase, New Mexico, the multistage skids (more precisely, their last, fourth, stage) were able to accelerate to 10,430 km / h. True, such devices are used to test new materials and various crash tests, so it is difficult to call them vehicles … In general, the revolution never happened.
Now these are the * sleds * used for speed records.